Motorhome Features

The Water and Plumbing

Roof-mounted Solar Hotwater Service

This little gem really saves the day. Even during the colder months, just a few hours of good sun heats the water to 70 deg C. Mixed with cold, this provides more than enough for a few hot showers! It's only 70cm x 50cm and stands proud of the roof by 25cm, holds a good 10 litres in the insulated header tank, and is all stainless steel.

Instead of water circulating through tubes, this mini-solar heater has 5 evacuated tubes that soak up the suns rays and transfer the heat to the water tank, similar to having 5 individual heating elements. This works great, and we backed the system up with a Duoetto 12v/240v Electric hotwater service just in case of raining weather. The header tank still holds hotwater many hours after the sun has gone, and still warms nicely even on an overcast day.

Pumping the water

We have elected to run several pumps, again this gives us a good backup system. The "potable' or "drinking" water tank is seperate to the rest, and delivers water to the kitchen sink via a seperate pump and faucet. This is also a low flow pump (3.8l/m) to help conserve water.

The hot and cold water for the kitchen, shower and wash basin is pumped by a larger dual pump system with airtank etc to smooth out the flow. Finally the toilet and laundry are operated by another single pump.

Water tanks and storage

To make the most out of "free camping" the 240 litre drinking water tanks are totally isolated from the rest of the plumbing system! We then have another 240 litres of "fresh" water for showering, toilet flushing, laundry, and hotwater. This tank can be easily topped up from a fresh running river or creek with a small submersible pump. Good enough for showering or washing up if necessary, creek water and dysentry are low on our list of things to do and see, so we keep the pure drinking water seperate. It can always be topped up from 10 litre bottles from the supermarket if necessary.

Having all that water is one thing, but you need to store it after it has been used too!. We have a 210 litre "grey" tank, that we can drain if necessary, and a cassette type toilet for the "black" water. The dunny is good for a week or 2 depending how much you use it naturally, and it's easy to transport the cassette on it's own trolley to the designated dumping points.