Thoughts on freshwater tank size size

[yvairguy]

Back to the original post. It really has more to do with how well you can conserve the water you have. I have a 22 gallon fresh water tank. I can go 2 weeks, give or take a day or two, with one person. I bathe everyday and shower off. I also drink the onboard water after run through a second filter. I also use some bottled water and have a small dog.

[avanti]

Originally Posted by Davydd

Temperature limiting is the same with your kitchen and bathroom sink, an adjustable combination of hot and cold water valve. With a short burst you can test it in your hand over the sink if you want but knowing how to adjust and use same as washing your hands it may never come to that.

They are not remotely the same. Sinks have separate valves for hot and cold. When you use the lever on a sprayer at the end of the hose, both hot and cold are (or may be) on at the same time. Thus, they are connected together; thus thermal expansion in the water heater can force hot water backwards into the cold line, preventing it from cooling potentially-very-hot water; thus producing a scalding risk next time the lever is pressed, even though it was fine a moment ago.

THIS is why most such faucets are designed to dribble. It is a cheap way to prevent this scenario. People seem to think that this is a design flaw. It is not--it is a kludge, but it is quite deliberate.

The sprayer is way, way more efficient in conserving water in a Class B.

I agree with this.

[InterBlog]

Originally Posted by PleasantonMac

So my new Pleasureway Ascent purchase will come with a 20 gallon freshwater tank. Knowing me and my family, that feels like it's on the small side. To be honest, I have no idea what our usage will be, but I am curious to know what people think about the freshwater system. If you're camping without hookups, how quickly do you burn through fresh water? Are there solutions like extra holding tanks or something like that that people carry? Or am I overthinking this?

In the "Just Say No to thread drift" category of responses:

PleasantonMac, if you describe more fully your intended van usage scenarios, we can comment more coherently.

Camping without hookups - I got that part. But --

- Where? (Name some target destinations)
- For how long?
- With how many people?
- With what degree of "roughing it" tolerance on the part of those people?

Here below is a picture of my main "camping without hookups" location. I have a 20 gallon fresh water tank, but because I treat the lake water for multiple purposes, I am water-unlimited.

My husband and I have an off-grid van, and in most of our travel scenarios, we are food-limited. In other words, we run out of food before we run out of water, wastewater capacity, propane, or electricity (and even that takes weeks).

You may be considering travel scenarios that are not as extreme as ours, and thus you might have different considerations. I cannot tell from the information provided in the first post.

[Davydd]

Originally Posted by avanti

They are not remotely the same. Sinks have separate valves for hot and cold. When you use the lever on a sprayer at the end of the hose, both hot and cold are (or may be) on at the same time. Thus, they are connected together; thus thermal expansion in the water heater can force hot water backwards into the cold line, preventing it from cooling potentially-very-hot water; thus producing a scalding risk next time the lever is pressed, even though it was fine a moment ago.

THIS is why most such faucets are designed to dribble. It is a cheap way to prevent this scenario. People seem to think that this is a design flaw. It is not--it is a kludge, but it is quite deliberate.

You just don't give up do you? I've used mine for going on five years now without scalding and you haven't so I suspect my opinion is based on experience and not some theory. ARV's shower head is not new. They've been used mostly in boats I assume coming from mainly a marine supplier and your reasoning that you would need $100 to negate the dribble is ludicrous for a reason other Class B upfitters don't use it. Do the math on a $100,000 Class B (0.001% of the cost) and tell me the inefficient difficult to use dribble poke knob is worth having for the handling inconvenience and water waste.

[avanti]

Originally Posted by Davydd

You just don't give up do you? I've used mine for going on five years now without scalding and you haven't so I suspect my opinion is based on experience and not some theory. ARV's shower head is not new. They've been used mostly in boats I assume coming from mainly a marine supplier and your reasoning that you would need $100 to negate the dribble is ludicrous for a reason other Class B upfitters don't use it. Do the math on a $100,000 Class B (0.001% of the cost) and tell me the inefficient difficult to use dribble poke knob is worth having for the handling inconvenience and water waste.

May I respectfully ask that you please consider the entire discussion before choosing to participate in it. The reason you haven't been scalded is that your rig has a tempering valve (all Rixen's systems do, since it would be dangerous to do otherwise), so you have already paid your $100. There was also no "theory" proffered. It is a simple fact that manufacturers design-in the dribble to prevent the scalding scenario I described, which is quite real. Several have documented this fact.

BTW: My rig is set up identically to yours. There are plenty of quality non-dripping shower heads available. I am not advocating the dribble approach, just explaining it.