Water is among the essentials you are going to need in your RV. While your home either has a well or a city water system setup for the purpose of delivering drinking and cleaning water, your RV is a bit different.
With or without modifying your lawn and water system, it’s easy to hook your house water system up to your RV.
You can use a portable hose hookup and connect it to your inlet valve. Another option is to setup a more convenient and easy to reach water hookup on your property, especially if the house spigot is far away.
Connecting via your home water supply
You’ll need a couple of items to connect your home water spigot to your RV.
- A white or blue potable water hose. These are unique from a traditional green water hose. They are made to exclude chemicals that could potentially leak into your water supply. In the context of a green water hose normally made to fill a small pool or water your lawn and other methods not intended to consume water.
- A pressure regulator for your home spigot.
The next step is to pull your RV as close to your water spigot as either the house or your lawn will allow. In some cases, you won’t want to drive your RV anywhere but the driveway or street.
Connect the regulator to your outdoor spigot. Why do you need a regulator? In the case the water pressure is higher than you were expecting. Most home water systems deliver water pressure between 40 and 70 PSI. Above that you and the potential to damage more sensitive PEX tubing in your RV.
Connect the potable water hose to the regulator now attached to the spigot. You might need to turn the nut on the end of the regulator or hose right until it is fully tight. Some RVs also have a switch for “City Water” intake. The purpose of this switch is to allow you to fill your fresh water tank and introduce city water from the same port. Use city water if you don’t need the water stored in fresh.
Finally, connect the potable water hose to the inlet on the side of your RV. This can look like an adapter that the mouth of the house either surrounds or connects to.
Once connected, go ahead and turn on the water at the spigot. Open a faucet or turn on the shower to make sure everything works.
Note that you shouldn’t need to turn on your water pump to use city water, which is already flowing and has it’s own water pressure as it arrives. If you fill your fresh water tank with water, then you will want to use the water pump.
Making an RV water system at home
House doesn’t have an easy to use exterior spigot, or too far away? You can indeed build your own water supply from your existing pipes.
For most RV and home owners, setting up your home to be a more convenient water system also includes electrical. After all, you are about to do the work of setting up water lines – why not do the whole thing?
There are a few steps to take, though they may not all be necessary depending on your driveway and situation.
First, make a concrete pad that is large enough to allow your RV to drive on and offer at least a couple feet on each side to walk.
Second, dig a trench from your existing water lines to where you would want to put your water and electrical. Contact your local utilities company first to have someone check for gas and electrical lines before you rent an excavator or have that shovel ready.
You’ll want to lay out pipes in the trench, underground below the frost line to keep the pipes from freezing.
You can then build a post, or a box that the spigots for the water and the cabling for the electrical wires can go inside – these can also be separated.
Once these steps are completed, you’ll want to just drive your RV up to the pad you created and plug it into the water using the same method as we mentioned above.
Is hooking up to the fresh water tank different?
No, not really which is great for simplicity. On some RV’s, you’ll have a separate fresh water tank inlet from the city water inlet. The actual method of connecting to those inlets is the same.
You’ll just want to shut off the water supply before moving the hose so you don’t spray yourself – it’s also rather difficult to screw in a running hose.
When should I extend my water lines to my RV to hook it up?
The easy answer is if your lawn and driveway are far away from your water, or if you don’t want your house running across your lawn too often.
In some cases, RV owners will use their RV as a guest house. In the case of consistent use as a guest house, water and electrical hookups can be nice to keep guests comfortable without worrying about tanks. A preset water and electrical setup also means you don’t have to run hoses and power cords to the same spot over and over again – it’s already there.
Conclusion
Hooking your house water up to your RV is relatively easy. You’ll need a couple of small items like a good hose and a regulator to ensure safety, but these are easy to find at a hardware store. The next question is whether or not you make the hookups permanent, but that’s up to you, your living situation, and in some ways your wallet or do it yourself expertise.