Once mounted I decided to fill the Road Shower and test it out. They recommend sanitizing the Road Shower once a year if you plan on using it for potable water. I filled it with about a gallon of water and pressurized it around 60psi (65 is max) with a bicycle pump, or so I thought. Apparently, the gauge on my pump was faulty and it wasn’t even close to 60psi (probably closer to 20) and I would figure this out later. While water pressure was good to start, it quickly slowed noticeably.
After running that initial gallon through the Road Shower, I sanitized it with a mixture of 3-4 gallons of water and bleach. This time I used my Vaiar compressor to pressurize the shower and performance was noticeably improved. Reading only around 40psi, water flow was strong and steady. I then refilled the shower several times to ensure all of the water/bleach mixture was rinsed through, each time keeping the unit pressurized with the compressor.
The first time I filled it to rinse, I filled it almost completely with very little air. This resulted in initially poor performance due to the lack of air volume to pressurize. Keeping the compressor going, that performance quickly improved as the volume of pressurized air increased. The final time I filled it, I wanted to check the volume of water I could expect to transport while still having a good amount of air in the tank to pressurize.
Since the Road Shower 4 is advertised as a 7 gallon tank, I wasn’t sure if that was total or usable capacity (accounting for the need to leave space for air to properly pressurize). Filling the tank while leaving enough air in the tank did give me exactly 7 gallons of water as I filled my 7 gallon Aqua-tainer in less than a minute. I had removed the nozzle keeping the tank pressurized at about 40psi with the compressor.
What I have not done yet is run a tank with just the initial pressurizing to see how it performs. I’m not terribly concerned as I plan on running it with my Vaiar compressor when camping. I am also glad I won’t be using a bicycle pump as that seemed to be quite a bit more work.
The last thing I have yet to do is rotate the RTT 180* so it opens to the other side of the trailer. That’s a two-man job that I will hopefully get to today. I also want to use that opportunity to leave it in the December Vegas sun for a few hours to see how well it heats ups.
