Like most RVers, the amount of time that we can spend boondocking or away from
a campground with hookups is limited by how much water we can take with us
and then how fast we go through it. For this video we're looking to change that.
I'm back again with yet another RV do it yourself project. Since we completed our solar setup,
we've been doing way more boondocking. Now, we have a 65 gallon fresh water tank, a 50 gallon
black water tank, and two gray tanks, one of which is also 50 gallons and the other is 37.
So with our typical water usage for our family of four, we can go 10 days but
much more commonly and much more comfortably we typically only go about a week at a time.
And then we have to break camp and find a place to dump and refill water. All of that is about
to change. So here's the plan, we picked up a 42 gallon portable RV waste tank. Now,
with this new macerator pump and a 75 foot hose, we can pump our waste water from the RV right
into the tote which just lives in the bed of the truck between the tailgate and the hitch. Next, I
drive this to the dump station and just unload it through the side here with a regular sewer hose.
Don't worry, I'm not bringing out the sewer hose for show and tell. Next, after the waste water is
all taken care of, we now have a 60 gallon fresh water bladder. So we just refill this, and there's
room for it in front of the hitch still in the bed of the truck. And then we run into a little bit
of a problem because our RV doesn't have a gravity fill for our fresh water tank. So what that means,
is that when I come back with a load of fresh water, it'll have to be pumped into the RV right
through our normal water inlet. Now, we do have a valve configuration up here for sanitizing and
winterizing the RV that will use your existing pump to suck water in through this port,
and I don't really understand why, but it doesn't work very well. I've winterized the RV before,
and it took forever to pump five gallons of RV antifreeze in. So while I've heard some people
have had some success using this function to fill water while boondocking, it just didn't
really seem like a good option for us. Instead, I bought an identical pump to the one that's already
installed in the RV. So not only should I be able to use this to pump water from the tank
of the truck into the RV, but let's say we're out in the woods and our house pump dies, this
would be a direct replacement so we wouldn't be caught out in the middle of nowhere without water.
Next, I got a couple of stainless steel adapters. These are half inch NPT connections on the pump.
So they'll go into these, and then these adapt that to the regular RV freshwater hose. So I'll
take our regular freshwater hose from the bed of the truck to the inlet of the pump and then
another hose from the outlet of the pump right into the water fill for the RV. And it should
fill exactly like it would at a campground. Now for the electrical part. Both our freshwater
and waste water pumps operate off of 12 volts, and we've had this power port sitting in the water bay
all these years unused. This was part of our solar pre-wiring that came with the RV, so theoretically
you could hook up some external solar panels to it, but it's just been sitting here unused with
a coil of 12 gauge wire hanging off the back of it. So I wired that up to the battery bank to
use as a power port for our pumps, and ironically enough, this two-wire connection here is the same
exact one that the macerator pump came with. So the fresh water pump just came with bare leads,
so I bought a pigtail with the same connector on it to chop up to connect that with an on off
switch. I spliced together the wiring harness for the macerator pump with heat shrinkable splices,
then again for the fresh water pump. Now for the exciting part. I have enlisted the help of my
lovely assistant. Let's do it. Let's go. There we have it. Let's go get the hose. I attached the
macerator pump to the RV sewer port and connected the 75 foot hose to its outlet. That seems snug.
So the tote came with this hose adapter to go on here. I think it's technically a cleaning port.
You could put non-potable water at a dump station in here to flush this thing out, but it's also the
only place that a garden hose will attach. So I'm gonna use it to pump water in, and I'm just gonna
take off this cap right here, which if this was on the ground, this is where you would dump your
sewer into with a regular sewer hose. I'm just going to leave that open so air can escape. All
right so we attach this right here, and again I am pumping the waste into the tote into the bed
of the truck because if I did this on the ground and filled it through the regular port this would
be like 500 pounds and there's no way I could lift it. And then this goes on here, and I think that's
it. Now I'm gonna have my lovely assistant press a button for me while I watch it fill.
Here is the on off button for the macerator pump. Now I just have to complete connecting it.
Okay so next I'm gonna open both gray tanks to get all that waste water sitting up against the pump.
So here is the lever for the first gray tank. I'm going to open that.
So far so good. Looks like everything's holding, so I will open the second tank. So now all that
wastewater should be resting up against the pump, and now it is time to pump into our tote. Hit it!
So far so good. Pretty uneventful so far. It's the way we like it. Okay stop it!
What do you think? I know there's still a little bit of water in the hose. So I'm hoping I can
turn off the valves, maybe turn it on again for just a moment to kind of clear things,
and then maybe take that off of there and try to lift it up high enough to clear the hose.
Hopefully this doesn't get messy. I think any time you're dealing with your
sewer port you're always thinking, gee hopefully this doesn't get messy.
That's why we're testing it with the gray water, not the black. Absolutely yes.
I think that's good. Next stop dump station.
Water out, time for some water in. Before filling, I made sure to disinfect the water bladder per
the instructions that came with it. Next, for my first crack at this I only filled
the freshwater bladder to a little over half capacity. All right so I got that
done. Now we're back so I'm going to pump it into the RV. I have one hose connection on
this fresh water pump that's a little bit difficult so I want to always make sure I connect
my inlet first, because then I can twist the pump to get this on here. This blue hose
is going to the tank in the bed of the truck, and then I simply have to open a valve on that tank
to bring the water to the pump. Step two is the electrical connection for the pump.
Then I use one more hose here to connect to the outlet to the pump and into the RV. And now,
since I'm not entirely sure that I got 45 or so gallons of water in that bladder, I put my flow
meter right here on the inlet to the RV. I know I'm gonna lose a little bit of water through the
hoses so this will just tell me exactly how much water I get into my freshwater tank.
Okay I'm going to go open the valve on the end of the bladder in the truck.
Next, I'm going to change my valve configuration in the water cabinet
to fill the tank. All right now we turn on this pump. There it goes, one gallon now.
Getting down near the end of it here. Looks like that's about
it. The pump is stuttering. The bag is empty. I closed the valve on the bag.
Looks like I got 37.2 gallons. Like I said, I think I'll do a
better job with it next time. I'm sure there's a little bit lost in the hoses,
but pretty happy with this. I really like that that bag will fold down so tightly and it is
lightweight and goes away real easily. I will definitely supply a parts list, if not in the
description then definitely in the related blog post which will be in the description. Thanks for
watching. If you like this kind of content, please give it a thumbs up and we'll see you next time.
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