Apparent water pump problem that wasn't

GJH · 27-11-2007, 10:42 AM

As we were doing our final bowl of washing up before leaving Upwood on Sunday we apparently ran out of water. We could hear the pump batting its little brains out but no water from the tap.

Unusually I hadn't filled the tank up, just put a few gallons in because I knew we wouldn't use all that much as there were showers on site. Even though that was the case I was sure that we hadn't used all that I had put in the tank.

When we got home I didn't have time to investigate but did drain the system against frost and found that there was about 2 gallons in the fresh water tank - oh dear, has something gone wrong inside the pump?

This morning I got the cap off the tank to have a look and found that the submersible pump is mounted so that its inlet is about 3/4 inch above the bottom of the tank - which means that it's not surprising that there are still a couple of gallons left when the tank is apparently empty.

Happily, when I put sufficient water in the tank I was able to draw it through the taps (both hot and cold) so we don't have anything wrong with the pump. In future I'll just make sure that I put enough water in the tank to begin with.

Our van is an Elddis Autoquest 100 - I don't know to what extent the problem might occur with other vans.

Graham

ukrv · 27-11-2007, 11:02 AM

Hi Graham

We get a similar thing on the RV.

I can only imagine the pipe is raised to stop any "silt" etc getting into the pump.

Annoying when they put the sensors below that level though, as ours starts spluttering when we're supposed to have 1/4 tank left.

Paul