Do you love your RV? If you take your motorhome everywhere and spend your time dreaming about the next important trip, you know just how important RV water filtration is. You never know what you’re going to get on the road, and having a water softener and filtration system on your RV can be a lifesaver. if you’re in the market for a whole RV water filter system, here’s what you need to know about how to choose the right RV water filtration system for your needs and budget.
How Much Do You Need?
The question here is whether you need to filter all the water that goes to your RV or only some of it. Some people only want to purify the water that they’re actually going to drink. This means that the water used for showering or brushing teeth will be the luck of the draw: in most cases, chlorinated city water provided by a campground.
Smaller Needs
If you only want to purify the water you’re actually drinking, you might need just an ultraviolet filter or ceramic filter. If you’re going to places where you can’t guarantee the quality of the drinking water at all, a reverse osmosis system is the safest way to make sure your water is perfectly safe.
Larger Needs
If you want to make sure all your water is clean, you’ll want an RV water filtration system for the entire home. This usually means getting a filter that can attach directly to your intake hose. You can get a reverse osmosis system that can do this or units that use ceramic filters and carbon.
The faster units typically come in a canister system. These are customizable and are often the best choice for the fastest flow. You can choose anything from one cartridge to a three cartridge system. The more cartridges, the purer the water. Multi-cartridge systems are most useful when you know you’re dealing with water that has lots of sediment or a really bad odor.
Serious Purification
Let’s say you don’t just want your water to be clean: you want it to be perfectly pure. It’s possible to get that within an RV water filtration system, but you should expect to pay for it. You should also expect that the flow rate will be slower than with other systems.
Ultraviolet Light
This is the filter you want if you have reason to be concerned about pathogens or microbes of some kind. UV sterilizers are pretty cheap, and if you combine them with a canister system, you can get water that tastes great and is safe, too. Be aware, though, that the UV light doesn’t usually do much to the spores that microbes reproduce with.
Distillation
If you want the purest water it’s humanly possible to get, you’ll want a distillation system. However, many places don’t even sell these for RVs unless you put in a special order. That’s because of the enormous cost of buying, running, and maintaining the system. Unless you’re RVing in the Amazon, you probably don’t need (and might not be able to afford) this system.
Reverse Osmosis
This is the tech of the future when it comes to water filtration. This gets rid of you microbes and other contaminants, and it also takes care of salts and minerals you might not want in there, making it useful for softening as well as purifying your water. Since softer water means less wear and tear on appliances, easier and faster cleaning, and less scum and spotting, you might want to consider this. Getting both a softener and a purifier in one RV water system is actually the most economical way to go if you need both.
Your RV takes you everywhere, in comfort and style. Treat it, and yourself, right with a good RV water filtration system.
