Trailering with full FW tanks?

[RAurand]

My fresh water tanks equal 88 gallons.
When boondocking or going to a Pennsylvania State Park, I fill-er-up at home and carry the full tanks with me. Never had any issues. Even carried full talks on a 7 hour drive to an out of state state park. Again, no problems.

[geezerbob]

Almost always a full tank
Bob

[ttavasc]

The lack of baffling can be an issue. With our new ORV (~80gal fresh water capacity) we were advised to run with either 1/4 tank or less or completely full to avoid the sloshing effects. In our previous 195RB Baja this was a moot point as we never had sufficient cargo capacity to fill the fresh water tank full without exceeding the GVWR.

[oldmanAZ]

Originally Posted by nynethead

You can now make tour own softener for the trailer. You use a big blue 20" housing and buy a Pentek WS-20BB Water Softening Resin Filter, ( $42) it gives you 4500 gallons of soft water just like at home. started using i this year wife loves it

We've been using a Pentek WS-10 Water Softening Resin Filter Cartridge in one of our a standard 10" housings. DW and I both love it.

[skids]

I have a 195rb and its fresh is 20 gallons. Yeah, i travel with it full and with the hot water tank full. But with those dinky tanks, you would do it too. I think with some of you out there with 80 gallon FW tanks and the like, it might be a matter with hitch load as well as tire load...

[rockaw]

I also usually run with both tanks (80 gal total) full. I've got over 10,000 miles on the RV Trailer now with 2 trips to upstate NY and 2 thru/in the Smokey Mountains, no problems.

I also keep them full, stored at my home, emptying and refilling every 1-2 months (cycling some thru the sinks/lines) keeping fresh water in.

We had a tree go down up the road during one hurricane and took us 5 days to get power back (the 10 houses on our road were not a high priority) anyway we cooked a lot of food and moved the rest into the RV frig and with a generator (and aso ga on the fridge) lived there for almost 4 days.... We did use the toilets in the house most of the time with water from the lake we prestaged for flushing to save the RV tanks because we didn't know how long we'd be there for.

[anchorman]

I always travel with at least 2/3 of a FW tank. I got caught once with no water. Never again. Yes, it weighs 7 pounds a gallon. Deal with it. Better safe than dry. Just my 2 cents.

[tazz46]

We always travel with 1/3 tank of fresh water, just in case of needed bathroom breaks or breakdowns. The manufacturers cheap out on everything possible. We only fill the tank when we are close to where we are dry camping. At 8 lbs a gallon, it’s a real waste of fuel to travel long distances!!!

[gordo1952]

We had the opposite event while traveling in the mountains once we got to our destination I could see a huge bulge in the Corplast covering the bottom. It was the tank pushing it out ...I pulled the cover down and 2 brackets had broken welds. Ours is a 2011 jayco fw so as the age they must get weaker and no way to confirm it. I had to hire a portable welder to come to our site and reinforce the brackets...he said when new probably were ok but failure was going to happen. Just a thought

[Idaho Spud]

I am on my second RME with the large water tanks. We normally boon dock so water is not readily available. Almost always travel with full water tanks, sometimes several hundred miles. Many times we are on very rough dirt and mountain roads. So far no issues. I too have read about tanks falling out. On both of my Jayco trailers I have added several ratchet straps from frame rail to frame rail under my trailer for added support and peace of mind

[Forelyndogs]

Some folks claim you're wasting fuel by hauling full tanks. Frankly, I have no desire to waste gas, but I didn't buy an RV to save gas, I bought it for convenience. Carrying full freshwater ta tanks means I can stop at a rest stop or anywhere that there may not be water available. It's worth that convenience.

[imjustdave]

Always full, what would the point be of a 60+ gallon tank size if you can't safely use it. Might as well carry a 10 gallon tank then and call it good.

[rtaylor]

I typically do not have hookups so prefer to start out with a full FW tank. I tend to agree with the post that says either carry a full tank or about one-quarter full. I think the dynamic forces of water sloshing around in a non-baffled tank is a bigger problem than the extra (more static) weight.
An extra 200 or 300 pounds (8.33 pounds/gallon) is well under 10% of the overall weight of my loaded trailer. Most of my lower gas mileage is due to wind resistance, so maybe optimistically I could expect to improve my gas mileage by about .25 mpg if my tanks were empty. I live in Colorado, pull a lot of long hills, but just don't think a little better fuel economy is worth risking ending up somewhere with less water than I need when I could have carried it.
Just my humble opinionated opinion.....

[eagle55]

I am new to Jayco travel trailers and haven't picked mine up yet (a 2019 Jay Feather 20BH) but am preparing now for getting it next week by reading everything I can get my hands on. The owners manual (PDF download) doesn't say one way or the other about hauling full FW tanks but says not to do it with the grey/black tanks. This seems more about load balance so I am guessing that the FW tanks are located near the axles.

After giving it some thought I decided not to chance it and placed a 55 gal poly drum in the front of the bed on the Chevy 2500HD tow truck and have routed fill and discharge lines to the poly which I can transfer what amounts I estimate to need before traveling to the next camping location. This will not only be less weight on the running gear of the trailer but less strain on the rough roads in my area of the Yukon territory and Alaska. The 2500HD has more than enough spring under it to handle 55 gal of water without even feeling it.

I have a small electric pump that can transfer water from truck to trailer or may even be able to gravity feed from the pickup polydrum to the rv FW tank. Later I will get another "trash pump" dedicated only to pump off the Grey water into a 20 gal RV portable holding tank that I have kicking around.. Since we almost always stay many nights in no hookup government campgrounds this should help carry us until we are ready to go to an rv park to empty/fill tanks and do laundry etc..
Here's my poly drum setup.

[paul42]

It is my nightmare that this becomes a real thing, people afraid to travel with a full water tank. Pretty soon the RV companies will be building down to that expectation, and it will be something else we then really have to worry about. We have a 23mb with an 80-gallon tank, and quite often travel with it completely full. We even did a 3,600 mile trip with it, most of those with a full tank. If we can't travel with a tank full of water, what is the point!

[UncleBob]

Hey Eagle55,
Look in your owners manual in section 8 under Fresh Water System. There is a warning box that says "Never travel with full fresh, black, or grey water holding tanks."

This was news to me as well. (I have a 2017 Whitehawk 23MRB and it says the same thing.)

[txauditr-ret.]

Another thing to bear in mind....when travelling with full tanks your have more weight and less stopping distance. In addition you have a potential problem of weight shift on corners, approaches, exits and curves. My neighbor just crashed his TT with full tanks when the car in front of him stopped suddenly for something in the road and he had to brake and swerve. Troopers attributed it full tanks and ticketed him

[cariboocreek]

Originally Posted by txauditr-ret.

Another thing to bear in mind....when travelling with full tanks your have more weight and less stopping distance. In addition you have a potential problem of weight shift on corners, approaches, exits and curves. My neighbor just crashed his TT with full tanks when the car in front of him stopped suddenly for something in the road and he had to brake and swerve. Troopers attributed it full tanks and ticketed him

My fiver weighs in, on the scale and fully loaded at a touch over 15k, without water. I doubt that 800 extra pounds of water is going to be the dealbreaker. If your neighbour got a ticket for losing control, my guess is it wasn’t the water....

[eagle55]

Originally Posted by UncleBob

Hey Eagle55,
Look in your owners manual in section 8 under Fresh Water System. There is a warning box that says "Never travel with full fresh, black, or grey water holding tanks."

This was news to me as well. (I have a 2017 Whitehawk 23MRB and it says the same thing.)

The owners manual I'm using is for the 2019 Jay feather and after looking all through section 8
the only reference I could find that talked about traveling with full tanks was this one for grey and black water, nothing about fresh water tanks in this manual.. Wonder if it was a mistake or maybe they have fixed the fresh water tanks. Not a great policy having tanks knowingly falling out onto the highway! And their reasons for not traveling with black/grey tanks was about wasting fuel and handling characteristics.

[edatlanta]

Originally Posted by Forelyndogs

Some folks claim you're wasting fuel by hauling full tanks. Frankly, I have no desire to waste gas, but I didn't buy an RV to save gas, I bought it for convenience. Carrying full freshwater ta tanks means I can stop at a rest stop or anywhere that there may not be water available. It's worth that convenience.

I wonder how much fuel is actually saved by carrying a few hundred pounds less in the FW or any of the tanks actually? Now compare that to the 13' height of most 5'ers and 70+ mph on the road and the wind resistance. You want to save some fuel - slow down. I suspect the actual fuel saved by carrying a bit more weight can not even be measured. I know I keep my FW tank full all the time except monthly when I use all of it doing laundry and then fill it back up. More than once I have been in a campground when the water went off due to leaks and I was just about the only one that didn't care how long it was going to take to get it fixed.