Your on-board water supply is important to your health. Proper care and maintenance is a must.

Use a separate, dedicated drinking water approved hose for your fresh water. Use a different color hose for your utility hose so you will never mix them up. Remember, you will be using your utility hose for lots of things including cleaning the black water tank and sewer hose!

When not in use, connect the ends of your fresh water hose together to keep the dirt and creepy crawlers out.

Know your water source. In our travels around the US we generally assume that water is safe to drink. However, RVers have reported filling their water tank with rusty or muddy water from campground taps. And some water, while safe, tastes really bad. Run some water from the faucet into a glass and check for clarity and odor. If the park water is not clear or it has an odor you may want to wait until you get to the next place to fill your water tank. When we started RVing we used a water filter on the incoming water supply but now just filter our drinking water. If the park water has an especially bad taste or is hard we may buy bottled water for drinking.

Keep in mind that filters will remove contaminates such as sand and rust and will improve taste and odor but a filter is not a purifier and will not kill bacteria and other microorganisms.

Before you connect you RV to a curbside faucet check the pressure. Your RV water system is designed to operate at pressures of 40 to 70 pounds per square inch. Water pressures at the supply may be much higher... over 100 psi is possible. To protect your plumbing and your hoes use a pressure regulator at the faucet end of the hose.

In the past I would sometimes not use our regulator if the park pressure was low in order to get the greatest water volume. The problem with not using a regulator is that the park's water pressure can very. Even if it is safe when tested it may not stay that way.