Refiling from Fresh Water Sources as a Van Lifer
Water is by far the biggest limiter to staying off grid as a van lifer for long periods of a time. We have extremely small water tanks compared to the endless supply of water when living in a city. Let’s look at the numbers. The average home dweller uses 3,000 gallons of water per month. In a van you have a fresh water tank that can hold, give or take, 20-40 gallons. So, as soon as that is up, you have to refill it.
Typically van lifers fill water tanks via spigots; however, these limit you to heading into town where they are. However, with all of the fresh water around like lakes and streams, why can’t we fill from there? Well, we can as long as you have a pump and filter.
BluTech ARX+, Guzzle H20 Stream, or ClearSource Nomad
Today, we are sharing a solutions that will allow you to refill water off grid from any fresh water source allowing you to stay out there longer! These solution can be bought as products OR DIY-ed into your existing water system. The below products allow you to pump water from a fresh water source, filter it, and dump it into your water tank:
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DIY Campervan Water System Basics
If you are looking for an in depth guide to camper van water systems, this isn’t it. This is our secret hack to refilling our water tank off grid. But, have no fear: you can head on over here for a complete water system building guide.
The Typical Way to Refill Your Van Water Tank
The way most van lifers fill their water tank is from potable water stations. These are usually the following:
- RV dump stations
- Flowing wells (mostly East Coast)
- “Fresh water” spigots (find on IOverlander or Sekr)
However, it is important to either confirm this water is potable and have a good water filtration strategy.
Our Struggles with Water Fill Stations
While the above sufficed for our initial van life journey, we developed a few struggles filling our fresh water tank this way:
- We constantly had to leave our beautiful camp spot in the woods to head into a town and fill up with a hose that sometimes reached, sometimes didn’t.
- Despite being labelled as “potable” we really questioned the cleanliness of some fill ups often.
- We are snow chasers, so as the seasons turned, we found almost every water fill station winterized and we had to resort to pouring jugs of water from indoor water fountains. Not ideal, or fast, and sometimes not free!
I will never forget driving around in Upstate New York and trying 5+ spigots that were all winterized. This exact day was the day we discovered systems like the BluTech ARX+ , Guzzle H20 Stream, and the ClearSource Nomad.
How to Refill Your Camper Van Water Tank from Fresh Water Sources
Now that we’ve given a little background as to why standard van life water fills can be difficult. We’d like to share our new method of filling water from fresh water sources. There are out-of-the-box solutions to do this, or you can opt to alter you onboard water system (more details on that at the end of this guide). If you are opting for an out-of-the-box solution, the process goes like this:
- Boondock near a river (or stream, or lake).
- Run out of water (or just desire some because it looks delicious).
- Fill up 5 gallon bucket with water from water source. You could opt to park close enough to the water source that you don’t need a bucket; however, we found that it is easy enough to keep a spare bucket and it opens up our options from filling from fresh water sources.
- Pump water from bucket into fresh water tank with chosen system (options below).
- Repeat until full (about 6 trips for our 32 gallon water tank).
Here is a visual 🙂
Out-of-the-Box Solutions
In order to pull water from a still and fresh water source, you need a pressurized solution that has built in water filters. There are a few options on the market for this: BluTech ARX+ Off Grid Water Filtration, Guzzle H20 Stream, and Clearsource Nomad. They are are relatively similar with only small differences in the type of water filtration, price, and weight. All three of these systems are water filtration systems that we would trust but we personally have the BluTech MRX+ as it is the cheapest. However, it also is more frequently out of stock.
BluTech ARX+ Off Grid Water Filtration System
The only out-of-the-box “filter and fill” solution that we have personal experience with is the Blu Tech ARX+ Open Water Filtration System. This system:
- Has 4 stage water filtration in 2 separate canisters
- “Tasty” and “Longevity” Filter to filter out larger particles and improve aesthetic taste and smell with carbon.
- “2-in-1 Off Grid+ Filter” for finer grain filtration and electro-adhesive filtration (down to .2 microns)
- Filters at 3 gallons per minute ( we can confirm this – our 5 gallon bucket takes about 1.5min)
- Has an on board pump charged via 12V
- Is durable, lightweight, and packs away easily
Guzzle H20 Stream
The main difference with the Guzzle H20 Stream compared to the 2 other options here is that is adds LED UV-C purification as the final stage of water filtration/purification. This comes at a higher price point of $1,195. But this system can also be used with pressurized sources, not just un-pressurized. This means you can hook it up to campground water, or spigots you aren’t sure about.
Clearsource Nomad
The last out-of-box-solution is the ClearSource Nomad. This is priced very similarly to the BluTech ARX+. The main difference is that this system is heavier and clunkier; however, we have heard that the functionality is great if you can afford to compromise on those two aspects. It is about double the weight of the other two systems (30lbs vs 12lbs).
Additionally, the filtration method is a bit more obscure as we can only find that is has a “NASA derived VirusGuard filter”.
[Bonus] Alter Your Water System
Before we went up to Alaska (land of the fresh water sources), we decided to alter our water system. We doubled our already on board 12V water pump to be switched to PULL water into our system instead of PUMP water out of our system. This was a bit of a complex install, but it has been game changing!
We share a diagram and detailed instructions on how we did this here.
Watch Us Fill Our Water Tank with the BluTech ARX+!
In late 2023, BluTech renamed this system from the BluTech MRX+ to the ARX+. In the video below or in other places on our blog, you may see this archaic naming. We are working to fix it! The products are virtually identical except for the ARX+ has updated filters.
Additional Camper Van Water System Resources
Filtering and filling from fresh water sources is a very niche (but essential!) part of van life. We have several guides about other parts of camper van water systems. If you found this guide useful, check out some additional ones below!
Thanks for being here! Happy building!
Eric + Colby
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