BAC Forum
General Boards => Technical Support => Topic started by: Jerry Emert on July 04, 2014, 09:16:11 PM
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1. I'm on city water at the CG. Noticed that pressure is really low inside. Noticed it last trip also but we were at a State Park so I thought that may be the reason. Lots of pressure at the end of the hose. Took off the water filter to check and still low. Water pump on increases pressure. Thoughts?
2. Had water pump on and noticed that it doesn't stop running when I turn water off. On my old 5er and on this I was looking for a leak. None. It doesn't stop. Thoughts?
Thanks in advance as usual.
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Try and shut off the external pressure feed from the campground and purge air from the pump and tank line. The pump just pulls from the tank so be sure that the tank has plenty of water in it. It is hard to purge air in the pump feed line sometimes when the output side of the pump is facing the city water pressure. As far as low flow try changing the pressure regulator check valve to a higher pressure/flow one. That has helped many of us.
http://www.campingworld.com/shopping/item/chromed-abs-plastic-city-water-entry-chrome/7222
Later Ed
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Try and shut off the external pressure feed from the campground and purge air from the pump and tank line. The pump just pulls from the tank so be sure that the tank has plenty of water in it. It is hard to purge air in the pump feed line sometimes when the output side of the pump is facing the city water pressure. As far as low flow try changing the pressure regulator check valve to a higher pressure/flow one. That has helped many of us.
http://www.campingworld.com/shopping/item/chromed-abs-plastic-city-water-entry-chrome/7222
Later Ed
Ed,
How does that pressure setting in the new device compare to the stock regulator setting? I have the same issue on not much city pressure and Ken at BCS recommended removing the stock regulator and installing an adjustable pressure regulator. But I have not been able to find an entry connector/check valve without a regulator.
Larry
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Try and shut off the external pressure feed from the campground and purge air from the pump and tank line. The pump just pulls from the tank so be sure that the tank has plenty of water in it. It is hard to purge air in the pump feed line sometimes when the output side of the pump is facing the city water pressure. As far as low flow try changing the pressure regulator check valve to a higher pressure/flow one. That has helped many of us.
http://www.campingworld.com/shopping/item/chromed-abs-plastic-city-water-entry-chrome/7222
Later Ed
I'm confused (I know surprise), water pressure is pretty good from the water pump with or without city water on. Also isn't the installed pressure regulator like 55 PSI?
Thoughts on why water pump tuns continuously with no visible leaks?
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There usually is a small screen in the port where your water hose connects to the coach. I only say this because it's happened to me with a different MH, check to see if that screen is plugged with gunk. If it is the pressure and flow can go way down.
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There usually is a small screen in the port where your water hose connects to the coach. I only say this because it's happened to me with a different MH, check to see if that screen is plugged with gunk. If it is the pressure and flow can go way down.
Not it!
http://www.campingworld.com/shopping/item/chromed-abs-plastic-city-water-entry-chrome/7222
That appears to be the one on my coach! I looked behind the round access plate on the water bay and I'm surprised any water can make it through that mess of hoses back there!
Still looking.
Thanks
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Jerry,
Your coach probably has the 55 PSI version of this city water inlet. The one that Ed recommend is the 65 PSI version. It gives a lot better water flow.
Gerald
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Jerry,
You can have one that looks like this but this newer version ups the pressure and the flow. Even when the campground supply is less than 65psi I have found that the flow at lower pressure is much improved. The older version is chromed plastic and looks the same but needs to be a 7222. They are cheap enough and I would change yours even if it was a 7222 to rule that out.
There can be several reasons the pump continues to run. One is it is bad and will not build pressure which does not seem to be your issue seeing it helps with flow. The cut out pressure switch could be bad. The check valve in the pump could be leaking back and losing pressure. The simplest issue that needs to be ruled out is to turn off the campground pressure feed, bleed off pressure in the coach using a faucet and then turn on the pump. Bleed air out of the faucets in the coach and shut the faucets off and then see if the pump pressure the lines up and shuts down reaching the cut off pressure. Air in the lines and pump can cause the pump to not build pressure and shut down.
If there are no leaks and this does not fix the issue then change the pump out. You do not want the old one to continue to run, it will burn itself out.
Later Ed
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Thanks Ed will do that tomorrow.
Gerald, I'm not sure I want to tackle that mess I saw behind that water inlet today. I've seen better organized bowls of spaghetti!
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Is you water tank fill valve turned off?
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Is you water tank fill valve turned off?
Yes.
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Had a similar problem. Replaced the regulator / pressure valve but got the OEM from Beaver Coach parts. Still solved the problem.
Good luck
Keith
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I replaced mine with the 65 PSI version and the improvement was significant. The water pump no longer runs as a supplement to shore water.
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The same item appears to be available from Amazon for a dollar or two less plus free shipping (if you have Amazon Prime): http://www.amazon.com/SHURflo-183-029-14-Chrome-Pressure-Regulator/dp/B002OUPFOU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1404573105&sr=8-1&keywords=SHURflo+183-029-14
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OK, I'm confused AGAIN! Trying to purge the water lines as described above by Ed. Turned off the shore water. Filled the fresh water tank until it over flowed as I have no indicators other than Aladdin which is not working correctly yet. Turned on pump, turned on kitchen faucet and it went down to a trickle then just sputtered once in awhile. Turned on bathroom faucet, same. Pump just seems to be pushing air. Bad pump?
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Assuming the city water fill is off, it should fly... eventually. When I bring mine out of winter's sleep, it often takes a very long time for the pump to prime and reach anything beyond the sputtering stage. Is the filter on the pump inlet clean? If you have a winterization "kit" installed, is the valve to the antifreeze pickup hose turned fully off, and are all your drains, near the pump and at the water bay manifold, completely off?
Otherwise it does sound like a new pump may be necessary.
Joel
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Try taking the aerators of you faucets and see if they are plugged up. Do you have good flow in the toilet, how about the shower?
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Assuming the city water fill is off, it should fly... eventually. When I bring mine out of winter's sleep, it often takes a very long time for the pump to prime and reach anything beyond the sputtering stage. Is the filter on the pump inlet clean? If you have a winterization "kit" installed, is the valve to the antifreeze pickup hose turned fully off, and are all your drains, near the pump and at the water bay manifold, completely off?
Otherwise it does sound like a new pump may be necessary.
Joel
City water off, checked it 3 times.
I cleaned the water pump screen filter earlier it was dirty but not plugged.
What does the winterization kit/valve look like and where is it?
Low point drain is off.
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Try taking the aerators of you faucets and see if they are plugged up. Do you have good flow in the toilet, how about the shower?
toilet flow seems good but not sure what it should be.
Same with bath room.
I took the plastic aerator off in the kitchen, better but still slow.
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Jerry,
A couple of dumb questions for you, but
1. Is your fresh water tank full?
2. Is your auto-fill switch on?
If the answer to question 1 is no, you must have water in your fresh water tank. Without water in the tank, the pump will give no assist to incoming water.
If the answer to question 2 is yes, you must have that switch off. If it is on, it just keeps pumping water through the pump back into the tank and it seems like there is no water pressure.
I know you probably have made sure these to conditions are as needed, but all your recent posts indicate either of the above conditions.
Roy Warren
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Jerry,
A couple of dumb questions for you, but
1. Is your fresh water tank full?
2. Is your auto-fill switch on?
If the answer to question 1 is no, you must have water in your fresh water tank. Without water in the tank, the pump will give no assist to incoming water.
If the answer to question 2 is yes, you must have that switch off. If it is on, it just keeps pumping water through the pump back into the tank and it seems like there is no water pressure.
I know you probably have made sure these to conditions are as needed, but all your recent posts indicate either of the above conditions.
Roy Warren
Yes Sir the tank is full as far as I can tell. While filling I laid on the ground and waited for the over flow to start flowing then turned it off and waited for it to stop in case there was a siphon.
The valve in the water bay is off and I could hear the flow in the hose stop and see the over flow stop when I turned it off. I opened the low point valve while the pump was running and shore water was off. It felt like it was blowing air. I could stick my finger over the drain pipe for a sec and when I took my finger off it would spit a little bit of water out of the drain. At that point I had to stop.
Thanks
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Jerry,
Possibly a bad pump or somehow it is completely air bound or a hose crimped or the prefilter screen is plugged. The pump is usually in the bay behind a screwed panel. It would be worth taking a look and see if all the plumbing going into the pump is properly set up and clamps are tight. No kinked hoses blocking flow. You could pull the inlet pipe and put it in a bucket of water and see if the pump will pull water from a bucket. If it does not self prime from a bucket then get a new pump. Air bound should self prime and clear the air in most all cases.
Later Ed
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Jerry,
Your coach probably has the 55 PSI version of this city water inlet. The one that Ed recommended is the 65 PSI version. It gives a lot better water flow.
Gerald
I took the advice here and replaced the city water inlet. Even though the units looked identical, when I took the old one out it was labeled 50psi. The new one was labeled 65psi. Now I have great flow! Thanks Ed and Gerald and the others here that convinced me to go ahead and do it.
I also replaced the shower head with an Oxygenics head that concentrates the stream. It takes getting used to the narrower stream, but it really helps getting the shampoo out of long hair.
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Larry,
Wish I had long hair but that left long ago :-)
Later Ed
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Larry,
Wish I had long hair but that left long ago :-)
Later Ed
I wish I had long hair too (or at least more hair than I have now). But my significant other has long hair and was always complaining about the lack of ability to rinse shampoo out of it. Now these fixes should make her happy. Thanks again for the pointers.
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Jerry,
You can have one that looks like this but this newer version ups the pressure and the flow. Even when the campground supply is less than 65psi I have found that the flow at lower pressure is much improved. The older version is chromed plastic and looks the same but needs to be a 7222. They are cheap enough and I would change yours even if it was a 7222 to rule that out.
My city water inlet regular failed the other day and I got a new one at Amazon. The old one was the original and was rated at 55 psi; the new one is the 65 psi version. The improvement in water flow was amazing. I think the new regulator must have a rather different design and not just 20% higher pressure. Glad I made the change.
I have been using a Watts regulator at the hose spigot to protect both my hose and the "stuff" I have before the city water inlet, including my power hose reel and water filter both of which I have permanently mounted in the area to the left of the wet bay. I'm considering plumbing the Watts in permanently instead of putting it on at the spigot each time. One less thing to do and to forget to put away. I realize this would mean my hose wouldn't be protected by a regulator, but I'm less concerned about it blowing out than I am plumbing connections inside the MH. Can anyone see any other drawback to putting installing the Watts inside the MH?
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No problem with that configuration if it will fit, good idea Joel. I also changed my inlet regulator and had the same vast improvement in water flow. Crazy not to make that change if you have not done it yet....
Later Ed
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I have found that most of the RV parks water pressure seldom is about 60 psi so most of the time I don't even use my Watts reg. I have a test gauge setup and that's the second thing I test after the power supply. Check the water pressure and if its over 65 or so I will run the reg at the hose bib, I removed the one out of the water manifold. There is a park up in Gardiner Montana that has around 110 psi water pressure and they will warn you and supply you with a reg if you don't have one.
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Problem solved with water pump. Remember I'm new and when this happened I was still getting to know my MH. Well, as I was experimenting that day I found the switch that activates the dump valve for the tank. I never knew it. When I "filled the tank" the water came back out leading me to believe that the over flow was coming out because it was full. As I'm sure you've figured out by now, not so! Anyway I did finally figure that out and shut the valve, pump still didn't work. RV repair tech that I know and trust finally figured out that the dump valve was not closing all the way which would not allow the tank to fill so there was nothing for the pump to pump. So problem solved! 200+ to close the valve manually and orders not to use dump valve. Oh yeah and I decided to get the 5GPM pump just for giggles. Works great, 200 more!
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That's not going to be a very good selling point when it comes time to sell the coach. It's certainly not as convenient as intended or expected on a Beaver. I'd still look into getting the electric valve working properly again. A new solenoid? Motor? I have no experience with that particular mechanism, but would guess one of those 2 things. If the valve itself takes more force than usual to close due to some sort of damage, that might be harder to replace. Just my 2 cents.
Joel
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Understood Joel. I intend to fix it. Just not this month! I've spent $1000.00 in the last week cleaning up the mess the mobile RV tech made of the Magnum MS-2812 installation and to get the water working. The good thing is I found a Magnum trained and authorized Inverter tech that is also becoming a good friend. I should have taken pictures to show how the tech left a mess of spaghetti in the battery compartment so bad that when I opened the tray it almost pulled the DC shunt off the wall and came close to snapping some wires.
He also put cables on that were not rated for that inverter.
So yes I have to fix the valve cause it will drive me nuts if I don't, but I refuse to go in debt to do it. That means wait till payday to do it. I know, I'm ranting! Been an expensive week. Lucky though to have met a friend that also happens to be a high end type RV Tech. He works on Millennium coaches when called and is a master cabinet maker. A good guy to know.
If you are in Orlando look up Sanford RV and or Scott Singer.
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Thanks Ed! I'm a real Newbie here. New to RV life (home owner to full time RV in one day) and new to Beaver. Thanks Ed for the info. I just ordered a pressure regulator and should be installing it Wednesday. I wasn't aware that my 2003 Marquis had a built in regulator and have been using the inline one that was part of the starter pack that the dealer gave me when I bought the coach. Removing the inline regulator may solve my low pressure problem but as this is a 12 year old unit I figured that a new replacement for the builtin would be a good idea. I'm looking forward to solving other issues with the help of this forum.
Try and shut off the external pressure feed from the campground and purge air from the pump and tank line. The pump just pulls from the tank so be sure that the tank has plenty of water in it. It is hard to purge air in the pump feed line sometimes when the output side of the pump is facing the city water pressure. As far as low flow try changing the pressure regulator check valve to a higher pressure/flow one. That has helped many of us.
http://www.campingworld.com/shopping/item/chromed-abs-plastic-city-water-entry-chrome/7222
Later Ed
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Got the new regulator installed (took about 5 minutes). The resulting increase in water pressure is wonderful. Thanks for the tip. :D
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I just noticed that I didn't close this out with what the actual problem was. Sorry I guess I got busy. Anyway, everyone kept asking about the tank fill valve on or off and if my fresh water tank was full. The pump was running constantly also. It turned out that the electric fresh water dump valve was not closing all the way. I did have the fill valve off. When I turned the fresh water fill valve on I thought I saw the fresh water tank over flow when what I was seeing was water coming out of the partially open dump valve. closed it, afraid to use it now! Replaced the 55psi regulator like Joel suggested and it worked well. Also replaced the water pump with a higher flow model just for the heck of it. Except for a popped off fitting in the water bay a few months ago, water has been working great since. Thanks for all the help, then and since!
Jerry
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Yes, you did explain what happened back in October. I think I done bin there dun that, Jerry, when the rig was new and I was getting used to all the electric valves in the water bay. The tank overflow and dump are in the same area and easy to get confused.
I'd still check into repairing the dump valve, as I advised previously. It may be a relatively easy fix. Plus, who knows when some service tech has occasion to dump your tank, hits the switch, and assumes he left the valve closed, and the pump gets inadvertantly burned up somehow. If nothing else the switch, now that the valve has been manually shut, needs to be electrically disabled or at least marked "do not use" with a sticker or tag.
Joel
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OK, I'm confused AGAIN! Trying to purge the water lines as described above by Ed. Turned off the shore water. Filled the fresh water tank until it over flowed as I have no indicators other than Aladdin which is not working correctly yet. Turned on pump, turned on kitchen faucet and it went down to a trickle then just sputtered once in awhile. Turned on bathroom faucet, same. Pump just seems to be pushing air. Bad pump?
Did you remember to turn the "fill" knob back to the OFF position after filling the tank and before trying the pump. This is exactly the symptom you would see if you didn't.
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Yes Sir! All fixed now except I haven't had the gumption to figure out how to get that far under the MH to try to fix the fresh water dump valve yet. I'm starting to contemplate either buying some super jacks to jack it up, some super duty ramps or making something out of wood to drive it up on. As you all may have noticed, I'm not very mechanically inclined. So we'll see what I can get done this winter when the temps go down to 75 or so.
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Jerry, don't know about your Patriot, but we had the same problem with our 07 Contessa. On ours the control for the fresh water dump is located behind the Aqua Hot and can be accessed from the foremost bay which is just aft of the Aqua Hot. The problem simply was a loose connection between the motor and the valve. Tightened things up and has been fine for the last 3 or 4 years. If yours is the same, you should not need to risk crawling under the coach to repair. Good luck!
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Jerry, don't know about your Patriot, but we had the same problem with our 07 Contessa. On ours the control for the fresh water dump is located behind the Aqua Hot and can be accessed from the foremost bay which is just aft of the Aqua Hot. The problem simply was a loose connection between the motor and the valve. Tightened things up and has been fine for the last 3 or 4 years. If yours is the same, you should not need to risk crawling under the coach to repair. Good luck!
Would yours open but not close all the way or just not work at all? Mine will open and dump but not necessarily close. I haven't tried it since a friend (RV Mech.) got under and closed it. I'll check behind that bay when I get a chance. Not sure I would recognize it or not. Thanks
Jerry
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Jerry, ours was the same as yours, would open but not close all the way. I think you will recognize the valve control, if you look where the drain pipe passes through the under carriage.
Don