Coast Resorts Open Roads Forum: Travel Trailers: Water fill up onboard tank

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Topic: Water fill up onboard tank

Posted By: Dealwiddit on 03/13/17 10:50am

I just purchased a 2015 Keystone Laredo. I have had several units in the past and they all had a water fill up where you just stuck a hose in and filled up. This unit has a switch between onboard and city connector only. So how do i fill up at state parks etc where you have to haul jerry cans? Any creative help will be appreciated.

Thanks

Posted By: SoundGuy on 03/13/17 10:54am

Dealwiddit wrote:

I just purchased a 2015 Keystone Laredo.

So how do i fill up at state parks etc where you have to haul jerry cans?

Whoever sold you the trailer should have gone through this with you. [emoticon]

Posted By: Old-Biscuit on 03/13/17 11:24am

Fill up prior to going to state parks

Get a water thief and pull up next to spigot and fill

Fill up at gas station/fire house/business close to state park

Get short hose, connect to 'winterizing' connection on water panel and suck up water using on-board pump

Read owners manual...generic as they are.....water panel is discussed

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Posted By: 2oldman on 03/13/17 11:58am

Hauling jerry cans is not a way to get a sufficient amount of water, unless you like navy showers and paper plates.

* This post was edited 03/13/17 12:08pm by 2oldman *

Posted By: OBSPowerstroke on 03/13/17 12:12pm

2oldman wrote:

Hauling jerry cans is not a way to get a sufficient amount of water, unless you like navy showers and paper plates.

I've used jerry cans several times when I have parked the trailer for a week or more in areas without access to drinking water. Three 7 gallon cans is 21 gallons total, and if you remember to take them with you and fill them up every trip into civilization, it's pretty easy to keep the fresh water tank topped off.

Josh
'16 Ford F350
'11 Komfort Resort 240RK
Portland, OR

Posted By: sch911 on 03/13/17 01:47pm

Most parks will also have a potable water spigot sometimes near the dump station.

If you have to use jerry cans there are 12v pump systems available to extract the water from the cans and pump it in the tank.

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Posted By: Dealwiddit on 03/13/17 02:21pm

YES , i saw some 12 volt water pumps fro about 69 dollars. I think this is my best bet.
Thanks

Posted By: mobeewan on 03/13/17 06:36pm

This one might work.

12 volt pump

I have one similar but have the traditional water fill opening for the fresh water tank. It should still work for you

Posted By: red_neck_camper on 03/14/17 07:16am

Dealwiddit: Here's another way, if you have a convenience station with outside shower and water pump suction line.
- connect hose from outside shower valves to city water inlet
- turn inlet switch to fill water tank
- put suction line into your jerry can full of water
- turn winterizing valves to suck water from can
- turn on water pump, open cold water valve on outside shower to fill tank

Ken

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Posted By: Lynnmor on 03/14/17 08:07am

Your trailer already has a pump, why would anyone buy, wire, switch and deal with another one. I made a minor modification to the winterizing hose, and now can draw water from a container and send it to the fresh water tank.

[image]

Posted By: 2oldman on 03/14/17 09:29am

Lynnmor wrote:

I made a minor modification to the winterizing hose, and now can draw water from a container and send it to the fresh water tank.

It's difficult for me to tell exactly what you did.

Posted By: bobndot on 03/14/17 10:32am

If you find the 2nd pump system to be easier for you to use.
Here are pics of the 7 gal Aqua jug and Atwood marine pump.

https://www.rv.net/forum/index.cfm/fuseaction/thread/tid/28987779/print/true.cfm

Posted By: Lynnmor on 03/14/17 01:30pm

2oldman wrote:

Lynnmor wrote:

I made a minor modification to the winterizing hose, and now can draw water from a container and send it to the fresh water tank.

It's difficult for me to tell exactly what you did.

To make it work, all I did was remove the guts (check valve) from the city water connection. Then put a tee in the line behind the city water connection and connected the winterizing hose to the tee. Last, I installed an inline check valve after the tee. Valve 1 was the original valve on the winterizing hose. All the rest of the diagram is the plumbing as manufactured plus the other modifications I made. You only need to look at the city water inlet, the tee and the check valve if you have a winterizing hose already attached. The only parts I needed to purchase was the check valve, a tee and some hose clamps. Outside I made up a short garden hose and connect it to a rolling water tank, but you can use any vessel that you want.

Posted By: Dealwiddit on 03/14/17 02:05pm

OK , i don't have a winterizing suction hose on the outside.....I feel like an idiot, have had 4 travel trailers now and a fifth wheel.... so i think I'm back to the 69 dollar water pump. My station has hot and cold valve for outside shower, hook up for that of course, black tank flush inlet, switch for city or onboard water with one inlet for that. Thanks for your patience here. Its not life or death for me but I just need a plan.

Posted By: 2oldman on 03/14/17 02:28pm

Dealwiddit wrote:

OK , i don't have a winterizing suction hose .... so i think I'm back to the 69 dollar water pump..

No problem doing that. It might take a bit of shopping to get the proper fittings to attach your input and output hoses.

I carry 78 gallons of water at a time. I do not conserve.

Posted By: sam22 on 03/14/17 04:31pm

2oldman wrote:

Hauling jerry cans is not a way to get a sufficient amount of water, unless you like navy showers and paper plates.

Lol I love these people who have nothing useful or constructive to add to a conversation but still feel the need to share their opinion....which I guess I've just sort of done.

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Posted By: Lynnmor on 03/14/17 05:05pm

Dealwiddit wrote:

OK , i don't have a winterizing suction hose on the outside.....I feel like an idiot, have had 4 travel trailers now and a fifth wheel.... so i think I'm back to the 69 dollar water pump.

The winterizing hoses are never on the outside, they are usually in a storage area. One can be added, just follow the diagram down to the strainer.

Posted By: dave54 on 03/14/17 05:13pm

2oldman wrote:

Hauling jerry cans is not a way to get a sufficient amount of water, unless you like navy showers and paper plates.

Speak for yourself! No problem here.

We take a couple of 5 gal jugs with us every time we leave our boondocking site. Dump them into the fresh tank when we return. Stretches the fresh water almost indefinitely.

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Posted By: 2oldman on 03/14/17 07:01pm

sam22 wrote:

2oldman wrote:

Hauling jerry cans is not a way to get a sufficient amount of water, unless you like navy showers and paper plates.

Lol I love these people who have nothing useful or constructive to add to a conversation but still feel the need to share their opinion....which I guess I've just sort of done.

What's unconstructive about it? The OP doesn't *have* to haul jerry cans. If he wants to get offended he'll say so. My answers aren't directed at anyone else.

* This post was edited 03/14/17 07:26pm by 2oldman *

Posted By: Lantley on 03/14/17 07:09pm

My convenience center has a connection where you can attach siphon hose and suck/draw water from a bucket or container. No mods required, the factory already provided a connection. I'm surprised a 2015 model does not have a OEM method to fill fresh tank when there is not pressurized water available

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Posted By: FLY 4 FUN on 03/14/17 07:40pm

once you find your winterizing hose near the pump...you can decide if you want to add a longer hose and instead of sucking antifreeze into the system just dip the hose into a jerry can and let the pump pull the water into your tank. Thats what I do and adding 6, 12 or 18 gallons is not a big deal. If I need more I have a 33 gal tidy tank I had made with a 12v pump to force transfer it into the city water hookup.

Daryll

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Posted By: Searching_Ut on 03/14/17 08:00pm

If your 5er is like my bighorn, there isn't a winterizing hose. You connect a hose to the city water inlet, and select winterize on the selector valve. It sucks water, or antifreeze, but only to pressurize the water lines. It won't backfeed to fresh water tank. I just use a cheap shurflow pump to suck out of a 60 gallon bladder, or jugs as appropriate. Don't know what they were thinking in only giving me 65 gallons of fresh water with 90 gallons of gray capacity.

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Posted By: Dealwiddit on 03/15/17 06:29am

Thanks again for all the input. I will check out the suction hose on the pump, its in a screwed down compartment beside the bed next to the under compartment , 15 Laredo 29RKE, maybe modify it and run it into the storage compartment? If not, maybe just get a 12 volt pump and forget about it. Not sure why Keystone designed it this way.

Posted By: 1stgenfarmboy on 03/15/17 09:38am

^^^^ my 2017 Forest River is like that, i am going to put hinges on the compartment where my pump is, it is silly to need a screw driver to get to the pump.

You can tell that engineers cam up with it, if thay would have let the janitor design it they would have made it easy to get to.

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Posted By: Dealwiddit on 03/16/17 07:15am

Makes you wonder after all the years of making RVs why they just don't make the systems easier to work with. There is enough other issues to deal with, makes you wonder how people can just go and rent an RV and survive on their first camping trip!
Thanks Again!

Posted By: rbpru on 03/17/17 09:23am

Twice when camped at a 10 day event I ran out of water with about 2 days to go. Rather then hookup and drive to the water spigot it was easier to carry a couple of 5 gallon buckets to get me through.

I used a siphon to fill the tank. Without a fill port, I would go with a small pump. Nothing fancy or fast, just sufficient to transfer the water to the TT tank.

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Posted By: westend on 03/17/17 12:20pm

Dealwiddit wrote:

YES , i saw some 12 volt water pumps fro about 69 dollars. I think this is my best bet.
Thanks

I have this Harbor Freight 12V pump. It is a good little pump for the money--$39.00.

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Posted By: hohenwald48 on 03/18/17 06:50pm

I use the winterize suction hose on the pump then connect the outside shower hose (adapt as necessary) to the water fill connection. Turn on pump. Removes water from jug, pumps it to outside shower and into the tank. Simple enough.

I was lucky in that my "outside shower" is actually a standard male hose bib connection with a garden nozzle. If yours is something else you'll have to go to Lowes and make up some kind of adapter to get from the shower fitting to the water fill female hose bib connection.

Only extra part is the adapter. Everything else came form the factory.

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Posted By: IndyCamp on 03/18/17 08:10pm

2oldman wrote:

Hauling jerry cans is not a way to get a sufficient amount of water, unless you like navy showers and paper plates.

This is exactly what we do, and it IS a perfectly fine way to get a sufficient amount of water. We fill up the fresh water tank (40 gallons), along with four jerry cans (six gallons each) when we enter a park. That's 64 gallons to start.

If we are at a site for an extended time, we just refill the jerry cans and use them to refill the fresh water tank.

It's really not a problem to drive five minutes to a water source, fill the cans, drive five minutes back, and dump the cans into the fresh water tank. 15 minutes of work adds 24 gallons of water.

For those who are curious, we use a 37-gallon tote for our grey water when we are at a park site for an extended time. We've gone eight nights without emptying the black tank, but I do a lot of peeing in the woods. [emoticon]

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Posted By: SoundGuy on 03/19/17 04:17am

SIMPLE FRESH WATER TRANSFER

Regardless of whether a trailer has a conventional gravity fill for the fresh water holding tank or has been saddled with some form of over complicated valving system to direct potable water into the trailer the simpler solution is to ignore it all. Instead, invest in a 12 vdc potable water pump, mount it on the trailer somewhere you deem convenient, and plumb the pump's output directly to the tank. In my case Coachmen had connected the fresh water pump's intake hose to a port halfway up the side of the tank so the end result was the pump could never fully drain the tank. To solve this I installed a T in the drain port which is on the bottom of the tank and connected the pump's intake hose to the T - now the pump will empty the tank fully. With this done that left the middle tank port unused so I then plumbed the output of my fresh water transfer pump located on the trailer tongue to this middle port. To transfer potable water from Aquatainers sitting in the back of my truck I simply stick the transfer pump's intake draw tube into a full 'Tainer sitting on the truck tailgate and let 'er rip ... fresh water holding tank fills automatically. [emoticon]

If the trailer's FW tank doesn't have a port on the sidewall then use a T on the drain port and connect to that instead. Naturally this mod is easier for those owning a trailer with an open underbelly but for those that are enclosed it's a simple matter of creating a 3-sided hatch where you want to access the fresh water holding tank's ports. More pics are in my gallery. [emoticon]

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Posted By: Lynnmor on 03/19/17 08:31am

SoundGuy wrote:

Now that IS complicated! Why not just use the on-board pump to draw the water in like I explained earlier? In my case, I added only a tee, a check valve and some hose clamps. Any needed valves were already there.

Posted By: ExxWhy on 03/19/17 09:13am

Learned something new again! Never heard of an RV without a fill cap where you just pour water in the tank. Apparently that's a thing these days based on a little searching. What a PITA for someone like me who can count on one hand the number of times we've had a city water hook up while camping. Not grasping what the designers are thinking on this one.

Posted By: SoundGuy on 03/19/17 09:20am

SoundGuy wrote:

Regardless of whether a trailer has a conventional gravity fill for the fresh water holding tank or has been saddled with some form of over complicated valving system to direct potable water into the trailer the simpler solution is to ignore it all. Instead, invest in a 12 vdc potable water pump, mount it on the trailer somewhere you deem convenient, and plumb the pump's output directly to the tank.

Lynnmor wrote:

Now that IS complicated! Why not just use the on-board pump to draw the water in like I explained earlier?

Nope, not complicated at all ... I've done one variation or another of this mod on every trailer we've owned, going all the way back to our popups. Simpler because there are no valves to reset, better (for us) as a separate fresh water transfer pump doesn't prevent my wife from using the trailer's system at the same time I may be transferring water, and third, it cost me nothing because the pump I'm using for transfer is the trailer's original pump which I replaced with a Shurflo Revolution. Win - Win. [emoticon]

Posted By: Lynnmor on 03/19/17 05:08pm

SoundGuy wrote:

I wrote earlier: "To make it work, all I did was remove the guts (check valve) from the city water connection. Then put a tee in the line behind the city water connection and connected the winterizing hose to the tee. Last, I installed an inline check valve after the tee. Valve 1 was the original valve on the winterizing hose."

I know that some want to add water pumps, wiring, battery boxes, more hose and fittings, but there is a cheaper, simpler way. I only bought a tee, check valve and hose clamps.

If I walk to a hydrant and bring back a container of water, my wife has no problem waiting a few minutes till the water is drawn in. Can't imagine that would be a problem for any reasonable camper. The fill operation can take place when convenient for everyone.

The three "complicated" valves are turned the opposite way while filling and returned when done. Hard to imagine that is beyond comprehension.

For a visual aid, I have the instructions next to the valves.

[image]

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