Low pressure water tip

Bogger,
The Lone Ranger here,
Must put in two cents worth, as the obvious may not be obvious to some regarding this mod.... OK, fine, but make sure you do not do this and hook up to city water pressure without a pressure reducer... The HWS and pumps, and other things are not designed to take 100 psi, they are made to run at a maximum of about 35-40 psi.... OK? You can also blow hoses off and flood the van. The entire system ONLY is designed to run on low pressure. You could use this modification filling by gravity from a rain water tank or something, or pump it in with the same kind of low pressure pump... Just not from a city water hookup...

OK, I'll shut up now, and go back to my horses..
Regards LR

Neil,
That sunction line set up sounds great! I wonder how far you could pull water with standard pump?? Probably states some kind of measurement on pump. Will have a look.

Been meaning to set something up for creek/river use and had planned on settin up with separate pump etc. Your method seems much simpler and no extra pump to lug around- Thanks.

Matt

Hello Boggers,

Many use the pump in the van to suck out of a 20 litre bucket, with that suction line on the a-frame. I don't, but others find they like the ability to dip the bucket in the creek and use that water for the showers and such...

One minor note: Personally I am a bit cautious about washing dishes in suspect water... Hepatitis is always a worry, and a final rinse with a jug of boiling water poured over the top relieves that worry a bit. These days, any civilization upstream? Treat the water as suspect... Always...

Happy Trails from the Lone Ranger....

The other thing with plumbing that you have to be aware off. The type of plastic piping that BTi use (I think they call it Duct or similar) is NOT available from many plumbing supplies, especially over in WA where a friends van had a damaged fitting and we tried numerous locations around Perth to get parts required. All said that they don't stock it because hardly anyone uses it, they use a similar piping which is similar in housing and stock that.

In our situation, in order to repair the leak without having to wait for BTi to post parts over we had to remove one section out of system and found that 12mm hose fits over the plastic and with a couple of good hose clips withstands the pressure.

Also if you fill your black poly tanks under pressure via suction hose lines, you will blow the tanks apart. It seemed like a good idea at the time, until the big bang.

Hello Boggers,

Yes per Brian above: "hardly anyone uses it" and "not available from many plumbing supplies", that is because it is expensive. I am not surprised it is not readily available on the frontier in W.A.

It IS HOWEVER, widely used among caravan builders here where almost all vans are built from Melbourne to the Sunshine Coast. The fittings take hot water really well, where normal hoses can have some problems. It is also very resistant to abrasion, and the fittings expand and contract well with the expansion coefficient of the fittings on the hot water heater and plumbing fittings without leaking. THAT IS WHY WE USE IT... If we were to use the cheap fitting readily available just anywhere, you would have a different set of problems to deal with... Keep in mind, there are usually reasons we do what we do, and they may not be readily apparent. In this case, with the potential of stray current, and dissimiliar metals electrolytic or galvanic corrosion, and the differing expansion of the different plumbing bits we are hooking up to, these fittings have proven to be the BEST, not cheap, just the BEST....

There is a reason we do what we do...
Lone Ranger..