Randy: Hey guys, Randy with Pete's RV TV here again today. Another quick tip segment
for you. Today, I'm going to show to install a pump converter. It's getting a little bit
cold up here in the North East. You probably see the goosebumps under my tattoos. ha, it's
that time of year to get winterizing. Now, winterizing is pretty basic, but if we
can make it easier, I'm good with that. And, once you install one of these in your trailer,
it's going to make it easier for every time you have to winterize. So, pump converters
can come a couple of different ways. and, what a pump converter is, is something that
we attach very near to our water pump so either the trailer can draw out of the freshwater
holding tank, when we are using it in the summer, or dry camping, or traveling or what
have you. or it will draw out of our antifreeze jug and we just install a quick valve and
a little hose on there and that way we can turn the valve, put the hose on the jug, and
we can winterize without having to unhook our pump, so it just makes it easier for us
and it can be done very inexpensively. This is one of the kits that we sell in the
store. again, pretty easy to hook up. This is a brass that comes with a coupling here
so you can go right to the head of the water pump and everything that you need to do. my
preferred method is with a three-way valve, a plumbing valve that we had used for PEX
plumbing. This is, what I've got in my camper and this is, what I've got in my camper and
this is the way I'd like to install them if I do it for our customers. And, so, I'm going
to show you how to put in the three-way valve for the PEX plumbing. Now, we're not going
to be hooking this to PEX plumbing so the first thing we can do is get rid of these
PEX plumbing nuts. And what I've supplied myself with was three hose clamps because
that's going to work in conjunction with these tits here on this guy. Now, this can be purchased
at any RV store. Again, it's called a three-way valve. And, what we want to do when we look
at the three-way valve is, it's going to allow water to pass through one of them all of the
time and then one or the other depending on which way we select the valve.
So, first thing we got to do is determine which one is the constant flow. So, the only
way to do that is kind of look down the hole. And, if you turn the valve like so, and I
can still see, and well Josh won't be able to see it with a camera, but I can see it
open on both ways and I look [00:02:00] at the other two and it's open one way and closed
the other way. So, I've just determined that this one right here is the one that gets the
constant flow. So, that's the one that we want to hook to the plumbing side of the camper.
And, I just usually make a little mark on it so I can retrieve it quickly while I'm
putting this together. so next thing we are going to want to do is, we are going to want
to locate the pipe that we want to cut into. Now, in this spring right here, we got a pretty
good location. I can see what's going on. So, this flex line right here on our pump
goes down below the floor as a flex line. That's going to go to our freshwater holding
tank. On the other side, I can see some plumbing coming off and I got two pipes coming off.
I got the city water fill coming in on this guy here.
I know that side of the pump is the output side of the pump and this is the incoming
side of the pump. And, you can usually tell, again, one's flex line. It's got one hose
going to it. And, the reason they use flex line on this is to keep the noise down while
the pump is running. And, I've got two hoses in my city fills coming on the other side
so I know that's the plumbing side of the coach, which is where we are going to push
the antifreeze through the pump or draw it into the pump and push that way. So, now that
we have determined that. Also, with the Shurflo pump and the jet pumps, both of the biggies
out there that you're going to see in the RV world, if you look at the head of the pump,
there is directional arrows if you're not 100% sure but sometimes it's hard to get your
head in there and see which way that's going. So, if you use my method, you should be all
right. So, what I'm going to do here, is I'm going to take my fancy pipe cutters. No, you
don't need fancy pipe cutters like this. You can use a razor blade or something like that,
but you want something to be able to cut through the pipe fairly straight so when we put our
hose clamps on we get a good connection. So, I'm just going to cut this guy right here
and that's where I'm going to install my valve. So, again, now that I know that this is the
full time plumbing side where I put my little red mark there, that's the side I want to
go into the pump. The other side is going to draw off the water tank and then we will
put our hose on this side. And, I'm going to put my hose on it just to save doing it
underneath that cabinet. So, the first thing I'm going to do is put my hose clamp on, put
that guy on there, and we can go ahead and tighten up our hose clamp. [00:04:00] If I
was smart, I would have brung a tip from my screw gun to do this with, but I wasn't so
I'll just do it with a screwdriver. Bear with me here. Perfect. And, that's good and tight.
Now I'm going to take my hose clamps and slide them on my other two pipes so they're there.
We'll go ahead and install this guy here. We'll get a water tank and then head of the
pump right there. And, again, it's pretty important you find
out which is the constant flow because if you hook us up the wrong way, it's not going
to work for us. And, if you find you've installed it and it's not drawing antifreeze the proper
way or getting it to the right location, you may want to just take it apart and make sure
that you've got it hooked up correctly. So, I'm going to get in the way of the camera
here for just a minute so I can tighten these up. And, you don't have to kill them. It's
not crazy high pressure water, but we want to make sure they're good and snug so we,
don't have any leaks down the road and we don't get antifreeze all over our carpet.
One more to tighten up here. And, after you've installed this, you can watch the video that
Josh and I made about winterizing the campers, doing the basic winterization and that should
help ya getting down that road if you have any questions on that as well. All right,
with both of those tight, we have successfully installed the pump converter.
So, with the valve turned this way, we're going to be drawing out of our freshwater
holding tank into that water pump and pushing water from the holding tank throughout the
coach when we don't have city water present. And, with the valve turned this way, we can
now put this right into our antifreeze jug, turn the water pump on, and start pumping
antifreeze through all of our faucets and devices throughout the coach. Simple as that.
So, we have just successfully installed the pump converter and that's going to make your
winterizing a lot easier for ya every year rather than unhooking and hooking that pump.
Thanks for watching Pete's RV TV with Randy today. [00:06:00] Thanks for checking our
quick tips and happy camping, and thanks for stopping in.