A Nice Cup of Tea – Our Water Filtration System
The Most Important Liquid on Earth – Tea.
Water, the source of life. We can’t survive without it and more importantly, you can’t make a nice cup of tea.
When travelling in the van, we ensure water is safe to drink by using a filtration system. Water passes through a number filters to ensure items such as sediment, algae, trout and bacteria are removed. These include physical filters and a UV filter. This allows us to collect water from almost anywhere that’s not the ocean and be sure it’s going to be safe and more importantly, make a nice cup of tea. This also provides important protection against imbeciles who clean their chemical toilets using potable water taps.
We’ve set it up such that it allows us to filter water during filling as well as when pumping to the tap if need be. It’s also possible to cycle the water in the tank through the filters and back into the tank. Overkill? Not just an awesome Motörhead song.
It is also installed it in such a way that it will be near impossible to get at quickly if it springs a leak. It’s like engineering genius, but the opposite.
When travelling without the van, or out hiking, we use a much simpler DrinkSafe TravelTap water bottle (we have an older, hard bottle version).
System Components
- 40 Litre cold water tank. Internally located to avoid freezing. Filled through an internal fill point.
- Shurflo strainer before the pump, stops anything that could damage the pump getting through.
- Shurflo pump. Pressure actuated.
- Shurflo Accumulator to give smoother water flow and less short bursts of the pump.
- 10″ Double water filter housing. We use 2 filters to extend the life of the filters, given it is not an quick job to get access to the filters. These will remove chlorine, organic compounds, pesticides, herbicides, rust, dirt, sand and sediment particles.
- Five micron 10″ filter.
- One micron 10″ filter.
- UV filter. Homemade- Details here.
- Cold water tap. This includes a microswitch which is used to fire the UV filter.
- 35 Litre grey water tank. Probably a bit excessive, but it fit neatly in the spare tyre carrier under the van. In freezing conditions we leave it open and pop a bucket under it.
Moon on a Stick
Things I’d change in hindsight/more space/lottery win?
- A bigger water tank would be nice, but space, weight and weight distribution are issues. I’d also like to move the fill point to outside the van. I have a vague plan to remove the rear window and replace it with something I can drill through.
- Using a commercially available, tested and professionally made UV filter would probably be safer.
- Making the system more accessible in the event of problem, but the limitations of a small van make that difficult. I can get to it, it just takes a while. Luckily the filters easily last a year.
- Hot water! It annoys me that we could make use of the waste engine heat to create hot water, but I haven’t found a way to make a fixed system in the space we have. Even a 10L calorifier is too big.
- Smaller filters would have made life easier, but were not as readily available as the 10″.
Other Drinks Are Available
Note that this article is also applicable to the YouTuber’s favourite – coffee.
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