Keg Water Systems Finally Explained - Mexico Water Filtration - Everlanders see the World!

[Music] welcome back everyone we're camped out here on the Sea of Cortez in Baja Mexico right next to the ocean and what better time to give you a tour of our water system then right next to the water so by popular demand everyone wants to know how our Pepsi keg water system works okay so I've sort of unpacked our side utility compartment here a little bit to give you a little better view these are our five Pepsi kegs we have provisions or room for ten of these 20 liter cylinders in here but we only have five along on this trip and basically these are retired Pepsi cakes a 10 or rather 20 liter Pepsi keg they're stainless steel and they have these fittings on the top referred to as ball lock fittings because the connector for them has little balls on the inside that grip on the ridge there and they're a quick-connect fitting you just lift up on this sleeve and they click on so as I said we have 10 of them in total but we've only got 5 along on this trip and that gives us a total of 100 liters and we use that for drinking it goes through our water filtration system and and washing dishes and cooking and that sort of thing because we use a composting toilet we don't flush a lot of our water down the toilet and so we can actually make this hundred liters go about 10 to 15 days of conservative use so that suits us just fine so I can actually pop this lid off like this and it's a big opening large enough to get my big arm in there kara can get her arm right to the bottom and should we get any manky water in there like I'm gonna get out the lid get it opened and clean and sterilized right up so in addition to being able to get our arms inside and clean them out if we have to here's a couple other things I really like about these kegs they're small enough that I take one of these throw it over my shoulder and take a hike and go and get water from the spigot at the campsite we're at or oftentimes we've been at a restaurant or a diner that sort of thing and say yeah we eat some water and can we bring in a vessel and fill it up for us and more often than not they're happy to do that and so just having a modular like that where I can take and go and get some water you know run two or three loads and get a few kegs of water that's been really really helpful especially down here in Mexico where there isn't RVs fill stations at every corner we can just get whatever water we can as we're going along and in fact many of the locals down here seem to buy their water it's water purification retailers that that fill up jugs for you and another reason they're on the inside like this is because of freeze protection they're inside the building envelope insulated inside our living space so that when we're camping in freezing weather our water and all of our lines and everything is inside the heated compartment so assuming we are not freezing our water is also not freezing the other really neat thing about the kegs is we can kind of segregate our water so if we have fresh clean good known good drinking water I can keep it in X number of kegs and then if we pass by a stream or some other questionable source of water we can keep those separate and then filter as needed or use it for non-potable uses like washing off the dog or whatever so the next thing is fittings these are ball lock fittings they're pretty cheap about five bucks apiece and typical common 3/8 nylon tubing I went for 3/8 because that's a nice common size where these ball lock fittings will will fit right on there but also our compressor airlines are all 3/8 so I can use these very common push-to-connect fittings this is good event and be loud and so you know that's a common size between the two systems that made it really easy to integrate so how does it all work there's an in hole and a note hole the inside has these little plates on there typically and the outside doesn't and so this comes from our air compressor through a regulator and that air regulator regulates the pressure down to 40 psi which is about City water pressure and so then when I click this on here if pressurizes the keg with the 40 psi of air and then it wants to come out this hole at 40 psi so I'll use the shower wand as an example I've got the liquid fitting which is typically black and that just clicks on there and then we would have pressurized water coming out of there so that's a simple version of the system we've gone a couple steps more complicated where we have five kegs and so I've made a few of these jumpers so this allows me to daisy chain them so that one will feed the next one in the next one and we usually have four wired in series and then we keep one as a reserve so that when we route to the four we know we have just that 20 liters left and to be mindful super mindful of water usage so that's the kegs and storage side the compressor is pretty simple here as you can see the my air compressors just tucked in this compartment here goes through the error regulator which Tunes it down to 40 psi and from there it heads through the through the living area here through our water filter which I'll show you next and up to the top so it's not so much more complicated than one but that's really as simple as it is so moving inside now this is our dinette floor and behind this panel is where I've installed our water filter so I've disconnected the power and some other things here so I can pull it out and show you basically this line here comes from our Pepsi kegs goes through the sediment filter which is just a basic spun filter for you know sand and rocks and then it goes through an activated charcoal granular charcoal filter and then through a block charcoal filter and then from there it comes up into the ultraviolet sterilizer which is a six watt UV light that kills all the Gribble ease that filters can't filter out and so it should be sterilized coming out of there and from there of course it goes through the hose and over to our faucet water no surprise this faucet has two lines hot and cold we typically only use the one cold one normally and it's your run-of-the-mill average residential faucet we don't have a cheap plastic RV faucet we wanted something a little nicer and this one has the wand style pull out with the sprayer great for rinsing off dishes or whatever and we thought to eventually put a shower curtain that came out here over the entranceway and then that could be a discreet shower if we weren't able to shower outside so then on the topic of showers this is our shower keg we keep it separate from our other kegs we don't plumb it in series with the other ones typically or ever and that allows us to use whatever water we come across so we'll fill this with clean Creek water if we find a nice clean Creek or whatever you know tap water refined on some hoes laying in the street and as long as it's clean ish looking water and we'll put it in here and this becomes an hour shower cake so the way that works the way we use this is of course we put our water in there and then I've 3d printed this little adapter a simple little oval thing and that keeps this Innova sous-vide cooker from falling all the way in so that sets in here like that and then we plug it in here like this and it starts up so we set this to whatever temperature we'd like it start it takes about 15 minutes to heat up uses about 250 watt hours which takes us five minutes to make off of solar and heats our water to the perfect shower temperature then when we're ready to shower take this out put the lid back in go outside to the air hose I showed you earlier pressurize it with 40 or 50 psi of water pressure and then I just built this up really quick the same ball lock fitting and a simple residential sink sprayer button and that allows us to conserve some water clip that on there and then rinse yourself off whatever manky bits need to be Dominque if I'd and there's the push button is really nice because rather than turn it on and then just have it spraying water endlessly you can wet your hair what you know what you're with yourself you can wet your hair and wet yourself lather up do all the soapy bits you need to do and then rinse everything off and so this works really well for that I did have to buy this cake new they're not very common but it's nice because it's a half half cake size two and a half gallons or ten litres and you know it's 3/4 full right now but it's still not too too heavy we can get this heated up and kara can walk off into the bush or manhandle it without too much problem so that's how that whole system ties together for showering when we're out out in a boat so I hope that rundown gives you a good idea of how everything works how our water system works we do get a lot of questions about it so now I'll have a video to point everyone to thanks so much for watching we'll see you next time

Channel: Everlanders

Views: 21,782

Keywords: Pepsi Keg, RV Water, Van life Water, van build water keg, ball lock, RV water filter, Van Conversion Water, Overlander, DIY RV, Conversion Van Water Tank, VanLife water ideas, VanLife Shower, DIY Van Shower, Van Shower heater, full time rv living, travel bloggers on youtube, baja california sur, diy camper, full time rv living tour, arctic ocean swimming, overland lifestyle, van life shower kit, van life shower installation, van life shower pan, van life water system

Id: 1THtBYxu8N8

Length: 10min 38sec (638 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 04 2019