Trip Planner: Water, Waste and Propane by Model

Power is the thing people model before a trip. Water and propane are the things that actually end trips early. Enter your model, your group and how long you plan to stay, and this tool estimates how long the fresh tank lasts, when the grey tank fills, and how much propane the furnace will use.

Plan your stay

Why the grey tank is usually the limit

Every Black Series carries roughly 64 gallons of fresh water but only 26 gallons of grey. That ratio is deliberate, because fresh capacity is what lets you arrive self-sufficient, but it means the shower and the kitchen sink fill the waste side long before the fresh side runs dry. On a shower-heavy trip with four people, grey is almost always the first tank to reach its limit.

What to do about it:

  • Catch and reuse where sensible, and keep dishwashing to a basin rather than a running tap.
  • Shower with the water off while soaping. This one habit roughly halves grey production.
  • Carry a portable grey tote if you regularly stay more than four or five days in one spot.
  • Never dump grey on the ground in a dispersed camping area. Most public land prohibits it, and it is what gets sites closed. Dispersed camping rules.

Propane in the cold

The furnace is the biggest propane consumer by a wide margin, far ahead of cooking and the water heater. The numbers above cover heat only, and they scale sharply with how cold the nights are: a shoulder-season trip at 40 degrees uses roughly half of what the same trip uses at 20 degrees. The furnace fan is also the biggest overnight electrical draw, which is why winter trips are hard on both propane and batteries at once. Winter and ski trip guide.

The Yellow Stone and Rocky Mountain editions add the Alaska winter package with tank heating, and Rocky Mountain adds a separate diesel furnace, which takes heating load off propane entirely. Compare the editions.

Plan the rest of the trip