Transfering water from jugs to tank the easy way

[skruske]

Last year while on a long stay on the central Montana prairie, it was necessary to dump water from jugs into the water fill on the side of the Bigfoot 10.6e TC. I and two good friends poured 4 5gal jugs into a make shift funnel cut from a soda bottle.

That got me to thinking there has to be an easier way.

I bought a 1gpm 12vdc pump on Ebay for about $16. It has 3/8" inlet/outlet so 3/8" tubing was procured from Home Depot along with fittings and a couple caps. That cost was about $17 in parts. The gator clips & wire was left over from some other project.



While plastic would work fine, I got brass for the intake side as the weight would help keep the tubing on the bottom of the jug. I put a cap on it after drilling several 1/16" holes through it.






I tested it all out with just a gallon jug & the pump moved that volume faster than 1gpm. Shown here on our XLR toybox.



Power for the pump is in the compartment directly to the left where I installed extra batteries. Simply clip onto to the battery and the pump gets busy doing it's thing. I will keep this set up portable so I can use it in either the truck camper or on the 5th wheel.

[UncleBilly]

I looked at a setup like this a few days ago. Searching further I've found Marine Bilge Pumps that move a ton more water than that. With this pump it would take me over 90min too fill my tank. Bilge pump in a river is just minutes. This is for a [Moderator Edit] scenario. Zombies are fast [emoji12][emoji12]

[kb2ztx]

I did similar but with the harbor freight 12 volt water pump. It has garden hose connectors already on it so just hooked my hose up

https://www.harborfreight.com/12-vol...ump-63324.html

Its $40 but i had a 25% off coupon. Has clips.

[Bigd9]

I did something similar right after Hurricane Katrina hit. Public water supplies were compromised and we were forced to use bottle water. I traveled inland a good distance to find a small water pump to use, but I just placed the outlet hose from the pump directly into the gravity fill port. Your idea looks really great!

[winniman]

If you are dumping the water out of 5 gal pails, why not just elevate them and use a syphon hose. Let gravity do the work.

[fratermus]

Or chuck up a pump in a cordless drill:

https://youtu.be/usKtoyjgfH4?t=39s

[Itinerant1]

We boondock more now than stay at rv parks so getting water into the fresh tank was becoming a pain. I was just using 3 - 6 gallon water containers but at roughly 48# lifting and wresting with the funnel/ containers I finally broke down and put this together. Variation from others that I have seen on the internet. I was pumping from the containers but ordered the bladder to save on space.

I used a Seaflo 33 series 12v pump , 3.3 gpm


I wired a trailer plug onto it and plug it under the tailgate .

I chose this pump for the time the one in the 5th wheel fails and I'll just use this one for it's replacement.

AquaTank II 30 gallon Bladder. That gives a 100 gallons for the 2 weeks and usually it's time to move on to the next location anyways.

2_5/8" OD x 1/2" ID Vinyl hoses, #4 clamps 1/4"-5/8" diameter, 1_3/4"female hose end x 1/2" ID hose barb





The bladder sits in front of the hitch and doesn't hit the tailgate, so a perfect fit.
This is full @ 30 gallons


Just about empty


When completed with the water transfer the bladder can be folded up and the pump broken down taking hardly any space.

[zman-az]

I just use my antifreeze inlet hose. Free and already installed.

[becks]

Since we do not have a gravity fill I just carry an extra water pump for our coach and use that when I need to add more water while boondocking.

[Reed Cundiff]

We use both Itinerant1 and skruske methods. Our Open Range installed pump pulls in about 2.5 gpm when you adjust the valves properly. Our Roadtrek does not so we just put clips on our backup water pump with clear plastic tubing as others have shown in this thread, and get about 2.5 gpm.

We winter in Mexico (primarily Yucatan) and Elaine does not trust the water. So we get a bunch of garrafones (20 liter = about 6 gallons) and take them to a water purification place and fill the garrafones, haul them back and fill the fresh water tanks. Takes quite a few to fill the 80 gallon fresh water tank on the 34' 5th wheel.

Reed and Elaine

[memtb]

Been doing something similar for many years. I decided on an rv pump as it can be used as a spare.... If your rv pump dies! I wired mine with a 7 pin rv plug (wired so as running light pin supplies power to pump). Plug it in,turn on parking lights and pump runs. We also have a rather large back-up tank (in our case a 55 gallon drum). I fabricated a short piece of pvc pipe (to reach bottom of barrel)with water hose connections for suction side of pump,and hose connections on discharge side of pump. You "could" if needed, be parked 50 feet away from rv, and still get water into rv fresh tank.

[vsheetz]

Drill driven pump. I carry cordless electric drill anyway. Similar to this one at Amazon

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00F1...0gL&ref=plSrch

[4x4van]

If your RV has a Tank Fill Valve, and a Winterizing Valve, you don't need any additional hoses/pumps, etc. Turn your tank fill valve to "tank fill", turn your winterizing valve to "winterize", drop the winterizing (antifreeze) line into your water supply (bucket, can, bladder, etc), and turn on your on-board pump.

[oldbeek]

X2 on the Harbor freight pump. We take up to 7 people to the beach at a boon dock camp. I carry 6 ,5 gallon buckets of extra water in case we use all 100 gallons the Alpenlite has onboard..