Fresh water tank fill

[Kopy kat]

If the only way to fill the fresh water tank is through the city water connection, how do you add water when Dry camping without a water faucet nearby?

Thanks, Larry

[bobbecky]

We have the external fill as well as the power fill option with a city hose connection. I do carry a HF 12 volt pump to use with our 40 gallon bladder and have used it on newer trailers that only have the city connection to fill the tank. Works well and I changed the two battery clips out to a trailer plug to get power from the receptacle in the bed.

[LHaven]

I try to avoid ever going anywhere where I would be in that situation.

If for some reason I will be, I try to arrange to take on water somewhere just short of the campground.

But for emergencies, we do carry a short length of clear plastic tubing that just fits into the water fill port, and a funnel made from a cutoff 3L soda bottle that screws nicely into the tubing. How to transport the actual water and where you get it is always a problem of the moment. We do organize much of our storage-compartment equipment in various size buckets (mostly old pool chemical buckets with screw lids) so in a pinch we could sanitize and use those for transport.

[ChuckS]

The easiest way is to carry a water transfer pump and a piece of garden hose with male and female fittings on it... works quickly..have used the HF pump for seven years now since we got this fifth wheel with no conventional water fill port..

[bsmith0404]

They say you can hook a hose to the fill port and turn the RV pump on, but I’ve been told by some that they had trouble getting that to work. A 12 volt transfer pump with an inlets and outlet connection seems to be the easiest solution

https://www.harborfreight.com/12v-dc...BoCPxIQAvD_BwE

[chuckster57]

Originally Posted by bsmith0404

They say you can hook a hose to the fill port and turn the RV pump on, but I’ve been told by some that they had trouble getting that to work. A 12 volt transfer pump with an inlets and outlet connection seems to be the easiest solution

https://www.harborfreight.com/12v-dc...BoCPxIQAvD_BwE

Just thinking out loud: if you turn on the water pump, it is going to draw from the tank, but I would think unless you plugged the tank vent, your not going to suck any water in from the city water connection.

[bsmith0404]

Originally Posted by chuckster57

Just thinking out loud: if you turn on the water pump, it is going to draw from the tank, but I would think unless you plugged the tank vent, your not going to suck any water in from the city water connection.

Has to be set to the tank fill position. Supposedly it’s works similar to the winterizing process, but pumps to the tank. I think plugging the tank vent would actually cause the pump to pressurize and stop pumping. I’ve been told this process works, have not actually tried it.

[dutchmensport]

There are a couple way you can add water to your on board fresh water when you do not have a gravity fill port, but only the port for a city water hook-up, (and this is assuming you have the outside blue coiled shower-sprayer hose with an outside faucet).

All you need to do is attach your winterizing hose, flip the valve to "winterizing" and start sucking the water from your water source, be a bucket, or a jug, or a bladder in the bed of your truck.

The blue coiled hose now attaches to the faucet as always, and the other end attaches to the city fill. Flip your valve to city fill, and turn on your water pump.

Water will draw from your water source through the winterizing port. It will circulate to the outside shower (coiled blue hose), and then flow into the fresh water tank. Depending upon how much capacity your water source container is, will determine how many trips you'll need to make to get water to fill your fresh water tank in your camper.

The other option, is to purchase stand alone water tank, or a bladder that fits the bed of your pick-up truck and use a transfer water pump to pump the water into the fresh water tank, which would be the same as connecting to a house water hose.

I've used both methods, but only the first in experimental mode, just to be sure I could do it in a crunch. The second method, I've done, probably hundreds of times:

[LewisB]

We have a setup akin to what Dutchmansport has shown in the above pictures.

Additionally, don't forget that you can add small amounts to your tank through the tank vent - it will be an arch shaped plastic cap marked "vent". Slide this arch shaped cover up and off, then remove the vent screen, the use a funnel to add contents through this vent line. The line is pretty small; I wouldn't want to have to hold a 5 gallon can up and use this. But it works for stuff like adding bleach/water for disinfection. Here's the sticker describing this in the wet bay. The vent on our Raptor 353TS is on the CURB side adjacent to the front door.