by Steven Fletcher
Every motor home, travel trailer and fifth wheel needs at least one hose and I think you should have two and maybe more. Here's why. For fresh water hookups in many parks and campgrounds you will need less than 10 feet of hose to reach the water faucet. But if you travel much you will eventually stay in places where you will need a longer length.

We carry a four, ten and twenty-five foot hose for fresh water hookup. Using these hoses in different combinations makes the right length for most any situation. Having just the right length means no extra hose to coil or have snaking all over the place. The 4ft hose also serves as the RV fresh water tank fill hose at most water fill stations.

Our fresh water hoses are ONLY used for connecting the rig to the park faucet or filling the fresh water tank. We carry a fifty foot utility hose for all other needs such as washing the fifth wheel, watering the yard, and flushing the black tank and sewer hose. Yes, we've watched folks disconnect the fresh water hose from their motorhome and stick it down the end of the sewer hose to rinse it out. This is not healthy and, it's gross!

When storing our hoses we connect the ends together. This keeps dirt and creepy crawlers out and any water that didn't get drained out from soaking the storage compartment.

The fresh water connection on our 5th wheel is inside a small compartment. Trying to thread the hose coupling and tighten it enough to get a leak free connection was a hassle. A quick connect adaptor was the solution. It's easy to change the hose end of the quick connect to whatever length hose I need.

To protect our plumbing and supply hose from possible high pressure conditions I use a pressure regulator at the faucet. There's a quick connector on the regulator too so the hose just snaps on. Easy and qiuck.

Many RV manufacturers build water pressure regulators into the plumbing. If this is the case with your motorhome, travel trailer or fifth wheel then you won't need to add another. But having the regulator at the faucet takes some strain off the hose too.

We assume and are confident that in the U.S and Canada a park's water is safe to drink. But safe doesn't mean that it will taste good. When we started RVing we had a water filter on the incoming water supply but for the last few years we've just filtered our drinking water. However, we've stayed at a couple of park's where the water smelled bad and tasted worse. At those places we bought drinking water from a store of vending machine.

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.

We have a Y connector for times when it's necessary to connect to a shared faucet. Also, the Y connector allows us to use our utility hose without disconnecting the fresh-water service hose.

I like hoses with metal fittings and accessories made of metal parts because in the past I've had less trouble with them leaking but the last set of hoses leaked around the fittings! I cut the ends off and replaced them with plastic ones... they didn't leak... go figure.

One last accessory is a pair of pliers. Too often we find the faucet handle is broken or the faucet leaks. Having a pair of pliers stored with our hoses make repairs quick and easy.