Reverse Osmosis Water System

[jd1923]

2 hours ago, Galileo said:

Aside from not caring to tote around water to get stale and start growing things, my major reason is the 600 plus pounds you’re starting, stopping, and supporting with your RV and TV suspension.

The Oliver is made to carry this weight, up to 7,000 LBS and several members here have upgraded axles/brakes and leaf springs to carry 10,400 LBS. Hate to play engineer on you, but 600 LBS is 72 gallons of water. I carry that much weight in water but you can't (32G FWT, 6G, 3G plumbing and 35G in our extra FWT in the truck bed). That's 76 gallons which comes to 633 LBS and I have calculate I can carry this weight and have 1300 LBS available GVW between our Oliver at 6500 LBS and another 800 LBS we could put in our truck bed.

Say you filled your FWT and primed the plumbing, you'd have 35 gallons on board. Use some of it and if some is in the gray or black tanks (unless compost) matters not. I see you have on-demand hot water. This is under 300 LBS. Half fill the tank for 150 LBS.

If you run into bad weather you can stop-over for a night or two. If you break down, you can live in your trailer while waiting for a roadside repair. You may learn to 'roll' differently at some point. Full of water and batteries charge, we can live in relative luxury for 5 days until the gray needs dumping and over 10 for the black and our batteries will never be low unless I was to run A/C for a few hours. About a dozen Oliver owners dry-camped the Q this winter. @rich.dev was out there for months w/o hook-ups! Living out West you're not enjoying camping if only staying at campsites! 🤣 

[Geronimo John]

16 hours ago, Galileo said:

I don’t especially enjoy spending the $20 or $30 for the pink anti-freeze

You should consider shopping at a Super Walmart.  Three gallons is what I use every year = $12 plus tax.

[dewdev]

I can winterwize with 2 gallons of Rv anti freeze, but I porbably use less as I have a composting toilet.

[Galileo]

5 hours ago, jd1923 said:

The Oliver is made to carry this weight, up to 7,000 LBS and several members here have upgraded axles/brakes and leaf springs to carry 10,400 LBS. Hate to play engineer on you, but 600 LBS is 72 gallons of water. I carry that much weight in water but you can't (32G FWT, 6G, 3G plumbing and 35G in our extra FWT in the truck bed). That's 76 gallons which comes to 633 LBS and I have calculate I can carry this weight and have 1300 LBS available GVW between our Oliver at 6500 LBS and another 800 LBS we could put in our truck bed.

Sure, I could tank up and carry the 632 # ((32+32+15)*8) but that’s 632# less gold bars, guns, and ammo I can carry!

(Just trying to avoid tankering around something that I’m unlikely to need. Pilot training)

Sure - I -could- get stranded someplace and -wish- I had full water tanks and empty waste tanks, but I could also get a flat tire and have to jack up that much more weight. Anyway, you have to get that additional weight up to speed (fuel efficiency) and stop it (brake wear) so I try to keep everything as light as possible. 

I even TRY to get my wife to take along 20-30# less in mousse, moisturizer, and various creams and lotions…

After all, MUST make sure we reserve some of that useable load for several bottles of wine, Basil Hayden Rye, vermouth, and Luxardo cherries…

(Priorities!)

[Galileo]

5 hours ago, jd1923 said:

The Oliver is made to carry this weight, up to 7,000 LBS and several members here have upgraded axles/brakes and leaf springs to carry 10,400 LBS.

Is that an Oliver-approved modification?

Frame/chassis designed (warranted) to carry that increased load? 

I saw a recall come out a while ago that some LEIIs left the factory with 5,600# Bulldog couplers. (Ours is the correct 7,000# one) I’m assuming the folks who have upgraded their springs and brakes have also upgraded their couplers?

[jd1923]

3 minutes ago, Galileo said:

Sure, I could tank up and carry the 632 # ((32+32+15)*8) but that’s 632# less gold bars, guns, and ammo I can carry!

You can rationalize re not ever needing water while on the road, but where are your numbers coming from? There is no such 32+32+15 gallons in our trailers since it is impossible to have FWT, gray and black tanks all simultaneously 100% full! When you use the 32 gal FWT it empties from there to fill the others. We (Mike who replied, I and so many others ) would suggest you should carry some water or someday you'll be sorry. You could fill the FWT adding 32G weighing 266 LBS total. Or you could half fill it, for emergency use only, adding just 133 LBS to your GTW. Pick your poison! 🤣

[jd1923]

26 minutes ago, Galileo said:

Is that an Oliver-approved modification?

Frame/chassis designed (warranted) to carry that increased load? 

I saw a recall come out a while ago that some LEIIs left the factory with 5,600# Bulldog couplers. (Ours is the correct 7,000# one) I’m assuming the folks who have upgraded their springs and brakes have also upgraded their couplers?

I'm not the warranty worry type and ours is long out of warranty! What is your warranty end-date? Your hull now being about 3 years old. I did not mention the bulldog before, but if you added two 5200 LB axles (which your hull may already have) and say the Alcan leafs that many have added (rated at 2750 LBS ea, 11K total) AND a 12,500 LB rated Bulldog coupler and 2 5/16" ball, you can certainly go over to 10K LBS (unless you really think the Oliver frame would be the weak link). Let's ask Steve to chime in! 🤣

@ScubaRx has all these upgrades including trailer disc brakes and I'll betcha his hull has been running well over 7K, closer to 10K GTW, for longer than a decade!

Edited March 13 by jd1923

[John and Debbie]

4 hours ago, jd1923 said:

I'm not the warranty worry type and ours is long out of warranty! What is your warranty end-date? Your hull now being about 3 years old. I did not mention the bulldog before, but if you added two 5200 LB axles (which your hull may already have) and say the Alcan leafs that many have added (rated at 2750 LBS ea, 11K total) AND a 12,500 LB rated Bulldog coupler and 2 5/16" ball, you can certainly go over to 10K LBS (unless you really think the Oliver frame would be the weak link). Let's ask Steve to chime in! 🤣

@ScubaRx has all these upgrades including trailer disc brakes and I'll betcha his hull has been running well over 7K, closer to 10K GTW, for longer than a decade!

What are the limitations with the tires?  There must be some maximum weight that they can carry.  

John

[jd1923]

49 minutes ago, John and Debbie said:

What are the limitations with the tires?  There must be some maximum weight that they can carry. John

Good question, John. Tires is another consideration and I will explain this is not the limiting factor in this situation. We have the Michelin Agilis 225/75R16 Load Range E tire on our Oliver which I believe is the OEM standard. And any LT E-rated tire of same size, from any manufacturer, would have the same load specs.

Looking at the first row of this table, ONLY 40 PSI is required for the Oliver GTWR of 7,000 LBS (4 x 1,795 = 7,180 LBS). Truly this is all the pressure you need. I run anywhere between 42-46 PSI, thus adding a small safety factor. Any number in that range that I can set all 4 tires to without getting out my air compressor is good enough for me! If any of the four tires are under 42 PSI then I'll air up to 45 PSI on all fours.

You can also see that at 65 PSI you can run a load of 10.480 LBS (4 x 2,620). This says it all. So, if you have 5,200 axles with 12" brakes and HD leaf springs, the 12.5K Bulldog, just raise tire pressure to 65 PSI and everything will be in balance to run the 10K LB trailer. This size LT tire can handle over 12K LBS at 80 PSI.

Edited March 14 by jd1923
Added pic

[ScubaRx]

9 hours ago, Galileo said:

Is that an Oliver-approved modification?

Yes, they are. All Oliver trailers are currently delivered with 5200 pound axles with 12" brake drums. They are still using the 3500# chinese made spring packs.

Frame/chassis designed (warranted) to carry that increased load? 

Jim Oliver told me personally many years ago that the frame is designed to carry 3x its GVWR, so 21K pounds

I saw a recall come out a while ago that some LEIIs left the factory with 5,600# Bulldog couplers. (Ours is the correct 7,000# one) I’m assuming the folks who have upgraded their springs and brakes have also upgraded their couplers?

I believe the incident you are referring to involved a single trailer that inadvertently left the factory with a 3500# Bulldog coupler installed instead of a 7000# coupler. 

All of us that are towing with the larger HD trucks have long since upgraded our couplers to at least 12500# or 15000#. My Curt hitch #45902 has a tow rating of 20000# using a 2-5/16" ball. When my trailer was being built, I specified HD 5200# axles and springs. Soon after I took delivery, I installed 12" disk brakes. I have recently upgraded the springs to the American made Alcans due to the hundreds of owners who have experienced failures of their OEM springs. 

So, if I come across those gold bars you mentioned and need to move them, my trailer can do it.

 

[Ronbrink]

22 hours ago, Galileo said:

IF we have full hookups, I dump before leaving the site - because I like the nose of the trailer as high as possible to get good drainage. But we never use the site sewer “real-time”. If no sewer connection, we hit the dump station before hitting the road. (That’s the way turkey vultures do it - vomit before departure to reduce takeoff weight!)

That is my practice; the sewer part, not the vomiting! 

[Mike and Carol]

On 3/13/2025 at 9:15 AM,  Galileo said:

IF we have full hookups, I dump before leaving the site - because I like the nose of the trailer as high as possible to get good drainage. But we never use the site sewer “real-time”. If no sewer connection, we hit the dump station before hitting the road. (That’s the way turkey vultures do it - vomit before departure to reduce takeoff weight!)

There are plenty of campgrounds and open camping areas with no dump.  Leaving the Dome Rock BLM area at Quartzsite is a common example of having to tow with some amount of fill in the black and gray tanks.  You could detour into Quartzsite to one of the commercial dump facilities if weight is a concern, but we’ve always just hit the road to dump at our next location.  Even then, we’ve had camping spells where we did 2 or 3 locations with no dump.  As Steve explains, these trailers are pretty robust, and if you are towing with a 3/4 or one ton truck, weight control does not have to be a primary concern.  Mike 

[jd1923]

1 hour ago, Mike and Carol said:

There are plenty of campgrounds and open camping areas with no dump.  Leaving the Dome Rock BLM area at Quartzsite is a common example of having to tow with some amount of fill in the black and gray tanks.

Yep, we weren't going to wait in line at Q for a dump station. We dropped some gray when boondocking afterwards (legal in FS and BLM when 500 ft from others and water sources which is easy enough in Arizona). We carried 2 days of gray and a 3/4 full black tank back to the dump station in our neighborhood, carried it up 4500 net in elevation, up the Bradshaw Mountains, but negligible additional weight considering our rig and available GVW.

On another trip after 3 nights boondocking at Parowan Gap, there was a free dump at the Sunoco in Cedar City UT. Not a good design for the Oliver as we had to back in uphill and over a driveway hump! You do what you gotta do. The portable ramps help and I've used them many times in similar situations. 🤣

Edited March 14 by jd1923

[Geronimo John]

On 3/13/2025 at 10:28 AM, dewdev said:

I can winterwize with 2 gallons of Rv anti freeze

You are correct in that OTT video says two gallons as well.  I use 2.5+  gallons.  Just a matter of how long your stroke is!   🙂

GJ