Grey Water Storage
Today many free and low cost campgrounds require campers to be fully self contained, this means that NO waste is to be left behind, not only the usual rubbish we all have but no waste water should be allowed to fall on the ground either. Indeed some locations can apply very large fines and equipment confiscation if you fail to do this.
For many years now motor homes sold in Australia have been equipped with grey storage facilities, in most cases it simply means an extra water retention tank of somewhere betwee 50 - 200 litres capacity depending on the size of the vehicle, mounted under the chassis.
For some unknown reason however few caravans are fitted with any such device, perhaps it might be that generally caravans, in the past anyway will use caravan parks and therefore they will connect to the parks waste systems but today even where the majority of caravans have ensuites fitted some method of retaining waste water is rare.
nb. Jayco state that 90%+ of the RV's they produce today have an ensuite.
There are ways around this of course, to purchase a seperate water tank and have it installed under your caravan would be the ideal solution, however apart from the cost this might not be possible on many 'non-off road' vans due to lower ground clearance dimension issues.
The answer is not hard, your waste water tanks needs not to be permenantly installed but you must be able to catch all of the water and not allow any to spill, not a drop...our set up will satisfy the rules and costs little...click the photo below to see how we overcame this issue.
We use a simple idea, solar shower water bags are available in many places and they will cost around $15, the blue hose in the photo was purchased at a swimming pool supply shop, about $10, the short length of clear PVC hose from Bunnings.
When set up it needs to be leak proof, the blue hose has a short section of 20mm clear PVC hose force fitted into the solar water bag as well as where it connects to the waste pipes under the van, obviously you must catch the waste from the galley as well as the ensuite. This system will retain about 20 litres, when filled the bottle is sealed with its cap and disposed of at a Dump Point', we find one bag is adequate for one day and due to the low cost extra bags can easily be carried.
We use a simple idea, solar shower water bags are available in many places and they will cost around $15, the blue hose in the photo was purchased at a swimming pool supply shop, about $10, the short length of clear PVC hose from Bunnings.
If you would like to email us on anything you see on our website please scroll to the bottom of any page, we appreciate any comments and I will respond quickly. Your email address is confidential.