3 Essential Water System Components For Your Camper Van | Pump Selection, Tanks & More!

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hey guys welcome to the live stream tonight tonight we are talking about three essential water system components

that you're going to need in your van um that's going to be your water tank your water pump and then your gray water

tank if you guys decide to use one of those so um yeah let's get right let's get

started on the uh little

all right I'm back had to turn the heater off the thing is really noisy on these live streams

um

and there's another video that I'm going to link below and it's I was going over all the lines of the Vans and kind of

the flow of how to set up your water system so for example how it comes from the tank to the pump and then it goes

from the pump it distributes out to uh the kitchen faucet or if you guys have a hot water heater or if you have like a

rear spray down shower in the back um so those type of things are covered

in that video this one I just want to focus

if you guys see behind me on this table will be talking about this bottom tank which is

a 40 gallon gray water tank I'm sorry 40 gallon fresh water it's an over the wheel well tank we have the top tank

which is that is going to be your gray tank and then we got some other components over there such as the pump

and then a level sensor and then a drain valve and that's an automatic drain

valve it's pretty convenient so

uh so that's kind of a hard thing to put together if you've never been in a van maybe you really don't know you know how

much water you're anticipating you're going to need or how much you just literally want to carry and put in the

van so those are two different ways to do that one way that you can figure it out is

basically it's just on your usage so are you just taking the van for like a weekend trip or are you taking the van

on a whole week Journey or like a month to where you need as much water as possible you know is there somewhere

that you're going where you're not able to top off water say you're going really off grid and you need as much as

possible um if you need as much as possible I kind of work my way back this 40 gallon tank

behind me is about the biggest that you want to put in a van and still be able to build

a kitchen Galley kind of have a bed system that sort of thing now that's just my opinion I'm sure you can go way

larger but then you really get into the point of having the problem of having weight

so 333 pounds that you're carrying in on your on your van even though you

have it over the axle you may have it to one side which is generally how most

people have it so it's 333 pounds that shifted to one side of your van

the um can't hear audio

can't hear audio

oh no audio on Google Slides

all right guys we're gonna fix that one second here

foreign there we go all right Jamie how's that

can you hear me on the Google Slides

how we doing good

all right so talking about water weight 8.34 pounds

and uh there we go okay we got it

all right we're gonna test it here 8.34 pounds we got our audio good

all right all right let me get back on track here so 333 pounds on one side of the van

that is that's a lot of weight um if we go back over here to the

computer and let's see uh and I'm just gonna go to renergy again

then we're going to go to we're going to look at the weight of a lithium iron

phosphate battery um let's see here here we go

all right so we got this battery let's scroll on down to their specs

26 pounds so we had 26 pounds for that

so now let's go over to the drawing pad

there we go all right and let's just put this in perspective

so we have the back of the van and then we're going to have a 40 gallon

water tank over here so this is water and we got 40 gallons

and then on the left over here let's just say this is our power system

all right so the 40 gallons when we filled all the way up we got 330. let me

get that the same color we got

333 pounds so the power system over here

let's just say we have four of these batteries of the renergy

so four of the batteries and let's just average 25 pounds each I mean that's only going to be a hundred

pounds so you need 12 lithium batteries to

pretty much equal that

that 333 pounds so that's the first thing you got to think of is is the amount of weight

so without getting on a tangent on that um yeah just think about the weight in your

van now you're going to have an inverter on that side where the batteries are you're going to have a couple other components but you're not going to have

200 more pounds of components so depending on how you set your van up that's one thing to think of when you

look at tank size um then there's all kinds of different options 10 20 30 40.

20 is kind of a sweet spot so 20 is what we put on Thomas's van

and we put it on his van uh for two reasons it was an excellent fit

um and where we want it at location wise well the other reason was we didn't have

a choice that was that was the exact area that we had to put in the van but what I like about it is the way it was

designed so you can get a 20 gallon tank that's just a big old rectangle it's not cut

out specifically for a wheel well size and so no affiliation here but we're

going to go to Titan DIY kits and we're going to go to their uh water

section and we're going to look at this um we're gonna look at this 20 gallon water

tank so it's this they call it the slim tank so most tanks have this like bump out

and then they kind of straddle the on the front and the back um the weight but then the slim tank

has a longer area and it's it's more narrow

so this is the tank that we used for Thomas's van and we're going to kill a couple birds

with two uh with a stone here we got the mounting hardware let's talk about

that real quick so the mounting hardware on this is right here

so this tank has these brackets on the front and the back and you're going to

be able to bolt this into a frame so we were able to bolt it into an 80 20 frame

and uh that frame is underneath this bed right

here so if you guys can see on this bottom left hand side that is where that

is hidden if you buy this kit it does come with a couple of components but uh I only use

these brackets I didn't use any of this hose because we're going to get that to that in a second we'll talk about the

additional components that you need for the tank that were not talked about in our water layout video

so here's a 20 gallon tank it's nice and slim and the weight is half so we're

looking at like 150 pounds as far as weight goes because the tank the tank is heavier but

are lighter but the 20 gallon tank versus a 40 gallon tank it's not a huge difference in weight

but this is what a 20 gallon tank looks like let's hop on over to the website where

I purchased the 40 gallon tank so again no affiliation but this is Northwest

conversions and their water tanks look like this

so this 24 gallon tank right here it's the same profile uh as the 40 gallon

tank is just a little bit smaller because I don't think they have

I was checking in here earlier I didn't see a um

let's just check the gallery maybe we can find it

anyway this tank right here um the 40 gallon tank has a little bit

higher of a lip I'll try to zoom in more for you

but this is a 24 gallon tank but pay attention to the way that this is laid out so it has a cutout that is specific

to the wheel well of a van but it leaves a flat side on the

opposite side so you see right here um you've got a

flat face on this tank so you can put some panels up really close against it and have a

nice little chamber that the tank sits in this for this uh tank that I've got

from Northwest conversions doesn't have any of the brackets on it so you'll need to mount

it in a way that it actually holds itself in kind of like the battery system we did with the 80 20. so if you

saw the last live stream we did the 80 20 frame for the lithium batteries

you're going to build a frame just like that for the water tank and what you could use is you could use a little bit

of that um this stuff right here so it could use you can use this felt

roll and this felt is what could rub up again push up against the tank so it doesn't kind of chafe

so that's going to allow you to keep the tank contained and safe

and then what's also nice about Northwest conversions is if you click here they give you all the dimensions

the diameters of all the holes the links front and back of the wheel well so you

can get a really good idea of how this is going to fit before you purchase it and that's what I needed because the ADT

20 80 20 frame that I'm doing for the van behind me is real specific in how I

needed to fit the tank in the van because this tank uh the van behind me

has the adventure wagon kit in it and the way where the l-track rail comes

down I need to make sure this water tank was not too high and covering that rail because I'm actually going to bolt the

80 20 rail for the bed system on top of the tank and we'll get to that in a later video

and then another option you can do kind of like the the batteries is you can get these strap Downs

for the tank but they do take up some room right here so if you are already going to do an 80

20 frame around your tank that might be a better option than putting these in and then doing an

additional frame because the 80 20 frame will be able to touch the whole entire tank

so those are two options for the size of Tanks so the 20 gallon and the 40 gallon

we talked a little bit about the mounting hardware and location so the location that we

went over had to do with if we're doing uh

you know the weight on the right side versus the weight on the left side with the power

system now you can put it in the middle so you can put it right here straddling

the axle so for example if you had an overhead view of your van

and let's say this is the wheel well there's the wheel well here's your axle

um if you watch a lot of humble roads van builds he likes to put the tank kind of

straddling this in the middle sometimes just to distribute the weight

but as far as I as far as I know from the shows I've gone to and and things like that not having this pass through

kind of is a deal breaker for some people not being able to pass over this

so having the tank over the wheel well over here keeps it out of the way

so you can still do that and then you know traditionally have your power system over here

and that way you keep this area free so that's that's kind of what I'm

adhering to

all right and then um so these are kind of mirrored as far

as answers for the freshwater tank versus the gray water tank we're going to talk with a gray water tank in a

second but as you see it's pretty much I'm going to talk about the same thing on each one

so let's finish up with the freshwater tank and then we'll move on to the other

stuff so the next thing we're going to talk about are fittings and ports

so when you get a water tank it doesn't matter if it's a fresh or the gray

you're really going to make sure you need to make sure that the fittings the way that you've planned out and mapped

out your fittings is going to work for you so that has to do with where the tank is in the van so for our example

we're going to do over the wheel well and uh yeah let's go ahead and just hop over to uh the

um the other camera all right

so hopefully you guys can hear me over here so we're over here at this tank and uh

we're gonna finish up with the tank comments we're going to talk about the fittings so let's get the

freshwater tank off stick it over here

and then we'll talk about this 40 gallon tank so this is the one that I was uh showing

you guys earlier and this is the over the wheel well design

so what's nice about this one this one's going to go on the passenger side so this is the rear

and if we're talking about fittings we're going to start with our fill port in the back

now if you can help it you don't want to drill any holes into this you want whatever holes that are going to be in

here pre-made into the tank now with water tanks they do have a

they're blank areas so they're not actually cut out yet because they kind of help you out with that they may make

sure that stuff is not cut out that you don't want it to be but it gives you options in

case you know say you put this in the van and you were going to make your drain Port here but then you decided to

do something different and you put it on this back side so they give you have options not every

hole is going to be drilled out there's another website I'll show you in a second and that website will help you

to um actually you can draw the tank out and

they'll build you a custom tank with those holes cut out so we'll do that in just a second

but the back of this tank um for the ports the first thing you want to look at is where you're going to

fill the tank so you can do it a couple ways um

Thomas van I can't mentioning his van because it's such a it's such an interesting way we did it because

uh it wasn't the way we wanted to do it with the tank it was the way we had to

do it with the constraints so the back of his van where this spray down system was we

weren't able to do the uh traditional fill port

um on the top so most of the time when you have a van

this port up here or this port up here will be your fill port and what you'll do is you'll have an extension and then

you'll have something that can connect to like a hose faucet or something like that and it goes in the top of the tank

and then you fill up from there um but with his system what we had to do was we used a check valve system

and his spray down is right here I'll show you a video here in just a second

and so he plugs into the check valve that doesn't allow the water to spit out

and the water comes in goes here and it goes into a 90 pipe that's connected to

the top of the tank and we did that for multiple reasons I had to do with the way the 80 20 was in

the way but my point is you want to have options because when you start to build if you

think it's gonna one one you're going to go one way you might flip and go a different way so

again options are good so say the these two up here you've

reserved for your fill ports you want to make sure that your tank has a way to drain so we have three options

we have one over here on the left one on the right and then on the very front here foreign

right here now there's a couple different ways you can do this the

uh the drain ports can also uh

I double dipped in his van and the drain port is also the supply for the pump

so it may sound confusing but what I did was we took and this is in that video I did in the

in the description below the drain Port so the water comes out

and then there's a t and then a valve underneath his kitchen galley so if you

need to drain his tank underneath his Galley he just turns a valve 45 degrees the whole entire tank drains out but

once he closes it that system is now only going to

the pump itself so it'll pull from there and then when

you're not when you're wanting to drain the system you just open the valve and it drains so you kind of double dip off

of one port um but most traditionally you're going to have a solid uh if you're going to

have a hole at the bottom go into your pump and then at the back

you're going to want to you're going to most typically use the bigger opening and that bigger opening

in the tank that is going to drain your tank obviously faster typically these uh ports that are

smaller are going to be used to provide water to the pump

so again when you're going to take look for options as far as your where you're putting water in the tank where the

water is coming out and then we got one more thing over here

let me pull my notes up so if we come back over here the

computer uh this right here taint tank vent

overlooked so tank vent overlooked

so this uh the top of the tank most people overlook this

um they'll think you figure out really quick when your pump is it can't pump

the water through its the system because you got a vacuum um there's no way to

uh you'll find it out when you fill your tanker for the first time because you'll fill it out and then maybe some air will

start to be pushed out of one of these holes if it's not fully sealed because when you fill up this tank

there's there's air inside it's not pressurized but when you fill when you start to fill the tank up the pressure

gets greater and you need somewhere for the pressure to escape

so on the top of this tank we have one fort and so this one port is where we're

going to put our our vent and the vent for a water tank is essentially a check valve

so that when you fill it up with when you put the water in it fills up the air can

escape and then when you come over here

and the air the water gets pumped out of the tank

you have something so it can breathe so I called it a check valve but it's more of a breather vent now these

breather vents um let me see if I let me see if I have that example over here

all right bear with me we're gonna go I'm gonna go to Lowes over here.com

because I needed a breather vent quickly but uh

tank vent there it is okay

here we go to the computer all right check this out

so this is called a brass vacuum relief valve

and I wish I had an extra one to show you guys um but essentially what this valve does is

there's like a there's a little spring inside and this is a uh this is a vacuum

relief valve so we're gonna actually take this apart and

we're just going to use it so that it's just a vent so that the water doesn't Splash out of the tank

so there's a little spring inside and so I remove the spring and the plastic part

and then what I did is I just used this uh this vacuum relief I just use the

brass part and I use the this top plastic cap and what that did was if the water's

sloshing in and out it keeps it from if it hits it it doesn't spill out

so one it vents it and two it keeps it from spilling out that's really what you

want to do you want to relieve the pressure you want to relieve the pressure in the tank so that it can

Slicker in when the pump pumps the water out and you want it to blow the air out

or vent it out when you're filling it up uh and then keeping it so that doesn't

Splash out that's that's the whole gist um so fill drain provide water to the

pump and vent so there's the those are the things you want to see when you buy

one of these tanks so we'll come back over here to the

computer and let's see here

all right so we talked about the size the fittiness and ports you want to have those

mounting location so we talked about the location as far as

you know where it was over the axle and then

we're going to get to the water pump here in just a second

um see if there's anything else okay so we did the tank vent

we talked about that level sensor that's what I didn't want to miss okay let's talk about that

all right we can focus there we go so level sensor

um for me I like to do I like to not do one of these I like to

do the visual level sensor because it's not another part that's going to break on a van

plus you can actually make it look pretty cool so what we did on Thomas's van

um is I cut an oval hole out in his panel and then on the

back of the tank what we did is we put a blue LED light and so this blue LED light you've

probably seen this on some YouTubers Vans or you've seen it at Van shows um it's a way to backlight the tank and you

can actually see where the water level is uh because the color there's a little bit of change in color

so you get the blue light coming through and then you have this thing that's technically called a sight glass but in

our case there's no glass it's just it's just an open cutout that shows you the tank

and so what I did is I kind of I didn't want to the power system in Thomas's van is very

complex and we have a ton of circuits like we have almost 16 different

switches and stuff like that so I didn't want to add one more switch that could

be failure point but then also um you know it would be one more thing for

Thomas to have to to check on like find the switch to see the tank and it's kind of annoying

so what I did was uh when I to get the light to turn on

I just wired it in in line with the pump uh so separate circuit but same kind of

branch and so I wired it so that when the power when the pump got power the LED strip

got power because we're going to talk about why you want to not leave your pump on all

the time we'll get to that in a second but what I did was write it into the

same pump circuit so when he goes to turn his pump on the blue light comes on

and so if he ever wants to check his pop he can just uh or his water level he can just click on the pump it'll turn on

Prime itself and since the system is pressurized it's just going to turn off

we'll talk about that in a second too but that way the lights on with the pumps on and you can check the water

level it's just really simple so the only thing to break in this

situation to check the water level is the LED light so that's very simple

um where I kind of shy away from this level sensor now I did buy this level sensor for this build

but um I'm not sure if I'm gonna do the LED not sure yet

but the way the reason I shy away from it is once you cut a hole in here and it's not a

a threaded uh kind of plastic weld hole is if you have any leaks it's it's

really hard to get that sealed because this type of plastic doesn't take to

adhesives too well and the kit that they give you they give you this right here so it's a little

rubber gasket with some screws and

you can drill it and then you can put this in and then obviously flush out all the the plastic

bits and then bolt it in but this is always going to be going to be a spot that you're going to want to check uh

for leaks so if you're doing some you know serious off-roading or a lot of moving around the water tank sloshing

you know you could have a little bit of water weep from this uh outside of this

and then the other thing that you have to do is you'll need to calibrate this

so depending on if you're using um an electrical uh

not electrical where's the paper

so this is a Kus so cuss you see that so this system they have some really

cool like vintage looking like Marine gauges so it's just a white face with a really

cool dial it does look really cool but the thing is each one of these is specific to each

tank so for example right here what you would have to do is

you would have to measure your tank then you'd have to measure the offset from

the bottom so that you didn't get one that was too long or one that was too short

and then once you do that you'll need to actually calculate empty

full and possibly 50 percent and then if you want to get more granular in your

percentages you know 25 50 75 full

those are all going to have to be programmed as different voltages and

there's a brand called C Marine and it's an interface it looks really nice but so

this is my point is there's a lot of complexity added when you do this now the simple way of this would be just

to get the the cusp gauge because this would bolt a wire right into the gauge and then you

pretty much just have a low and then you just you'd have a high point but you still have to make sure that

um there's there is some synth calibration that's needed in this

so it'll give you the exact tank level if you have tank anxiety

you're always worrying about your water tank uh but for me after I went through this whole process

and we kind of paused on this van and then we started working on Thomas's I said you know I want something a little

more reliable and simple um and so that's why we did the blue LED in the back

and just so you can see the water level so pretty much that

okay so that is the level sensor

and then uh since we were talking about the uh we're still in the tank subject let's

talk about a water filter do you need a water filter and the pre-filter

so right now I'm just going to talk about the pre-filter talk about water filter when we get over to the pump

so the a pre-filter uh let me pull this up really quick

so this is a um this is something you're going to see

in the RV industry traditionally bigger RVs have it but really anybody that wants to double

check kind of screen filter the water from an RV park or something like that

is going to have this device and so what this device is

is this is a RV water filter and it's got some paper filtration and

it's also got it active carbon so it's a carbon filter as well

um but this is going to help prevent anything big from getting into your system so the

carbon filter is there for more taste you know that way if you're at some RV park and it's kind of

you know what hose water tastes like it it takes that out of your water before you fill your whole system up but for me

as a builder this is really for uh clearing out sediment stuff like that

that can damage or pump uh and then also damage your water system

um prematurely

so this is the I call this the pre-filter water filter

so a water filter I mean that's really going to be based on your needs

so whenever I'm uh doing the van life camping for

example I'm not drinking the water out of my faucet of my van

um that water is to wash my hands wash dish dishes

um uh you know stuff like that like boil water that sort of thing so

you're always somehow uh you know if you're using that Waterford

cooking it you're probably going to boil it before that so that keeps all that safe but for me I always have

you know a water bottle um like some Nalgene bottles stuff like

that for when I'm I need to drink water or I'm brushing my teeth something like

that so as far as the the water filter goes that's up to you

they do make systems that um they are a

it's like a infrared like a UV filter so that kills

out that kills you know viruses bacteria stuff like that but for this video we're just going to

stay focused on the tanks the pumping system and stuff like that so stuff that can

actually damage the pump uh sediment things of that nature

so you definitely need a pre-filter just to screen stuff going into your tank so it doesn't hurt your system this

water filter is more again for your taste

all right and then when I get to the gray tank we're also going to talk about why I'm not mentioning a black tank in

this video and we'll talk about that too all right so now let's talk about

um one more thing I forgot I got a tab right here

let's see where is that all right so this next part that I

missed uh this has to do with the size of your water tank and if you are

in a van or you're in an RV and you're taking a shower uh I just want to run

this statistic by you so it says according to the EPA

um taking a five minute shower uses 10 to 25 gallons

so if you're taking a normal length shower that you do at home

a 40 ounce tank is going to give you two showers and then I'm gonna back it up even more

now that's a cold shower so typically in Vans and Van builds you're typically

going to have a four gallon hot water tank so you know

sizing your tank to take a shower is a good thing but

these statistics on you know 10 to 20 gallons for a five minute

shower um it's a lot of water so when you are sizing your tank right

here you know think to yourself am I just using this to wash my hands

you know make some coffee in the morning rinse some plates off and stuff for food to some light things or are you you know

washing down ATVs in the back and taking outdoor showers or you have an indoor

shower um I would say that would be the biggest thing between getting a

20 gallon tank and a 30 gallon I mean a 40 gallon tank it's just how much water you're going to use

um and then what I did is I basically just I sized up the biggest tank that I could

put in the van so if I in case I wanted to change my options later so this fan originally did not have an indoor shower

it just had a rear outdoor shower with the spray down and uh so now I'm glad that I got the 40

gallon because now I have options to have that extra water capacity so that you can take a shower

um you know a couple showers for the weekend but you still have enough water to cook

with clean with and then you can still take an outdoor shower

all right so that's the one one thing I missed all right now we're going to talk about

water pumps and as we're talking about the water pumps we're going to go to the

manufacturer's website and this is for

sea flow so no affiliation I must say that every time

until it's not true sea flow pump the reason that I got this pump is I did

a ton of research and what my research led me to was

um you know I didn't want something to be noisy um I wanted something that would have a

pressure sensor inside so that when it got back up to a certain pressure it

would you know automatically cut off most most pumps do that and it's rare that they don't

I also wanted it to be able to be run dry accidentally so that

any of my customers in their van if they accidentally couldn't get to the pump switch or they'd have the you

know Bluetooth phone switch and they turn it on but then for some reason they couldn't turn it off they would have

damage to the pump or the system

and then I also wanted to make sure that you know it gave you that comfort of

having good pressure like you would have at home so all the kind of those creature governments comforts

so this are some topics that I'm going to talk about on the manufacturer's website

uh we're not going to get into the details of what makes up uh a diaphragm pump and

I think I completely butchered that uh spelling

let's see here p-h-r-e-g-m

ope that's right it just looks weird anyway so diaphragm pump that is the style of

this pump there's all kinds of different styles of pump that's the inner workings that's how the motor spins and creates the

pressure to create the uh suction or discharge in the pump this is

the the engineering behind it we're not going to go into that I'm just letting you know that this is a

diaphragm pump that we're talking about accumulator or not we'll talk about that so an accumulator

is something in a water system that keeps the pump from surging so if

you can imagine uh in your home

um everything is usually sized appropriately to where if you turn on a

faucet and you closed it uh the city is providing you the

pressure to your house so there's always a constant pressure so you open that valve the water comes through you close

that valve the water stops but there's still pressure behind that that wall that that valve

now in a van it's different because you're the water company too so you are

creating the pressure to get it to the faucet so because you're doing that

that pump has to turn on it has to suck the water into itself it has to

pressurize it and then it has to push it through the system so what that does is it can create a

pulsing effect like a surging effect um so

uh technically you would call that water hammer um

but here I'll back up so that hammering is that pump

if you don't have the system if you don't design your system in a van right that's what I'm talking about right now like if you don't have accumulator or

you don't have a pump that can withstand those uh

or manage those surges you're going to have that hammering effect so you may you may hear you may uh hear

that and some um I want to say lower end RVs but

you'll hear it to where the pump will turn on and it'll be this pump pump pump

it's it's the pump trying to push the water through the system

um so it's not ideal it's usually because the system is not designed uh as efficient as it could be

all right I digress accumulator or not so what the accumulator does is where the city is

providing you pressure you open a valve you have the pressure you close it comes back the accumulator is

uh it's like a little bladder in your water line system and what it's doing is

it is keeping it's a kind of keeping pressure on the system so that when you

open the valve and the pressure drops that bladder is going to

make up for that loss of pressure so that it's not the transition of having no pressure and

pressure is not as great so it's more of a softer um

come on with the with the water that's probably a crazy way to explain it but it might help you

so an accumulator just helps with the surgery and keeps the the flow smooth until the pumpkin maintain that pressure

and and come on all right an accumulator is another piece of

equipment that can fail in a van or in the in Thomas's van you don't have room

for an accumulator so believe it or not you can buy a pump

that can deal that is engineered to deal with that and

it can softly ramp up softly ramp down and it can actually modulate itself

based on the uh what you're asking of it

for example if you open the faucet halfway the pump just

slowly ramps up to provide that power until Reese reaches its internal

pressure cuts off you open up the valve the faucet for your sink all the way then the pump uh

corresponds accordingly so that that's pretty much all the stuff

you gotta kind of go through in your research so I'm kind of giving you a cheat code here and just showing you

that this pump right here um does a really good job

then we'll talk about noise we'll talk about can it be run dry

um and then

why always having it turned off all right let's hop over to the

manufacturer's website so the pump that we're talking about today is the sea flow

and this is the 42 series so cflow 42 series diaphragm pump

and what's really nice about this is I mean there's all kinds of pumps out there I mean you got sure flow

um here I'll just pull up RV pumps

okay so this is what you're typically going to see um water pumps there's there's no star

there's sure flow uh Flomax all kinds of stuff

but what I've done is uh

I've come upon this one and uh again no affiliation it's just something that I'm

very happy with I'm amazed at how quiet it is it's extremely extremely quiet

um and uh if we go Google one more time

and we're going to go to uh

so household water pressure most common 60 PSI for residential homes

now when you're doing if you're DIY or your professional builder

you can buy whatever water pump you want but the the style in building Vans and this

just my opinion is you want to have some type of comfort in there to where when somebody opens up a

faucet it's not just like a little dribble and it just it kind of feels cheap and then you also you also don't

want to open up the the valve and it's like they have a you know a pressure washer that is coming out of their

kitchen Galley so if you just go back to so many people have already done the

math for you you just you literally just got to go on to Google and then type in household water pressure

and then you're going to get your averages for household water pressure

so that's what I do I go in there 60 PSI around um and guess what now when I go to the

pump we have adjustability 17 PSI to 60 PSI

and uh let's see if I can zoom in there we go so 17 to 60 PSI

now why is the low end important well the low end is important because remember how I told you about the

surging pressure when you barely open up your water faucet you want a pump that can

change its its flow rate so that you're not uh when you open it up halfway to

just kind of fill your cup up a little bit you're not getting full pressure that that sort of thing if that makes

sense um noise very quiet sounding I I it's very

quiet you guys are going to see a video of Thomas's van in the future where we uh walk through

how to fill the water system check for leaks and then drain and then test the

pump so we've got a whole video on that coming coming up soon but it is surprise it was it's way way

quieter than air conditioning running it's very quiet

um threaded connections multiple fittings uh so let's talk about that

so when you get a water pump some that are you know a little more the

budget in may not have a bag of goodies with them

that's going to cause two problems one now you gotta start to figure out uh the

diameter of your fittings you've got to figure out you know what

uh what thread pitch and stuff they're using is it standardized all that kind

of candle worms but when you buy something that has this with it

you're going to be able to get the fittings that you need to make the connections you need or as I call it

they're kind of like cheat sheet parts so you don't have to use this you can

you can use a water filter system that you put together you can use fittings that you create I

call it like a cheat sheet because you can take this to Lowe's and you can

match up you know the thread pitch and the size you can just bring this into the store

you don't have to bring the whole entire pump you can bring the you can bring the pump in if you want to

I've done stuff like that you know no shame but it's just an easier way to start

figuring out how to get parts but this pump for example it comes with

uh two connections here

so you're going to have your your Inlet and Outlet of your pump the fittings that they give you are

going to be for a braided hose which is

you know it's not the way I do it um I will actually take this and I will

go and make sure I get the uh the PEX A fitting so it's the same thing

same half inch fitting but it's going to be

pecs so that way I can screw a Pex fitting on and then now I can connect my PEC system to the Inlet and the outlet

of the water system but you can use these to find the size and then next

remember we talked about um

we talked about pre-filtering the water before it comes in your tank

using the the RV water filter this is the next most important thing

um so back in the day when I was an engineer at this big textile Factory

um screens so filter screens and all the oil systems of all the you know uh

pump lubrication systems the hydraulic systems they always had a metal strainer

and what that is is that is your last safety measure before anything goes into

the pump now we're talking about water it's pretty simple but you can imagine if metal got into a

metal hydraulic pump it'd be really bad same thing for this this is your last

line of defense between anything getting in this pump and damaging it these pumps should last you about 10

years I mean they're built extremely well this one I'll talk about in a second you

know it's actually designed so that if you run it try it won't damage the pump to a point

but these these little wire strainers this is your last line of defense for

um the inlet of your pump what's nice is if you mess up say you get a garden hose

and you're filling up your your RV tank and you know you're just trying to get

the water in there but for some reason the hose fell in the mud and then you clean it off but then when you plugged it in I don't know let's just say we got

some grit in there you can uh this right here once you so

you can take it you can open it up and then all that grit is going to go

into here in this basket and you should be able to take this out all right you can clean this wash this

out put it back up in here and then screw it up

and that way your your pump stays safe so if you look on the pump you're going to have arrows

so one's going to be one's going to be your Inlet and then One's Gonna Be Your Outlet so this goes

on the inlet side and so I gotta be careful this is a new pump

and they do test them so this is going to have let me get water everywhere it's okay

all right so this would just screw

and you can use um you can use a

Teflon tape okay so imagine there we go so that's how

that works so this goes to your water tank comes in comes through this strainer and then goes into your pump

and then out to your hot water heater your kitchen Galley your spray down

see looks at the option you know foot pump design

that's that's a good point that's a good point um so in the chat

uh the question is talking about using a manual foot pump that's designed for boats

um with a five gallon jury can uh what is that thing called I think it's

called it's like called a not a gulper what is that thing called

let's see here

foreign guzzler that's what it's called

so this is what you're talking about the uh the guzzler there was two different Pot types you

got this one that's got the rubber part and then there's one that's got like a like actual petal like this one

um those are a good option so

I'm giving some options for the system but you don't you don't have to use this you can go way way simpler

so this okay I'm gonna go into this just for a second that's an awesome suggestion in the comments

so this is a foot pump so you basically push it down with your foot and it pumps water out of just a simple

Jerry can into your sink drains into another Jerry can simple

water system you can you know wash your hands wash dishes uses no electricity

um yeah I know a lot of people

um I kind of nerd out on the tech so the Real Simple Solutions you know I

don't talk too much about but they're not they're not uh

they're they're great Solutions

yeah so yeah definitely thank you for that comment um love stuff like that let's see quick

releases water type fittings on those yep exactly yep

so is uh so we're just gonna pause here since we got some stuff in the comments and I'm gonna show you some stuff that uh they're

talking about um

this company right here is called CP CPC yeah CPC right here

uh it's expensive little fitting but it works so good

um yep you have a good holiday as well thanks so much for the comment

so this CPC fitting they they work this end of it uh

you can get them see it's half inch so if you kind of stay in that half inch world

um it helps out but remember

uh when you're draining okay we're gonna get the gray water I'm gonna save that

for gray water tanks let me let me put that in my notes uh gray water tank

okay so what I just typed in my notes um when we get to the gray tank make sure you have a large enough outside

diameter or the OD for the drain pipe

you can you can use these fittings right here right there so these quick disconnect fittings are

awesome but make sure that if you're doing the Jerry can thing you're disconnecting and connecting

um for water supplying the uh foot pedal method

half inch is okay that's fine but when you drain we'll get to this in the uh

the gray water tank well we might just let's just go into it right now

um so the uh let's see here let me set try to set this up this is good for the foot pedal

you get this CPC Quick Connect fitting

you got your foot pump and it's coming out of a five gallon Jerry can right

perfect that's awesome so

[Music] um

once you do all that you're going to have to make sure that you drain it so my point is when you get ready to drain

it make sure that you're not using the same size you need to have a significantly bigger size

Quick Connect for your drain going into your bucket um or else it'll take you I don't know five

hours to to drain a seven gallon can so um

okay let me pause because I want to make sure that I finish up on this uh

we're gonna get to the gray water tank in just a second um

uh where was I here we go

we're going to finish up with the pump specs why I like this pump and I'm only going to tell you guys about stuff that

I've actually used so I'm not speculating about why this is a good pump and it's quiet I've used this pump

it's it's great so um so we talked about the pressure why

that's important talked about why it needs to be quiet the threaded connections why it's important to have

like I said I call it like a bag of goodies here so that when you go to the hardware store you you know what you're

getting um bypass

reduces noise strain on the pipes and wear on the pressure switch

so the bypass on here I'm not going to get into the engineering details but essentially what that means is

when the pump's running and providing pressure if you open up the faucet it's going to

give you that pressure it's just going to keep going but as you start to close the faucet

it's a great pump but it's not perfect okay they can't get your pressures for

every situation so what happens is that pump is still turning but there needs to be the extra pressure

needs to bypass and go somewhere else so that you know as you close the

uh water faucet the pressure doesn't continue to increase because you're making you know

it harder to get out of the faucet so if you have if it has a bypass in there

it uh doesn't um it doesn't keep that pressure

in in the pipes in our case the uh

the uh hex a um semi-rigid rubber feet noise and

vibration um yeah that's fine

this this mounting stuff it's okay um I mean that's just it's just simple it's

it's not that big of a deal but uh

these do give you a little bit of um it's more in how the pump modulates

and it doesn't uh it has all the other stuff this is this

is okay this is fine yeah make sure it has some type of rubber base

um the technical word is decoupling you want to decouple this so instead of

using these two to mount it directly to a piece of metal where it would immediately transfer the vibration

this base pad decouples and it it kind of it lessens the amount of

vibration the pump is moving into whatever you know if you're bolt this into a 2x4 or 80 20

what have you um

so continuous duty where do they have this

I'm trying to get too technical on this kind of keeping it very DIY

um continuous duty it's uh that's that is so that you can run it

without it burning up there's some safety built into it so I think there's

like a thermal uh where is it

um I know it has it in here but essentially it has as a thermal switch in here to where like if it gets too hot

or it gets too much power to man it'll protect itself on-demand use

uh that is really nice some pumps you turn them on and they're on but say for

example you turn this pump on and it pressurizes the system it'll actually turn off when it reaches a it's

a pressure threshold then when you open the valve for the faucet it turns back on

so the on-demand use is nice so instead of it just being on the on-demand is uh is good self priming

okay self-priming very important so again back in my engineering days

uh this was very important to the pumps and stuff that we worked on

the reason is if you look at self-priming you guys have probably don't even realize this

um if you look here priming priming capabilities

six feet and you're like what what the heck does that mean I'm gonna show you so let's

move over here to the drawing pad so

uh

so if we have our water tank let's do this

so you got our water we got our water tank right here we have our line

and then we're going to have uh so right here let's make this orange this is our

priming level I like you'll understand what this means in a second

and so we're going to do six man I can't write it today

we're gonna do six feet Max

okay and the water is coming up here this is the direction the water is going

and then the water is going to go to the pump and then it's going to go out

and it's going to go to uh the faucet

is going to go to

hot water heater hopefully you guys can hear still hear me

hot water heater and then it's going to say it's going to go to the uh

this is the rear spray down shower

okay that's a hose all right something like that all right

you get the point so the water is coming use a different color here

so the water is coming out of the tank and it's flowing up

okay so priming capabilities so this right here

priming capabilities six feet

so this six feet this is the max that the

pump can pull the water up

it's a mixed it can pull from here okay

oh actually okay let's just say this say this whole line is six feet long all right

everything in blue is six feet that's the length that you can have the max length you can have before the pump

now some people might put the pump right here

okay you're fine but if your pump is over here

and it's let's say 12 feet away because you have you've got so many

different you know runs of pipe for example if it's 12 feet away

the pump is not going to work properly it's gonna take forever for it to actually pull a prime which means a

suction to get the water moving so what you want to uh

make sure just make sure that if your Tank's here and your kitchen Galley is

over here and the Run of pecs going to it just double check real quick that it's

not more than this number

and technically speaking that suction lift

um so you know if you had to go this way and

you were all flat and the pump was right here you'd be fine with a little bit longer

length but in my case my pump was up and above

the water tank in Thomas's van and Not only was it up and above but I had to do multiple changes

in the path before it came to the pump and that's because we had no space

we had no space to work with all right that's what that means hopefully that made sense

um I know we're getting into some technical stuff here but it's just to make sure that this is this is how you

make something work really well um shut off pressure 55 PSI

so the shutoff pressure is going to change depending on uh what kind of pump you have

um and now that pressure remember what I said earlier we want that pressure

uh

I lost it um we want that pressure to mimic

our household pressure right so when you open the faucet it feels

like you're at home it it's it's you know it feels comfortable you know it's not spraying

out very very fast at you and then

um the inlet and Outlet ports half inch so remember our

little bag of goodies here so we got half inch

and then MPT so mnpt let's copy this

let's go to Lowe's hit search

okay so if we were going to the hardware store you'll see

these there's this is a the name of that fitting there's all kinds of

different stuff so this little M npt world you can see

there's all kinds of different fittings and look at that we have our

pecs mnpt this is the wrong size we need a half inch

but guess what you can do you type in half inch female

m n p t akes

there you go so this is what I would screw on

to the end of this pump right here

so that's why we screw onto it and that is how you learn how to look it up

um so by the way that's female

npt and this m is Mill npt

uh I hope this doesn't bring up something

different okay yeah national pipe thread

so there's a mill national pipe thread and there's a female national pipe thread

you can look all this up it's real easy all right so once you know that boom you

got your fittings the weight is no big deal uh the leads so this is your gauge wire

and we'll okay we're going to talk about the electrical stuff in a separate video

we'll probably have just a video on this just a video on all the other stuff

um so we got 16 gauge wire

and then check this out so 16 gauge let's copy this

and 16 gauge Max Amps how many amps will 16 gauge carry uh 18 amps

um copper wire I I just do this as a habit that way I

can kind of I would just like to memorize ballpark of that um and that way

and then you come down here so that is the wire that is coming from the pump right here

um so if you look really closely

this one actually doesn't say it there it goes 16 gauge okay it's a very very fine print but your gauge of wire

that'll kind of help you plan for what to run to it um

the max amp draw is 7.5 amps 7.5 amps

the 7.5 amps of the max amp draw

if you don't have this value from the manufacturer you can just uh

you can come above this so say if I did not have this number

you know I would want uh I probably want a 10 amp fuse

but then the manufacturer says you know 11.3 I mean that's very super technical

um but what I'm saying is a 10 amp fuse in this case would be uh would work

uh it would be actually a little bit it would essentially a Tamp would burn out quicker than what the manufacturer

suggested which is good anyway because you don't want this higher than 7.5 amps

Max that's what it's like telling you that's what this info is for

and then finally you can go down here and nerd out on this stuff I'm not going to go over any of this stuff

this is you know it's pressure curves blah blah I will go over this

um when you have a nice pump from a company or just a nice company in general they're going to give you

engineering drawings this is going to help you understand how much room you have to put this pump under your sink or

wherever you're putting it without purchasing it yet you can find out that it's you know around five inches wide

from here to here you know it's almost eight inches long that sort of thing

um but then there's just some more pictures about uh you know what the internal housing looks

like the wire leads oh here's the thing that I missed I'm gonna see runs dry without damage and built-in thermal

protection uh so that's cool too then you give they give you an exploded

view um but you don't need all this then if you wanted to this is included

but if you broke it or something you could just go buy another one

um yeah that kind of turned out into a video on how to size the pump up but that's kind of what I wanted

to teach you guys tonight so we're going to put these back in the bag so I don't lose them

and then let me pull up this our slideshow to see where we're gonna go next

all right if you guys have any questions um go ahead and put those in the

comments right now in the chat box because we're going to get ready to end this stream here in just a little bit

uh so we talked about the water tank we talked about the water pump

we're going to finish off with the gray tank and then uh one of these things I

didn't mention so let's go ahead and talk about our gray tank

I'm going to go ahead get this camera working again

all right we're going to hop over to the other camera

it's okay I know it's not on yet

got a long stream here don't we yeah I'll put this battery in here I want to keep going

all right let's see do we got we got another camera

you know all right no video

[Music] any questions I need some questions

there we go okay hopping over here so let's go ahead and take down this

tank and then we're going to pop up the uh the gray water tank

so the one that I have with me is a 10 gallon tank

it's not the biggest tank I'd say you get two showers out of it

but I wanted to show you so I wanted to show you how this is designed

so if you did kind of like a military shower you're going to be able to get maybe four showers like two and a half

gallons um which that would be pretty good give you about you know four days for

example but you're probably going to be doing outdoor showers stuff like that the reason I'm saying this is this tank that

I have right here I'm going to show you where I got it really quick this is from

this company right here so this is plasticmart.com

and you can go into uh rectangle rectangular plastic tanks

and look at this look how many they have it is insane look at this

okay what's really cool is you can go up here you can organize by capacity all right

you can find 10 gallons and then once you get in the 10 gallon Zone

you can go over here and you can find out all your measurements

linked with height and what works for you so what I did is I measured the

underside of the Ford Transit and there was a section so on the passenger side you have the

step then you have the exhaust system that comes through then you got the

drive shaft and then as you make your way over to the driver's side there's a section that's almost exactly this

profile and it allows you to put the tank up all the way flush with

the frame rails I know it's a unibody technically not frame rails but

and it allows you to have the most ground clearance possible most most of the times when you're

looking at the gray tanks you always see them just almost dragging the ground I mean they're going to catch on speed

bumps all kinds of stuff uh I know the promasters like the travados they're really bad about that I mean

it's you're really kind of asking for it if you mess up um you're you're not overlanding or whatever but with this my

intention was you could have 10 gallons of gray for the shower and

which would be enough for you know weekend or possibly a week depending on how you if you wanted to shower that

often now that is not saying you wanted to do outdoor shower that's saying you are only showering

inside um uh say you're trying like you're stealth camping or something like that

anyway so you can go to that website you can find this tank and then this is this

gray tank you can see is different than the other tank there's like a little Basin down here in the bottom

so you see how there's like a step and so that step is so that when you

mount this it has a way to drain down here and now this is a low point

and where the low point is that's where you can drain it so you can fill up here

you can fill with this one and then you can drain with this one and then these other two again they give

you options um this one down here is open this one's

open but these two are closed but for gray you're probably going to want the larger opening

um yeah let's see if we're going to do we have any questions nope so I'm going to end it with one more

extra component here all right guys back on the computer let

me show you this extra component that is

the drain how to drain your gray tank so let's check it out

so you can put a valve underneath your van to drain your gray tank

and that's kind of hard because you have to go underneath your van if it's freezing outside you're trying to drain it at RV

side or like a dump station or something like that it will be much nicer if you could just

have some type of device where you just press the button and it electronically opened up the

valve and dumped your water out so that's what this is this is uh it's made by U.S solid I think I got

this on Amazon and uh

I got this one to test um it needs to have a larger larger opening

but what this does is this valve where you would place it is you would

place it at the bottom here of the tank and when you wanted to drain the tank you'd flip

a switch up in the cabin and it would open this valve and it would drain your tank out

um that way you you wouldn't have to do it

um and then great tank I didn't even mention this but gray tank is everything that's not uh sewage if that makes sense

so stuff like shower drain water sink drain water stuff like that

um the uh sewage or

you know that's that's black water that's what that's called if you guys didn't know

um so anyway that is gray tanks are pretty

similar you know you're sizing it about the same for your capacity of what you're going to use it for it's just the

inverse um gray tanks are typically less

almost always than the fresh water tank because you're using fresh water in the

sink and then sometimes those systems are separate so you'll have

uh like uh the person who had a comment earlier you'll have like a Jerry can

five or seven gallons maybe one or two of them underneath the sink and then you'll have one of these for

the shower so they'll be split so say you have two seven gallon Jerry

cans for your gray under your sink that's 14 and then you have this tank

which is 10 so you have 24 gallons of capacity for your gray

and then you have your 40 gallon tank um so that way you can use it and then

you still have some residual for doing like an outdoor shower or cooking and stuff like that

but yeah I'm gonna hop over here and I think we are going to go ahead and end this oh here we go

how do you vent that way there we go I'm back how do you vent an under mount tank

when it is very close to the floor good question

so you can get uh

There are rules of thumb uh there's also like industry rules if you're trying to

have uh stuff certified for like um like the RV uh

rviaa's Association I forgot the exact word but let me hop back over the tank

and I'll answer that question so the question is how do you vent an under mount tank when it's very close to

the floor so let's hop back over here all right so

uh I'm gonna have to do this anyway with this tank so what I would do

is um I'm going to give you the easy option

first it's not the best but you're obviously gonna obviously going to have to have

some line ran higher than the tank so you probably know exactly what I'm talking about

so that's probably your question you got it all the way up but you know you need to go higher but you can't because this is maybe flush to the bottom of the van

so imagine that this port right here you can probably see that so let's just

say this one or this one is our drain okay and then this one is where the what

the water from the shower is coming in then we have this one left over so let's say we're going to use this one as our

vent but just like you said the vent we're hitting the bottom of the

so that's the bottom of the the van um well guess what you're going to have

to do you're going to have to drill through the floor I've seen this I've not done this but this is what I

would do if I was put in this situation drill through the floor and then now that vent pipe is coming up

um and so I saw you I saw a DIY do this and I thought this was a great idea

um so pause on me telling you to drill through the floor and go up what they did was they took this line This vent

line and in the side of a van you have these cavities they're just open cavities and

they go up into the van and so what he did was he took a braided

line came across here and then went up into this that cavity that open cavity in the

van because there's two reasons he did that one same example that you have is Vans

right here and you can't go up any higher and two gray water usually doesn't smell

good so it's it's sink water or it's shower water and

you want that vented outside so that panel in your van that chamber

um it's uh

I think how he did this I think he had to do he had to drill something to have the vent out

but he used the Chamber of the van that body side to had to vent it outside

and it wasn't connected to the inside of the van if that makes sense um

let me go back over here to this computer does that does that make sense

so you could so use the let me go here

so I would so use this part so this part of the van like this this

cavity in here because usually it's going to be here in the back um

let's see here there's a so there's another YouTuber

um 70 Savage uh I'm trying to think so the seven seven to a Savage if you

guys watch a lot of Van life videos or building videos he's got a very popular Channel where he built his van

in his van what he did um it doesn't look great but it achieves

venting the tank uh where he can't go up so what he did is

he took two check valves and they're two breather valves and he took this vent and the line out and so

he made a check valve that allowed air to go out to vent the tank when it filled up

and then he had another over here that allowed it to suck in air back into

the tank when it was drained and so he just used two he used two check valves

and just you know flipped one and then he used uh like the braided that braided

hose that's a way to do it another guy took it and drilled up through the van so

that was at a higher point you just gotta make sure that it vents outside so that does involve cutting another hole in your van

so the seven of savage option is probably probably one that I would do two check

valves um now we have sucks in air and it blows it

out and uh you know I think he ran it down

to where he could kind of make it go up a little bit because I mean typically you're not I

mean if you're fully filled this uh it's time to drain it anyway so

um that little bit that's spitting out the check valve probably not gonna be that big of a deal so

I hope that answers your question um yeah check valves like that that's about

the best answer I have for you at the moment um we're gonna we're gonna put that tank

into the van behind me so I'm gonna have to vent it and I'll I'll

show you how I do it in the future all right okay we're gonna cut it now

that that is a long stream um make sure I got through all the stuff I wanted to talk about

uh for the gray tank make sure you have a large enough OD to drain the pipe

that has to do with if you're draining the sink into a bucket

make sure if you get a half inch supplying it with water make sure you get like at least a three quarters or

something coming through because if you've got a sink and maybe have like little bits of food or something like that you don't want to

clog that line up it's going to make your trip miserable have something that's large enough to

have you know kind of like a normal sink at your house to have stuff go through it

into the gray tank if like you have Jerry cans same goes for this tank like a

three-quarter inch line tank fit check talk about level sensor

talked about water filter pre-filter black okay okay here we go

last thing why was uh that's supposed to be y

was there no um black tank mentioned so the reason I didn't mention that is most typically

you're going to have like a Thetford porta potty or you're going to have uh

some type of porta potty that you know you're not it's a self-contained unit and you're

not getting so much uh black water that you need an additional tank you get into

a bigger RV the focus of this channel is Vans specifically so not large RVs and

stuff like that so there's really um you know no reason to kind of go into

the black tank thing because I'm pretty sure you guys will not use that

um yeah but Bruce hope that answered your event question look forward to a future video about that great tank vent

that I do on this van and uh guys that's going to do it for the live stream tonight

um that was pretty pretty long but I got all this stuff checked off that I wanted to uh kind of talk and teach to you

teach to you guys hope you enjoyed it links will be in the description soon

probably the next day or so to uh those websites as well as

um in your comments continue to put those underneath the video share it to anyone that you think it may help and

look forward to seeing you guys in the next live stream

[Music]

thank you