I'll address some of this for you too.
1. Filling tanks.
• We use a Boat bulkhead fill port. Additionally a boat fill vent. We spray the hose into the fill tube until the water comes out the vent, or we hear it gurgling in the vent.
• Depending how you want to do your plumbing, you can put direct hookups on the vehicle and a similar bypass system that RV's use. They bypass the pump and can fill the tank automatically with a float valve switch or similar. Check Valves work and are inexpensive
• That same bypass system can be hooked up to fill the tank and not bypass the pump relying on the pump to always do the heavy lifting.
2. Accessing a near camp water source
• We designed nice setup so we could use solenoids to open 3-way valves. Link for reference, not what we use(d)
https://www.amazon.com/8320G174-120-General-Solenoid-Universal-Butylene/dp/B016Y959FG/ utilizing a single on board pump but could add an inline one closer to the water source as a primer pump if necessary.
• As I mentioned in #1, you can hookup an RV style setup with a municipal water inlet and check valve to directly hookup pressurized water.
• Could also use a second exterior pump, check valve, and the municipal water hookup to bypass the on board tank and pump
• Could also run separate plumbing lines for your setups as to not contaminate the lines from exterior water sources that your tank lines run on,
• Or use a couple ball valves.
•
Get an inline UV water Filter/Light/Sanitizer/Sterilizer AFTER the tank before anything you will be using like the shower, sink, etc. and it becomes a null issue.
3. Gauges, levels,- If it is an RV style tank, there are tons of options.
• We got one of the Blue Sea Ultrasonic Tank Sensors - Our plan was to put one of those in our Fuel tank, and use sensors for our Propane and Air to have all 4 measurements (plus temp) in one place on a Blue Sea Monitor.
• Temp monitors. Yes, people use these. again, so many options and they are all viable. A little inline temp sensor on a John Guest Fitting ( looks like a 3-way) and run the wires to a digital display. Or analog it.
• In tank monitors are a thing too. So are the tank warmers, pipe insulation, and pipe heaters. If you have an on board heat exchanger, and setup a return valve to tank, you can easily run it to keep things fluid in the winter.
It all depends what the end result is and how much you are going to invest in it. Super simple or super complex. I like to press a button or two and be done. I have 4 Children and don't want to waste time on things that I can setup to work at the tip of a finger vs crawling around looking to fix or flip a valve. Build it right the first time, or petit up to be easily serviceable when you do decide to update it. We are going to build a Stainless 30+gallon tank this summer and add some goodies to it. We already have 2 on board showers, 20gal water, filtration, heat exchanger hot water, lots of extras....
