Camco 20183 Hose Filter Washers w/ Screen (3-Pack)

Grit in your fresh water line is one of those problems you don't notice until it's already causing trouble. A faucet aerator that won't flow right. A water pump that starts cycling funny. Sediment settling in the bottom of your water heater. The Camco 20183 hose filter washers catch that junk at the source, right where your drinking water hose threads onto the spigot, before any of it works its way into your boat or RV plumbing.

Here's what makes these different from a plain rubber washer. Each one has a stainless steel screen molded right into it, so it does two jobs at once. It seals the connection between your female hose coupling and the water source, and it strains out dirt, rust flakes, sand, and debris as the water passes through. You get the leak-free seal you'd expect from any hose washer, plus a layer of filtration you didn't have before. The screen is a 60 by 50 stainless steel mesh, fine enough to stop the particles that clog valves and foul up your pump, but open enough to keep the water moving.

They drop into any standard garden hose female coupling, so there's nothing special to buy and nothing to measure. If your fresh water fill hose has the usual threaded female end, these fit. On a boat, that means your dockside water hookup and your tank-fill hose. At the campground, it's your RV city-water connection and your fresh tank fill. We've seen plenty of folks run one on a washing machine supply line too, since the inlet screens on a washer love to catch sediment and clog.

Why does this matter on the water? Dock water quality is all over the map. Some marinas run clean municipal supply, others pull from older galvanized lines that shed rust and scale every time the pressure changes. You never really know what's coming out of that spigot until it's already in your tank. A screened washer gives you a cheap, no-maintenance first line of defense that protects the expensive stuff downstream, your pump, your inline carbon filter, your water heater, and the aerators on every faucet aboard.

These are made with low lead content and carry CSA low-lead certification. They comply with California's AB1953 and Vermont's Act 193 low-lead laws, which is exactly what you want on anything touching water you'll drink, cook with, or brush your teeth with. If you've ever been cautious about what materials sit in your potable water line, that certification is worth knowing about.

You get three washers in the pack, and that's deliberate. A hose washer is a wear item. It compresses a little more every time you crank the coupling down, and eventually it flattens out or the screen catches enough debris that flow drops off. Having spares in the pack means you can swap a tired one at the start of the season, keep one in the hose, and stash the third in your dock box or storage bay for the day the first one finally gives up. Cheap insurance for a part that quietly does a lot of work.

Installing one takes about ten seconds. Unthread the female coupling, drop the washer in with the screen facing out toward the spigot, and thread it back on hand-tight. That's it. No tools, no adapters, no plumber's tape. When the screen eventually clogs with sediment you can back it out, rinse it under a tap, and reinstall, or just swap in a fresh one from the pack.

A quick note on what these aren't. They're a sediment and debris screen, not a fine drinking-water filter. They won't pull out chlorine taste, odor, or dissolved contaminants the way a carbon cartridge does. Think of them as the coarse pre-filter that keeps the big stuff out and lets your real filter do its job longer. Run them together and you'll get more life out of your cartridge filter and cleaner water at every tap.