Draining fresh water from Bailey Advance

[DaveHobson]

I’m new to motohoming, and recently bought a 3 year old Bailey Advance 66-2. I’m having trouble emptying the fresh water tank (which I want to in order to get rid of potentially ‘stale’ water, but which will be more important when it comes to preparing the van for winter). As i understand it, I should just have to open the drain tap at the bottom/side of the tank, and it should empty underneath the van. Well some of the water appears to be coming out, but only a dribble, and the gauge is still showing 10% full (and I can see by undoing the cap that there’s still a lot of water in there). Does this suggest that the drain pipe is blocked? Or am I doing something wrong?

 

[Jenka]

The Baileys have rubber plugs to drain water access is via the floor open the lid then you will see a round plug open hand in job done !

 

[vzac]

Not sure about the advance we have an autograph. To empty the fresh water out of that we have to pull the bung out of the tank from inside the tank. The waste is from a lever on the pipe out side the van.
And common problem with bailey is how inaccurate the gauges for waste and fresh are, I would just look, you know when its empty, there non in.

 

[RidersofRohan]

I have a 66-2 and I’m not aware of any bung.
The tank drains through the valve at the bottom right hand corner, a little blue tap. The water drops onto the top of the waste tank which is beneath it in the chassis. So water drips down off the waste tank in various places depending on how level the van is. ( So if your expecting to see the water draining neatly out of a little tube underneath the van, it won’t, it will be in a series of dribbles off the outside of the waste tank)
Obviously this leaves a small amount of water in the tank, you can of course drive up your levelling wedges to tilt the van back to aid the last dregs of water out through the valve. Personally I can see the point, mine has only a tiny amount of water left in, a few absorbent paper towels would probably remove.
One piece of advice I would give regarding this water system is, check the tank for any swarf left in after manufacture, ie where they have drilled holes for the pipe work. This swarf and anything else that may get into the tank is sucked up by the internal pump and into the pressure switch, which then needs cleaning out, so as your tank is empty, now is the time
to check for debris and remove it.
Edit: just noticed it’s a 3 year old van, so probably debris already removed, so ignore last paragraph.

 

[DaveHobson]

Thanks all. No, there’s no bung on the Advance 66-2 - it’s the small blue tap, as described by RidersOfRohan. Your reply was really helpful - I was indeed looking for a neat stream of water, and the water dripping randomly made me think that something was wrong. But the issue that I now have is that the water dribbles out really slowly - is that normal? There’s still a lot of water in the tank - a few cms deep.

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[Landy Andy]

If you think there maybe a blockage try shoving a turned on hose, up the waste pipe

 

[bridgedino]

I had reason to investigate a similar slow drain from the fresh water tank on a 2019 Bailey Advance i had. If, like mine your blue drain down tap is of a push fit design its worth removing it to clean it. I found mine was choked up with the black plastic shavings left over debris from when the black plastic tank was fitted. Use an old towel to soak up the rest of the tanks water before removing it though

 

[DaveHobson]

Thanks bridgedino, I’ll have a look at that - if I can ever get the tank empty!

 

[DaveHobson]

I had reason to investigate a similar slow drain from the fresh water tank on a 2019 Bailey Advance i had. If, like mine your blue drain down tap is of a push fit design its worth removing it to clean it. I found mine was choked up with the black plastic shavings left over debris from when the black plastic tank was fitted. Use an old towel to soak up the rest of the tanks water before removing it though

The outlet pipe was indeed partially blocked - thanks for taking the time to alert me to this.

 

[mitzimad]

i think you only have one post left so use it wisely or may be consider paying the £20 per year to be a member here being a member means you can use the search facility and acces to more advice

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[Guigsy]

When we want to empty the fresh tank after each trip, we just run the taps to empty it into the grey.

A couple of times per year we sterilise the fresh tank with Puriclean. Which does a double duty when we run it through into the grey tank and let it sit there for a bit too.