5 Months without Running Water Living in a Van

We purposely disabled running water in our van at the beginning of the New Year. For the first time in almost five months, we can finally wash our hands and dishes with hot running water inside our home.

Why live in a van without running water?

We’ve frozen pipes and busted plumbing in two class B RVs over three winter seasons.

Winter Season #1

The first time in our Winnebago Travato, we were actually winterized. But apparently, the water wasn’t completely flushed out of our water filter, so it busted.

We could see pink RV antifreeze in the filter, but we could tell a majority of the fluid in it was water. Fortunately, it was simply replaced after a trip to the local hardware store and $30.

Winter Season #2

Spending two months in McCall, Idaho, temperatures were often in the single digits, so our Travato’s pipes kept freezing. Our best option was to thaw out by driving to a lower elevation with warmer temperatures.

Our dump valve also kept freezing and required a blow dryer pointed at it for several minutes to get waste to flow out. After dumping, we poured a gallon of antifreeze down the pipes before any liquid waste. This seemed to lessen the chance of our valve freezing. But the cost of antifreeze at $3 per gallon or more starts to add up.

Winter Season #3

In Eden, Utah, we had our current RV. A Winnebago Revel. Temperatures ended up about ten degrees colder than expected. We busted our van’s rear faucet that controls the hot and cold temperature for an outdoor shower. The plastic piece on the other side of our outdoor hose connector located behind our van’s sliding door also blew. As well as pipes underneath our sink.

Half our items stored underneath our bed were soaked from the bottom, and there was no acceptable place to take them out to dry because it was snowing. It was New Year’s Day, and not a single repair shop was open. We were lucky the damages we incurred were less than $500 to repair. Big thanks to…

Camping World of Kaysville in Kaysville, Utah, for helping us to implement a temporary solution on New Year’s Day!

Charlie’s Service Center in Sunset, Utah, for taking a look at our RV immediately upon my arrival and patching up our plumbing in just a few hours!

Van City RV in Kalispell, Montana, for getting us a new faucet so quickly. And de-winterizing our RV to ensure we had no leaks after our New Year’s incident.

Busting our plumbing in multiple places was the final straw

We decided it doesn’t matter if the Revel is supposed to be four-season. It was a critical reason for trading our Winnebago Travato for this Class B RV. But all RV mechanics we’ve talked to have told us that it is best to keep our RV winterized when spending time in temperatures below freezing. Our experiences were screaming the same thing.

We are not snowbirds traveling to warm locales like southern California and Arizona during winter. We purposely place ourselves in the coldest and snowiest parts of the country for skiing and snowboarding. Our most frigid experience was in Angel Fire, New Mexico, when the wind chill was pushing temperatures toward -20. Our diesel heater started acting up and eventually blew by the time we got to Salida, Colorado, a couple of months after the New Year’s plumbing incident. This would’ve been a more significant problem if we hadn’t been winterized.

So Kyle and I agreed that we would always winterize the RV for the duration of our ski and snowboard season. This past winter, we were winterized from the top of the New Year after the Eden incident, until mid-May.

What it’s like without running water

We keep freshwater in jugs

We have two, two-gallon jugs that we refill using potable water at dump stations, or filtered water stations often found in grocery stores. They are a perfect size for placing on our galley counter, so the dispensing end hovers over our sink without the jug tipping over.

Why not get a larger, five-gallon jug? The counter space to the right of our sink is also home to our built-in induction burner. I’m afraid a five-gallon jug might be too heavy for the burner. Also, it would take up all remaining counter space. With a two-gallon jug, we still have half a counter.

The downside of having the jugs is finding a home for them in our limited space. The jugs must be stored inside, so they don’t freeze. We are continually repositioning them out of the way. They have one home underneath our steering wheel when we’re sitting in place. And we have to secure them somewhere else when the van is in motion.

What happens to our wastewater?

In our Travato, we would put a plastic tub in the sink to catch any water when washing our hands, doing dishes, etc. We would then dump the wastewater down our toilet to our heated black tank.

In our Revel, we let the water go down the sink to our heated gray tank.

In these examples, we are not fully winterized. This is not recommended if you want to avoid freezing your plumbing altogether. Your dump valve and tanks can still freeze, including any plumbing your liquid waste has to travel through to get to a gray or black tank. If you’re trying to stay entirely winterized, you’d need to find a place to safely and legally dump your liquid waste. 

We use a lot of hand sanitizer

We do our best to limit our water usage since we are only carrying a maximum of four gallons of water for two adults and a small dog. So we use hand sanitizer when our hands aren’t visibly dirty. Otherwise, we use soap and water, especially before handling food.

Finding hand sanitizer has become a challenge during COVID-19. I can’t even locate the ingredients to make my own. When I can’t find any in the store, I’ve been able to order from Emz Blendz in Ashland, Oregon.

We limit our raw meat purchases

It’s a lot harder to disinfect a cutting board, a knife, and your hands when you don’t have running hot water. So we try not to buy raw meat and stick to pre-cooked options. Our favorites can be found in the refrigerated cases at Costco.

We minimize the number of dishes we get dirty

We also try not to cook anything that will end up caked onto our cooking pan. In the event we accidentally burn something to the bottom, we have a GSI Outdoors Compact Scraper that came out of an older GSI Outdoors Gourmet Kitchen Set. We also found that putting a splash of water in the bottom of our pan and putting the burner on a low setting, helps to break up anything stubbornly attached to the pan.

We use public bathroom and shower facilities

Living in a van, we use public facilities regularly anyway to conserve our water resources. Our Revel is equipped with an indoor shower, but we use it as a storage closet. We only use our outdoor shower on the hottest summer days in a place where nobody will be watching us lathering up.

Pink stuff dribbles out of every shower head and faucet

When your RV is winterized, it means RV antifreeze has been pumped through every bit of plumbing. But that pink stuff will dribble out all winter from every shower head and faucet. It’s a small amount, but we’re wiping it up every day.

Conclusion

Living without running water is doable, but we’d be lying if we said we aren’t happy when the day comes to de-winterize. It’s nice to have a 20-gallon tank that doesn’t need to be refilled nearly as often as two small jugs. Big thanks to my husband for keeping up on this task! It’s also much easier to keep things clean and sanitized when you have running hot water.

Before RVing in freezing temperatures, or excluding running water from your van build, attempt living without running hot water in your sticks-and-bricks home first. It’ll give you a better idea of what to expect so you can prepare accordingly. Or you may find it’s just not something you can tolerate, and RVing further south during winter months is a better fit for you.