Ontap Roam; portable, off grid water on demand
Imagine having clean, drinking water in a portable system, pumped out at whatever rate and spray type of your choosing, anywhere you go. Today, we’re reviewing the Ontap Roam; a jerry can, with a number of pretty major twists.
This was a product that I was genuinely interested in seeing in the flesh, and I’ve had a lot of fun testing it out. It’s rare these days to see anything overly innovative, and when someone goes out of their way to make a new product that makes camping, washing or even rinsing off after a swim easier and better, I’m all ears.
I suppose I’ll take you back a few months to start with. The 4WDing Australia inbox gets a heap of different emails. We get genuine questions and comments from our readers, a huge number of emails offering all sorts of random services and of course a whole heap of absolute junk emails, that get deleted every day. Every now and again though, I’m sent an email that’s far more interesting, and that’s what happened with Ontap, offering to send us a new Roam in return for a review.
What is this product?
The Ontap Roam is a portable, off grid water system designed to get water out in a variety of ways to make your life easier. In essence, its a jerry can with an automatic, battery powered electric pump attached to a hose and shower head attachment. You can use it for filling up a cup of water, rinsing sandy kids in the car park at the beach or having a quality camping shower under the stars. Normally we’re only looking for ways in which a product helps the camping and 4WDing community, but this has so many other options.
Who would use it?
Having water with you is easy. Anyone can throw a few jerry cans into the back of their car, and you’ve got plenty of water. The accessing of that water though, is problematic, and this is where the Ontap Roam is totally different to anything else I’ve seen. At the press of a button, you have access to clean, drinking water anywhere, and you can change the shower head to deliver that water in whatever way suits your needs. It’s perfect for:
- Showers or rinse offs anywhere
- Cleaning dishes
- Filling water bottles or cups
- Rinsing off gear
I’d say its the perfect water setup for anyone who doesn’t have permanent running water in their 4WD/Caravan/Camper Trailer. If you’ve already got a tank and electric pump, its only the portability that is of real value.
What’s the features you need to know about?
On the surface, the Ontap Roam just looking like a black jerry can. It doesn’t take much digging though to realise there’s been a whole heap of thought that’s gone into the design and development of the product. In actual fact, this is their second iteration from the Ontap Original, which was a much loved product by many and they’ve taken a good product and taken it to a whole new level.
It’s got an automatic pressure pump, which keeps water ready to go as soon as you open the valve, at the same pressure all the way until the tank is empty. The unit is IP65, fits in a jerry can holder, will pump water for 2 hours, is completely food grade and ready to go for drinking and can be charged by USB C.
They’ve made the pump detachable and you can purchase additional water tanks (the lower section), meaning when you run out you just swap the pump over in literally less than 30 seconds. Being black it will naturally heat up in the sun to provide a decent shower at the end of the day, and if its still too cool you can easily pour hot water into the tank to the right temperature.
The ‘shower head’ is pretty clever too; on a decent length braided hose that ties up nice and compact, and you’ve got a whole range (10, to be exact) of modes for the different applications. From a dribble through to misting, the normal shower arrangement, a single shot of water that goes several metres and a few others in between its well considered.
The tank size is 16L, water flow is 2.6L per minute, the battery charging takes 75 minutes on USB 3. It weighs 4.8kg empty, and 21kg full. It’s got an automatic breather and runs at 40 PSI.
My unboxing and first impressions
I was pretty excited to have this arrive. Ontap sent a second jerry can too, and the products arrived extremely well boxed up, and well presented. There’s very little setup, and I was wandering around the backyard shooting water out in no time. We’d been given a different brand, manual pump up shower only a few months before, and I could see significant ease of use improvements.
Real world testing
Beyond watering random plants (and spraying the kids!) at home, we’ve used the Ontap Roam on a couple of camping trips. If you’ve been following along for a while, you’ll know we picked up a 2005 Cub Camper a while back, and its pretty basic. So basic in fact, that it doesn’t have a battery, and the sink is filled with a horrendous, slow manual hand pump that I’ve already learnt to hate. The Ontap Roam now gets put near the kitchen, and we use it for filling the sink, washing dishes and anywhere else we need water.
Combining this with products like the Ecoflow Delta 2 Max makes for pretty comfortable camping – instant water and power on demand, anywhere!
What does it cost?
These are $399 plus shipping, with another $119 if you want to get another water tank.
Does it really have a place in our setup?
Previously, I would have said no, its probably not worthy of a place in our setup. We had a Reconn R2 with 270L of water storage, two electric pumps and an inbuilt shower, backed up with a 50L gravity fed water tank on the Isuzu Dmax. We sold the Reconn though, and went back to having no pumped water, which meant showers became a problem, and spraying anything down wasn’t an option.
I mentioned we were given a manual pump shower setup only a few months before which works quite well, but its so much harder to use. The Ontap Roam fills the perfect gap for us; its great for dishes, filling up drink bottles and showering from, and takes our water storage ability up several notches too. The Cub Camper only holds 60L of water, so we’re capped at 110L. Anyone who’s done any extensive travelling will tell you this is not enough for longer stays off grid, and the Ontap with its two tanks gives us another 32L (and its perfect drinking water too!).
What don’t we like about it?
This wouldn’t be a review without diving into some negatives. I’m not interesting in spruiking products, and in actual fact we rarely take gear anyway, but there’s really very little to mention. I’ve found it a bit of a struggle to wrap the hose around the pump on occasion, but I think you just need to be a bit more firm with the way you do it so it wraps on tighter and gets the hand piece in the right location.
I wonder how the second tank goes if its exposed to a heap of dust where the pump connects, and of course if the jerry can lives outside all day, the water is going to get warm. That’s great for showering, but not so good for drinking! All in all though, there’s very little to complain about, which you’d expect given the history of Ontap.
It’s worth mentioning I can’t really comment on the durability and longevity of the unit, but we’ll keep this post updated if anything changes.
What’s the alternatives?
The closest alternatives that I’d seen up until receiving this product are the manual pump shower systems, which do a reasonable job with the expected downsides. The one we have is very challenging to fill with anything but a garden hose, which makes filling up from rivers and creeks a challenge.
Beyond that, you can buy pumps that drop into jerry cans, or even ones that screw onto jerry cans, but I’ve still never seen one that goes to a long hose and shower arrangement. In essence, there’s no real competition, and that’s how you know they’ve made something neat.
We’ve also used a handful of the 12V shower pumps that you drop in a bucket of water and run to a cigarette lighter. Every time, these have failed within a couple of years; they just seem to be absolute rubbish.
Would we get one?
The million dollar question. Many of you know I’m about as frugal as it gets, and spending $400 on a portable water system is a fair chunk of change. Given our current situation, I reckon I would have thought pretty hard about it. Previously, it wouldn’t have been worth it, but if you’ve tried to fill a sink up with a manual hand pump, or gone camping or to the beach with young kids, you’d know how valuable clean running water is.
Wrapping it up
I love seeing innovation in the camping and 4WD world. This product is a genuine level up in so many ways, and I’m looking forward to getting many years of use out of it. If you’re in the market for an all in one portable water system the Ontap Roam is certainly worth a look!
