We Finally Stopped Buying Bottled Water for the RV

Confession: since our first rig in 2011, the most reliable water system in every RV we’ve owned has been the 24-pack of bottled water riding in the truck bed. Campground water at our seasonal site smelled, tasted off, and failed the most honest test in our household — Grizzly, who will happily drink rainwater out of his bowl, would sniff the same bowl filled from the tap and walk away. When a 110-pound dog with no agenda refuses your water, you don’t argue.

And it wasn’t like we weren’t filtering. We ran a Camco filter plus an inline filter on the line. They did their job on paper. The water still smelled.

Full disclosure, before we go further: Blu Technology sent us their AR3 3-stage filtration system as part of a partnership, and our link below earns us a commission. So yes — you’d be right to read this with an eyebrow up. Here’s the part that matters: we’ve been drinking our own tap water every single day since the install. Not sips for the camera — actually drinking it, in the rig, instead of bottled. You may think we’re just trying to sell you something. We thought that too, about every filter video we’d ever watched. Then we tried it, and it’s honestly the best thing we’ve done for our water system.

What the AR3 Actually Does Differently

The AR3 runs three canisters in series, and the order matters. First, a Longevity pre-filter catches sand and sediment — its real job is protecting the two filters behind it so they last longer. Second, a 0.2-micron high-flow filter targets bacteria, cysts, and fine particles; most RV filters — including the ones we’d been running — stop at 0.5 micron or coarser, and that gap is where our problem lived. Third, the Tasty filter, a charcoal stage that pulls the chlorine and the funk out of the flavor.

Rough stage, refining stage, finish stage. Our old setup was basically running the rough stage twice and calling it a day.

The Install: Wet Bay, Not the Ground

We mounted ours in the wet bay instead of leaving it outside — partly to keep it clean, mostly because there was no reason not to. The stainless quick-connects snap the whole thing together without tools, and the 25-foot stainless line runs from the spigot to the AR3, then feeds our Nautilus panel on the 310RL. The actual hookup took minutes. Flushing took longer — we ran the fresh line a solid 15 minutes and flushed the water heater, about 30 minutes total, before we’d let ourselves judge anything.

The Smell Test

Here’s the test that convinced us. Water’s worst enemy is a stainless steel cup — stainless wafts every odor straight up your nose, which is exactly why campground water tastes worse out of a Yeti. We filled one from our tap.

Nothing. No sulfur, no pool-water chlorine, no mystery campground cologne. Just water that tastes like water. If you’ve never had bad hookups, that sounds unremarkable. If you have, you know it’s the whole ballgame.

The Real Result

The bottled water run stopped. That’s the review, honestly — not the spec sheet, not the unboxing. A fifteen-year habit ended the week the AR3 went in, and the money we were burning on 24-packs stays in the diesel budget where it belongs. We’ll report back after a full season on filter life and long-term performance, and per our Product Review Policy, if this thing disappoints down the road, you’ll hear about it in detail.

Still to come: Blu also sent their BLEACHFREE sanitizer, which claims to turn tank sanitizing from a six-hour bleach ordeal into a 15–20 minute job. We haven’t tested that claim yet — that’s its own video, and we’ll film exactly how it goes.

Watch the Install

The full unboxing, wet-bay install, and the taste test — including Matt’s face when the stainless cup came up clean — is in Episode 52.

Want one? Shop through our Blu Technology link and save 7% on your system. Yes, it’s an affiliate link. No, that’s not why we like the filter — see above, and see our Partners page for everything else we actually run on the rig.

---

Want trip notes and the stories that don’t make the videos? Join The RWTC Pack — one email a month, no spam.