I noticed a puddle under the coach, started looking in a couple basement cabinets and managed to find a major leak coming from the fresh water pump. I had all the normal warning signs I tried my best to ignore… The pump running every 10-15 seconds after shutting off the faucet, etc, etc…

 

The time has come and I saw pumps on sale so decided it was time to tackle the dreaded leak, dreaded because the tiny space where the pump is installed is so dang tight! I managed to get a really nice #2 Phillips bit for my ratchet screwdriver so, I started tearing out the old pump. I found it was leaking around the strainer basket, the seals. One thing I’ve learned that anything plastic that’s been in the Arizona heat and is more than 8-10 years old is probably going to crumble if you try to rebuild, the toilet was that most recent to prove that. So I jumped on a $30 off sale and got this project started for under $100 (before extra parts and tax of course!).

It was obvious the strainer didn’t have much life left in it and the old connectors were not going line up between the new pump and the coach plumbing (old hoses were only 2″ long). So I bought a pump silencer kit that includes two 18″ hoses with the connectors I need. The next problem was figuring out how to fit the pump, a new style of strainer basket and those 18″ long hoses into such a small space! The other thing I noticed on the old pump is that the strainer was behind the pump, out of view and impossible to service.

By turning the pump 180 degrees allowed me to move the pump deeper into the compartment so the hoses and strainer are easy to hook up and get to for future maintenance checks! I like to solder electrical connections so it took several contortions to get the wires soldered and insulated too. All of this only took me 8 hours to figure out and complete, most likely a 1-hour job for an experienced RV tech!

Once I was finished I started up the water and checked for leaks and I didn’t have any mulligans this time. The new pump and silencer kit made a huge difference, it’s not silent when the water is running but running the water late at night is not going to wake up the neighbors anymore! So, if your profanity library small enough, you can probably survive a project like this one much better than I did 🙂

At this point I think we are ready to hit the road on our cross country trip.