Questions on water usage

[taliv]

I know this is going to vary by # of people in your group, whether you have a shower, and whether you're in the desert in summer, etc. But as a general rule, per person, per week, what's your range of water use?

and how much do you carry?
Do you have a way to measure how many gallons are left in your tank?
if your rig is going to sit for say a month, do you drain the tank and refill fresh?
If you're traveling across country, do you run on a dry tank and then fill when you get near your destination? (my tank holds a little over 330 lbs of water, so if I'm driving 2.1k miles of interstate before i get to the wilderness, I was thinking I'd wait til I got there to fill up)


what kind of water do you fill your tank with? hose at home or at an RV campground? distilled or filtered water?

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I have a 30 gal tank and 2x jerry cans. i do use my shower and wash dishes, etc. I've never run out of water, but the longest I've been out was 10 days so far and I had plenty of opportunity to refill during that time.
I mostly drink bottled water from the fridge but have been thinking of draining the tank and pouring gallons of distilled or filtered water in.
I really have no way to measure how much I've used or how much remains. I just top it off any time i have the chance.

 

[Rexplorer]

i bring 20L in the back in a water jug thing, and a bunch of nalgene bottles in random places. never ran out yet. not usually a shortage of top up locations. try to keep the water going in clean, but not always an option. fill it then filter it seems easier than filter then fill, since many uses don't need filtered water.

 

[professorkx]

i start with 17 gallons and carry a water filter to filter drinking water if we run dry. we boil water to refill to 13 gallon tank, and can always fill up the two 2 gallon rotopax water tanks if we see a place with potable water. most don't camp like my wife and I, as we go far from people, which isn't always possible in other parts of the US. our last trip was a 100 mile round trip to just send a text for work, and I barely had a signal to send the text. So, if we can make 17 gallons work, most folks should be just fine with somewhere around than volume since most don't get that far from actual civilization.

 

[taliv]

how long does 17 gallons last you?

 

[professorkx]

We can make 17 gallons last a couple of weeks for two people, as we are usually filtering water from creeks to drink when we are away from camp in the Jeep (we filter water using an MSR water filter into empty water bottles, usually 6 at a time), so that cuts down on consumption. We also use creeks for bathing (remember, we don't normally see other folks when we camp), and occasionally use a solar shower, but any unused water stays in the bag for next time, so we use able 1 gallon for both of us to shower.

Quite frankly, we have never had to break camp because we ran out of water. If we were in the desert away from a stream, might happen, but can't see that every happening in the mountains, as there's plenty of streams to pull water from to sterilize.