How to get water while boondocking
Todays’ gadget review is of the Wolverine Tuff Bottle portable water containers. Simply put these are folding plastic containers that let you move water. The idea here is that you can fill the bags with water and then transfer that water to your RV.
The obvious question might be why not to just use a bottle or five gallon container? The Wolverine bags are double-layered food-grade plastic that folds down to a very small size. So, when they’re not transporting water, they’re not taking up your whole storage bay. They’re also really light and very well made - in fact they’re actually made here in the USA in a Veteran-owned company.
Water bags
For anyone who likes to camp off the grid the biggest obstacle to that has been power. But we are quickly overcoming that obstacle with better solar and battery systems as well as more efficient air conditioning and heating in RVs. And that’s only going to get dramatically better in the next few years.
Water is the next hurdle. No matter what kind of RV you have, you only have a specified amount of water aboard. Getting more water isn’t so much a challenge but the size of the containers can be, especially if you like smaller RVs. That’s me.
I haven’t had any interest in carrying a five gallon container of water just because it takes up as much space when empty as it does when full. Five gallons isn’t really enough so now I want two or three and there goes much of my pass-through storage.
The Wolverine Water Storage bags fold flat when empty which means you can leave them in a pass-through compartment, for example, which also protects them from the elements.
Plastic water bottle
The folks at Wolverine sent me a sample of some of their containers to try out and, by coincidence, we’re boondocking for ten days at the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta. That means we have to figure out how to get water in and how to get water out.
The way my travel trailer is configured I can go ten days with my black tank so that’s not an issue.
But even the 54 gallon water tank will eventually run out with two showers daily (one for my wife, one for me). We find we can go about 4-6 days with our fresh and gray tanks as it is now.
So we need to find water and one way to get it is with those water bottle fillers at grocery stores. They also have a tap here at Balloon Fiesta Park but there’s one tap for hundreds of RVs.
We went on our bikes to the tap and filled several of the containers Wolverine sent us to try out.
As they fill they expand, naturally. There’s a lid on top that seals effectively.
They also sent a double-ended eight gallon bag as well as a spigot attachment.
“We have a 10% discount on Wolverine Tuff Bags - use code StressLess at check out on https://wolverinetuff.com”
The bags themselves
One of the things I’ve noticed about boxes of plastic is that they stink. Whatever weird chemicals they use to make plastic bags has an odor I don’t like. Yet that wasn’t true of these.
When I opened the box they shipped the bags in there was absolutely no odor whatsoever. It was noticeable enough that I asked for sniffing assistance of several other noses and everybody said they couldn’t smell the usual offensive odor that comes from products like this.
The bags are also double-layered and fitted with grommets on the corner so, if you’re clever, you might finagle some sort of hanging provision for the bags. Heck, you could even rig-up a shower and, surprise, surprise, Wolverine has a shower attachment.
Getting the water in
Another thing they sent me was a drill-powered pump. I already had this pump but there’s a big, big difference from what I had. Theirs has been greased with a food-grade grease so it’s safe for drinking water. The pump package also includes intake and output hoses and the intake hose has a fitting that’s the same size as the cap that goes on all the bottle bags.
They’ve clearly thought this trough.
Before I had a chance to try the bags myself I saw our neighbor carrying an empty five gallon bottle out of her RV and I flagged her down.
Hey, want try these new water bags and drill-powered pump!?
Sure!
So they went and filled several of the bags and we powered the water into their fifth wheel easily.
Final thoughts
I have to say I’ve had other collapsible bags before. Compared to those (they were Camco products) these don’t stink - the difference was noticeable.
These also have a much, much higher quality feel and while they’re not super inexpensive like the Camco bags were, they also didn’t cut my fingers carrying them back from the water fill station. The lids, too, are high quality and are tethered - another plus.
Most of these also have spouts as well as just lids and they’re both tethered.
What they sent was a variety of sizes but my wife already claimed ownership of the small travel bottle-sized bag. We also used the one gallon bag on the counter of our travel trailer for drinking water.
The 5.3 gallon bags were great for filling our fresh water tank along with the drill pump system.
Water out
One final thought - this water in has to go somewhere. While I had mentioned that our black tank goes for about ten days, our gray tank does not. So I got a cap on the sewer outlet that also has a typical garden hose adapter.
Remember how I said I had already had one of these drill pumps but didn’t realize that it wasn’t meant for fresh water? Well now I am going to use it for pumping out gray water into my Thetford Titan Tote. Essentially I can keep the tote in the truck and then pump water into it so I never have to lift it.
I have often said, if you want to know the laziest way to accomplish a task follow me around.
