Yes, I do have a conventional sink like most people, with a regular kitchen faucet, sprayer and hot water. The only difference is that I need to flip a switch to turn on the pump and water heater, and the tank kept filled by water toted in.
So many times in this big box world we seem to lose the sense of creativity or the ability to see beyond the box or the products offered up to us. Many years ago I had a friend that ran a small coffee house type bookstore and at one point she decided to expand past the simple coffee maker, coffee urn and selection of teas and moved in a coffee cart to do such things as expresso and lattes. Being that it needed to be self contained, to provide water for the drinks and a small sink to wash or rinse off things, the cart was outfitted with a water tank, a pump and a bucket to catch what drained from the small bar type sink. Why this seemed novel to me is beyond comprehension, since sitting right outside the door was my truck with a 10 foot camper on it that had just such a system on it (though with the addition of a toilet and a holding tank rather than a simple bucket under the sink).
Move forward many years to my living in the goldstream valley and as I was to find out most cabins in the interior even when they don't have water, are outfitted with sinks. In this case, unlike the goldhill cabin which drained only into a bucket, the goldstream cabin's sink was set up so that one side of the double sink drained into a bucket, and the other side drained to the outdoors. I'm sure one could think of many advantages to such a system, especially if they lived in a cold area where a drain could possibly freeze up or maybe saving clean rinse water to use for another purpose. In any event, in both places I simply used water from a container set on the counter, and heated water in a kettle on the stove. And at the gold hill cabin, since I really didn't want to deal with lugging a bucket around to empty it, I instead used dishpans in the sink which I considered to be a bit more handy to take outdoors to empty as needed, and not have to keep an eye on the bucket under the sink (though in reality, if one had appropriately sized water jugs or jerry cans to the size of the bucket, it would be a no brainer that one would empty the bucket when starting a new supply of water). I did, though also, have an office type water cooler with a heated tap for drinking and cooking, as I would get water from various sources and really did not want to worry about the quality of the water (there were times that a certain spring I would use was closed off after testing) or how the source was used or abused by others (such as people hooking up to flush out a holding tank on a line that is marked potable water). And in a way I still do that, although I have long ago traded away the water cooler (and not having a source of filtered water here as I did in the Fairbanks area) and instead use a Pur water dispenser that lives in the icebox.
When outfitting this cabin, though, I did want a better system, so carefully measuring the space I would need for drains, a pump, and a small water heater, I ordered the largest tank I could fit into the space from an RV supply store leaving just a bit of extra room around it for air circulation. As I didn't want to deal with a 12v converter on the system, I elected to get a more expensive park model 120v pump, but the reality there is this does limit one to only a handful of different choices and sources, and my feeling as per not wanting to be powering a converter all the time really turned out to be unfounded since it is on a switched outlet that only needs to be on when wanting to heat water or to use the faucet. The fist pump I had also required an accumulator (much like a pressure tank on a home system on well water, but only about the size of two large oranges) to even out the flow and keep the pump from cycling on and off rapidly, but this was easily mounted on the wall next to the pump (when I did replace the pump with another brand this had to come out of the system as the new pump controlled this issue by itself).
As the heater is not an instant type, this does mean if I want hot water I do need to switch on the power (above the sink I have a switch with a pilot light in it so that I am aware of when the system is powered and to remind me to shut it off when not needed), but it really only takes maybe 10 minutes for the heater to cook up a batch of hot water, and if I don't use much, the hater does retain the heat so there is often hot water hours later, and often still somewhat warm up to 24 hours later. I do, though, have the hater set on it's hottest setting, so for some that would be a major issue for scalding, but in this way I can temper it with cold water and make the limited amount go much farther without needing to heat more.
This kind of system could most certainly be expanded to include other things, such as a toilet or a shower, but if a shower was included, it might be wiser to go with a 4 or 6 gallon heater depending upon what a person uses and what demands they put on a system. For me, it's just the sink, and I do now also have a small dishwasher that actually saves water over making a sink full of wash water and more to rinse the dishes.
As for the water tank itself, it comfortably holds in excess of 20 gallons, it's filled via the green and white hose that fits over the spigot or spout on the water jugs (which are placed on the counter top to drain into the tank) and in winter I do leave one of the cabinet doors open to provide some warm ventilation, just to avert any problems with it getting too cold in the cabinet (though I could easily just replace one of the door panels with a stamped sheet metal type grill to the same effect) and as this was a box store assemble yourself sink cabinet (in other words made out of sawdust) I did also beef up the support under the tank by using some threaded pvc fittings that I could simply unscrew to the proper height needed (but wood blocks cut to the right height would have done just as well)
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