When you’re traveling and living in an RV, having a fresh water supply onboard is a real gift. But how long does an RV water filter last? Ensuring that you have plenty of clean potable water that’s safe to drink is important. Safe water for drinking, showering, cooking, and washing dishes requires a water filter that removes both sediments and contaminants. An inline water filter (or any type of water filter) is easy to obtain.
In this post, we examine RV water filters and how long they typically provide clean drinking water for your RV.
What Is an RV Water Filter?
A water filter cleans the water from a city supply. The goal is to provide you with safe and better-tasting drinking water. As water flows through the filter, sediment and contaminants are removed before they reach your faucet. Our post on the simple truth about how RV water filters work provides a wealth of information on water filters in general. But in this post, we’re especially interested in how long an RV water filter lasts.
How Often Should I Change My RV Water Filter?
We all want to know that our water filter is working effectively. That means that knowing when to change it is key. Unfortunately, there’s no definitive answer to the question, as several factors come into play.
First, of course, is how often you use the filter. How much do you use your RV? Are you using a whole-house filter, or are you only filtering water at your kitchen sink? Is one person using the water in the RV, or are there five RVers onboard? How much do you dry camp? (Us boondockers tend to be very sparing with water use, so we run a lower total volume of it through our filters.)
One of the most important factors that determine the lifespan of your water filter is the quality of the water flowing through it. If you’re traveling around connecting to water sources at a wide variety of campgrounds, water quality can vary considerably.
The quality of water from campground water sources can vary considerably, as can all sources of potable water such as those from fueling stations, dump stations, and city, state, and national parks.
When poor quality water flows through a filter, there are likely more contaminants to filter out. The more sediment and contaminants a filter removes, the more frequently it’ll need to be changed. On the other hand, high-quality water will present fewer contaminants for the filter to trap, so it will last longer.
So, the answer to how long an RV water filter lasts or how often you should change your water filter really depends on how, and how much, it’s being used. However, if you notice the flow rate slowing, that’s a good indication that a new filter is well past due. Or if you’re an occasional RVer, hitting the road on summer weekends for some R&R, a good-quality water filter will likely last you the entire season.
Can You Clean an RV Water Filter?
Some types of water filters can be cleaned, but certainly not all. For example, some ceramic filters can be scrubbed and cleaned with a brush or scouring pad. With this system, however, a carbon block is usually used as well for additional filtration and purification. The ceramic part can be cleaned, but the carbon block filter would simply be replaced.
- Aquacera NanoMetix filter elements utilize our new electrokinetic pleated filtration media combined with our AquaMetix carbon block core. The outer...
- The AquaMetix carbon core then removes chloramines, lead, and chlorine. Also reducing fluoride, volatile organic compounds, MTBE, mercury, asbestos,...
On the other hand, a solid carbon block filter is not a filter you would clean. When a carbon block filter has done all it can to filter, it’s time to replace it.
- SUPERIOR WATER FILTRATION proprietary solid carbon block filters contaminants down to ONE MICRON. That’s 70 times smaller than a human hair! Other...
- ELIMINATES the unpleasant sulfur taste and odor from campground water. Reduces Bad Taste, Odors, Chlorine, and Sediment from your drinking water and...
The same is true of the typical inline water filters used by many RVers. Once these stop filtering well, they’re simply discarded and replaced. Both this filter and the previous one are generally placed inline in your city water hose, between the city water source and the RV.
- Advanced 6-Step Filtration Technology: Discover the impressive power of the Tastepure RV water filter’s Hex-Flow Technology and its 6-step...
- Certified Lead-Free: This camping water filter is independently tested & listed to standards NSF/ANSI 42 & NSF/ANSI 53. It’s CSA lead-free content...
Sediment filters work like a sieve, removing particles as the water flows through. While some sediment filters can be cleaned, in our humble opinion, the cost of replacing them with new ones is worth the peace of mind that comes with a brand new filter. Sediment filters also don’t improve the taste or smell of poor-quality water. Instead, they’re designed to remove sediments such as sand, dirt, silt, and rust particles to keep them from affecting components of your RV’s water system, like the water pump.
A popular type of water filter that uses activated carbon is the gravity-fed Berkey filter, which sits right on your countertop. You simply add water to the Berkey, and its activated carbon filter purifies the water before you drink it. With this unit, the activated carbon filters can be cleaned, dried, and reused, but once clogged with sediment or particles, they need to be replaced.
This “Travel Berkey” comes with two purification elements. Together, they’re capable of filtering up to 6,000 gallons of water.
- POTABLE WATER IN THE GREAT OUTDOORS- Black Berkey Elements remove or dramatically reduce over 200+ typical contaminants that could be present in...
- ENJOY GREAT-TASTING TAP WATER EVERY DAY- The Travel Berkey System can be used at the campground, RV park, off-grid shelter to transform questionable...
Is an RV Water Filter Worth It?
Absolutely!
Remember, when you travel and obtain water from various sources, you can never be sure of the water quality. There’s a good reason why most RVers prefer to have some type of water filter onboard, especially if they intend to drink the water, as opposed to just washing with it.
Some campgrounds have water sources with very old plumbing. And when you fill your fresh water tank from a spigot at a state park, city park, gas station, or any other unknown source, you really have no idea what the quality of the water is.
So, yes…an RV water filter is absolutely worth having. Even if you don’t RV frequently, or drink the water, a simple inline filter should work nicely to remove sediment and help protect components of your RV’s plumbing system. And they won’t break the bank.
What Is the Best RV Water Filter?
Here again, the answer to this question really depends on how you use your RV. If you camp for a few weekends and maybe a week or two in the summer, the small inline water filters (like the Clear2O or Camco TastePure above) are likely all that you need.
If, however, you tend to visit places with more questionable water sources, where you may be concerned about bacterial contamination, you might want to opt for a higher-level system. Units that filter down to 0.2 microns can remove microorganisms that could otherwise make you sick. The problem with such filters is that they often have low flow, making them less desirable for use as a whole-house system on an RV.
A new system (from Blu Technologies), however, utilizes 0.2 micron electro-adsorptive media that filters out lead, bacteria, volatile organic compounds (VOCs), microorganisms, and more, all while maintaining a high flow rate. And it comes in an ultra-compact format! These filter systems can be purchased from our friends over at MobileMustHave, and you can save 5% using our discount code.
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This 3-stage, portable water filtration system from Blu Technology utilizes 0.2 micron filtration to make water safe to drink.
Do You Use an RV Water Filter?
Drop us a comment and let us know what system you use and how it has worked out for you. If you’d like, please share how frequently you use your RV and how often your filter requires replacement.
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Ricko J
Thursday 7th of August 2025
Would you still recommend an ACUVA unit as I have one available to install? Ord do you prefer the Blu Tech unit?
TheRVgeeks
Thursday 7th of August 2025
Hi Ricko, good question. We still recommend the Acuva, as we always felt extremely safe using it anywhere we travelled. But we like the Blu Technology system, too. The Acuva just has lower lifetime/ongoing costs since it uses only a single filter cartridge.
D Francis
Friday 4th of July 2025
Our RV has a built in filter we change once a year as we go about once a month, but we also use an inline filter ar the spigot The one thing i do every time before I hook up the hose from the RV to the inline filter, is that I run at least 30 seconds of water through the filter to flush it out and make sure the water is clear. Every time i do this it starts off a little dirty as things can grow just sitting moist for a couple weeks in the dark RV basement
Mark Laffin
Friday 5th of July 2024
We use a 2-stage water filter system that is connected immediately after the pressure regulator. The system uses the commonly available 10” x 2.5” filters. The first filter is a 5-micron sediment filter to capture particulates in the water supply; the second is a 1-micron carbon filter to reduce heavy metals, volatile compounds, and to improve taste. A 0.5-micron filter would be required to remove pathogens; we found the flow restriction too great with this filter. Our filters are inside completely opaque canisters to minimize the growth of algae that occurs with clear/transparent canisters exposed to sunlight.
We use the 2-liter/minute Acuva water filter/UV system installed under our galley sink for cooking and drinking water.
We replace our two exterior canister filters every 2-months when we are traveling for several months. We remove the filters and thoroughly clean the canisters when not traveling; new filters are installed prior to departure. The Acuva pre-filter is replaced before each 6-month snowbird travel season.
Bill
Friday 5th of July 2024
We're full-time and installed the NuvoH2O rv water softener system along with my factory installed charcoal filter for 10 months now and really like it. No more calcium spots.
Wil B
Tuesday 16th of April 2024
Any thoughts on part time filter use. If we're on the road for 2 months the home for 5 months. Is there anything I should do with a filter between trips? Store in frig (cool and dark) or don't reuse a filter after sitting so long. Thank you appreciate your well prepared articles.
TheRVgeeks
Thursday 18th of April 2024
Hi Wil. If you ARE going to let the filter sit that long between uses, we'd want to make sure it was totally drained... so nothing "grows" inside it while stored. Refrigerating might be OK, but we're not sure if that would possibly degrade the effectiveness of the filter medium. So, in an (over?)-abundance of caution, we'd probably err on the side of caution and toss out a filter that sat that long between uses. To minimize waste, we'd probably pick up a whole-house filter cartridge, replacement filters, and plumbing adapters to convert it to standard hose connections from a big box hardware store (Lowes/Home Depot/Rona) and get one of those push-in-the-ground filter holders (like this one on Amazon: https://amzn.to/3xOTzt4). Or you could just buy & discard the "blue bullet" type of filters, too. 😉