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Van Builder HQ is Live! Water Tank Fill & Leak Check #2
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May 3, 2025
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View Video Transcript
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[Music]
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he [Music]
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hey guys welcome to the live stream this Saturday we are working on John and Susan's van and today we're going to be filling up the tank for the second time
1:28
uh to do a second leak check uh because we replaced some fittings in the front near the water heater and then
1:34
we also had to uh we're redoing the panels in the back right corner which I'll show you guys uh we'll hop in the
1:42
van here there we go in just a second um
1:48
and go through that but uh this video is also going to serve for John and Susan to as like a how-to video on what to
1:55
look for when they're filling the tank up uh and also draining the tank so you can go back reference this video if you
2:01
need to uh double check anything or troubleshoot anything in the future um
2:07
so let's go back here so what we have is we've got a Northwest conversions 36
2:13
Gall over the wheel weld tank um what's nice about this tank
2:19
is when you do an over the wheel well there's a space inside that uh it's like
2:25
a cavity that the wheels goes up into and that way you can really match maximize your space in the
2:31
van um now this this fit was extremely tight pretty much all the vans that I do
2:38
uh everything is just really a tight fit and that's just to maximize space um
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you'll see that the water lines are up here on top of this uh
2:50
frame and um I I think this is a great example of uh a
2:56
DIY water tank enclosure um typically I do 8020 but for this one
3:03
uh we went with uh wood so everything in here is a wood build as far as structure goes and um I think this is a great
3:11
option if you are going this direction uh 820 actually is heavy uh despite it
3:19
being aluminum and this 2x4 construction is actually very light now what's
3:25
challenging about the 2x4 construction is as much as you go to the store and
3:30
you look down the piece of wood and you want to make sure it's straight um it's very challenging to get something that
3:36
is not slightly bowed or um you know out of square so there's a lot of nuances
3:43
that go into squaring this up so that when you put your finish panels on it looks nice and professional uh so that's
3:51
where a lot of time kind of went into building this you can kind of see that this is inset a little bit uh cuz I've
3:57
shimmed this out and then made sure that this face is straight now basically what I've done is
4:06
I've taken a uh just a piece of wood right
4:12
here and then I use this as my Square reference so that I
4:18
can put this up here and then I kind of dial in the top the side and this enclosure panel over here and just make
4:25
sure that everything is as you know as straight as can be um in the end what
4:31
you have to do is actually scribe this back piece because this might be tilted out just a little
4:39
bit so that's a little bit about the pros and cons if you're going this direction um also you need to keep in
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mind that you need to build structure into your water enclosure if you're
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doing this uh kind of wood construction the structure is so that you can actually
5:00
bolt your water pump in a place where you can actually access it so um you
5:06
need to be able to undo this pump easily and unbolt it to change it
5:13
if it ever burns out in the future also the second part is you need to be able to clean the strainer so the strainer
5:20
needs to be cleaned um you know I would I would check it you
5:26
know maybe once a year or maybe once every 6 months it really just depends on this part
5:33
right here so what we have uh for our water fill today this is the Taste pure
5:40
kdf carbon RV water filter so this is a carbon filter and so this is going to allow you
5:47
to um filter you know kind of now this does
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not kill germs and stuff like that this is basically uh it's a taste improver so
5:59
that car carbon filter um and then it also is
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uh to filter any type of uh like fine particles from getting into your water
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pump so you're going to want to uh you know if you're doing something
6:17
from a hose so City water from your house you know this is what's coming out of your faucet of your house this is
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just kind of improving uh how the water taste and getting just any like little
6:28
fine particles like you know say you're using your hose and maybe you have some grit or something like that uh there is
6:35
a screen at the front of this and you have whatever media they use uh you do
6:40
need to hook this up to a hose and flush it um because you'll have there's that
6:45
black fine carbon dust that's in here uh and so when you first turn this on it's going to be it's going to look like
6:52
black water just for a minute that's just the carbon being flushed out just like a Brea filter um or something like
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that if you've used in the past had a carbon filter so you need to flush it out uh it does have a screen here um and
7:05
then the aqua side that we're using for our quick connect it also has
7:12
a h metal screen so you going to have those two Protections in this middle one
7:19
uh before going in and then your last line of defense for the water pump uh we're really protecting the water pump
7:26
um that fine mesh strainer is what's going to get whatever pass through this when you're filling your tank up and
7:32
that's just going to help extend the life of your water pump now for actual filtering your water we do have a water
7:39
drop filter in the kitchen Galley area so that water drop filter that is for
7:45
your drinking water and that's on the cold side um and just keep in mind this this
7:51
is probably going to drip with your water hose um I mean I've got this kind of tight but it's this is really like my
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water hose thing that's dripping so even though we got the lawn seal and
8:02
all that stuff and that's waterproof you know you're going to want to make sure that you put
8:08
down uh just a towel just to keep everything from getting
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wet this is okay to get wet like in an emergency if it's raining outside or something but you just don't you don't
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want to get this stuff wet um now the tray here this is all sealed
8:29
so this tray you might have some drips when you do the wash down we'll talk about that in a second but pretty much
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if you have like a if you have a little microfiber towel like this that's really all you need so what you're going to
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want to do is just put it here when you insert this to fill the tank up um
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there'll just be maybe like a teaspoon of water that comes out when it reseals
8:53
so you just need to wipe it off and then you can put this there but this will not leak when you're driving this has a
9:00
springloaded uh recessed uh gasket so the spring comes out like this and this is the aquar is a
9:07
very high-end component um I think this is about 80 bucks for this uh interface
9:15
and then the wash down is awward as well same thing very high quality and then for our valve right
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here uh I think this is a this is Italian uh made this little valve right
9:28
here so really nice high-end components and then we got the really high-end PEX
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a um I got my phone over here so I'm not sure if anybody is asking
9:43
questions okay yeah I didn't charge my phone yesterday so it's charging right
9:49
now so hopefully audio and everything is good I'll do a quick double
9:55
check so really nice okay
10:04
um so besides filling this all up uh this is also going to be a how-to video at the end because we we' finished all
10:11
of our panels so all of our uh painted panels have been had
10:17
their final finish on there so we'll put the top the side and the back piece on so again this video is for John and
10:23
Susan just to see how their water system works and they can reference this video in the future
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um if they need to so we have uh there's a couple places
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we're going to check um the system as far as the tank and all the fittings
10:42
I've already filled this up and did a test today we're going to do the final
10:47
fill we're going to going to fill this up halfway and we're just going to leave it that way until delivery day for John
10:53
and Susan and that way we'll make sure that you know no leaks form over next
10:59
couple days type of thing but um so far so good on the tank uh there's only
11:06
there's a rear port in the back here that is the drain um back here I have a
11:13
uh it's an emergency cut off so in the event that uh actually let me go see if
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I can find the fitting so what I installed for these guys is a it's essentially just like a
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water hose connection um let me see if I
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can find
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it let's see plumbing parts have to go to the plumbing section
11:54
of the shop one of my friends came over and they said man it's like you have your
12:00
own Lowe's it looks like that but as much as I go to
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Lowe's uh not everything's here at the shop but I do have a lot of stuff it
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look it does look like I have a hardware hardware store um so this is a Pex A fitting so
12:20
this will be the very last thing I do um it's raining and nasty outside so I got the van back inside but this is going to
12:27
go there's a drain pipe right here that drains the tank and there's a valve so
12:34
this valve is going to always stay open you know while this panel is on in
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the event uh let's just say John Susan um that their house or a friend's house
12:46
and they hook a hose up here uh to drain their tank uh if you know if they forget the
12:55
hose is connected and they drive off and then this rips off of the
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van um they can still take this panel off and go in here and do this manual
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shut off valve so they can continue the trip or until they can get it repaired
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so this is the first drain then inside this is just a secondary drain just as a as a
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backup um and if this failed while you're were on a trip you could open
13:25
this panel and then use this valve as a backup so it's just good to have have redundancy um I've also installed two
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cut off valves in the kitchen Galley so in case one of the sink if the sink hose
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breaks or fails um they can shut that off and then still use the rear shower
13:46
spray down to to wash and clean things until the front can get repaired so
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couple bits of redundancy um the next thing that we're going to talk about is
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uh the hot water heater so um I replaced a hose on the hot water
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heater the first two fittings that I used uh they were the this style fitting
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so it was like a 90 screw on and the Bosch water tank has a a
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steel two steel pipes those steel pipes are plastic lined on the
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inside and on the cold water side that plastic lining was recessed about uh
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probably 2 or 3 mm inside or like you know about 16th of an inch uh but on the hot water side it was
14:42
level it was not recessed so I believe that's the root cause of that now it's
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brand new nothing's wrong with it I upgraded to a faucet style
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uh clamp and it has a nice chunky piece of rubber that chunky rubber sealed it
15:02
completely and today we're going to do the secondary check so that's our main
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thing we want to check for and the only other thing I changed during the first uh test of the system and today is I
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took these two fittings off and I reconnected them so these two fittings have their own o-ring inside and that
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was to install this uh top part so this top part does not move just like this part does not move this is a fixed piece
15:31
in the event that this breaks I you know they can bring it to me and I can still disconnect this take these screws out
15:36
and remove it so everything that I do that I would need to access I plan ahead of time to
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make sure that I can actually fix it in the future um now with this switch that's a
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different story this wood is Thicker Than This switch so this switch is
15:55
actually epoxy in so this is epoxy in uh this is a waterproof switch however if
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it ever failed in the future um there's two things we could do one
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the wiring in here I can simply just unplug this wire and then the sink will
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still function this is just a backup so this I put this in here as a secondary
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option to where uh say something happen and you know water was spraying out and
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they couldn't get inside the van cuz they shut the door they could just quickly go here and turn the pump off so
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this just a this is just a simple secondary switch um during operation this switch
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will always be closed uh you don't want to keep if you keep it open then the sink and the
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kitchen galy won't work so you always want to keep this button depressed now when you're using the van
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you can use the kitchen gal on off on off when you turn it on this will be obviously will work back here this is
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just for an emergency to where if you can't get to the sink button in time you
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can just disconnect it here um so we get redundancy on this so
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if this fails we can rewire it on the inside but this is epoxy in so we would have I would have to cut this out to
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replace it but it's those are very good switches um that I get they're very chunky they're waterproof uh the cable
17:24
connections are awesome um so moving down the wiring we got our wiring all nice and neat right
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here so we have access in our access panel to the wiring uh and that way we can you know do any type of Maintenance
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we need to so this is this is the maintenance area uh this line is fixed in here um
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but uh we've already tested this one um
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yeah we're going to fill this up and just start to check out the system first
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thing we're going to do um is just quickly check to see if we have any
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questions in the chat all right so now we're going to go back uh I'm going to zoom in just a
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little bit you guys can get a better better
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better view of
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this and we're going to fill the tank up
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my camera working with me there we go now again
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uh I did this is that the this is at the same level as the input so
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technically uh this can gravity feed so if you have this uh connector right here
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um and you put it in in the up position uh technically you can open this up and
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gravity fill with a funnel but really this AAR system is it's really designed
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to have City water pressure when you're filling the tank up and uh I think it would be a rare
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case that you would need to uh gravity fill this tank um especially
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for uh John and Susan's use case it is possible but um the prime primary way of
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filling this is uh with City Water ho like hose
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pressure now we have our pressure coming in here at the back of the tank we have our vent line that comes over down and
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across and that vent line goes
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uh right down through here it's this red hose comes around and then we have our
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braided line so that we can Flex it and come across that's our vent so as the
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pressure comes in just displacing the air in the tank goes out the vent and
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then that air gets out of the tank and the water comes into the tank um so you
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really need to make sure that that uh that ventilation is is good to go now
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when you're putting this Aqua in you can see see how it's kind of uh awkward to
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put this over here so you just need to figure out a way to kind of get this
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Twisted in the problem is uh when you come like come like
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this um let's see I'm going to actually let me see if I can clamp this down a little
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more so the award system is really it's most meant to be a faucet outside of
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your house you know like on the siding of the brick side your house so they're expecting to have room to use it um but
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for us we're doing a little bit
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different okay so I just crank down on that let's see here yeah I think that's better so what I've been doing is I kind
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of have this vertical and then I come in here and this is really nice you see we
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got double seals so that way it seals twice as it goes in and it really tries
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to they really try to minimize your um if you have any type of leaks or
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something like that now we're going to open this door just a little bit
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more so we can get to this um now you see none of this is
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leaking it's just the uh uh it's just right here at the front
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it's my water hose so it's not it's not the system and I'm just going to let's see
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here it's better if you don't use a chunky hose like this this is like a
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this is a super heavy duty hose that I'm using uh like a nice flexy like a
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flexible hose one that accordion style that would be better but now we have this uh in installed here it's just a
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Twist connect and then we have our valve and so we're just going to take it
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easy just in case we didn't make our connections um and then we're just going to back this
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off and you can hear uh our tank is filling up
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so while the tank is filling up I'm going to make sure uh that my drain valve is set
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right so underneath the van I'm just just draining it just to make
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sure uh you do want to uh take an air compressor or a leaf blower and blow out
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the tank before you install it I did that the second thing you want to do is do like a first flush so I'm just
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flushing out you know any type of plastic that might be in there um so now
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we've got the tank level uh that's why City water's nice it fills the tank up
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so fast um so we've got about two and a half maybe three inches of water so I'm
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going to cut this off I'm going to go inside the van and we have two places that we want to
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check the there's only two locations in the bottom of the tank that would be leaking it would be the Front Bottom and
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the rear bottom and so um you know we're just putting our finger here
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everything's good to go and then the back
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one same thing we're just doing a visual and we're good
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so we're going to let this thing fill up uh while this thing is filling up we
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can uh actually do um let's see we're going to fill this up
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probably filled up about 6 in let's just
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do okay that's enough so act like we filled the whole
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tank up I'm going to do that off camera um but now what we're going to do is the
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second step is we're going to purge the air from all the lines so the first thing we're going to do is we're going
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to go up to the kitchen sink and we're going to open the
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faucet uh so we can let the air out
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so we're just going to come up here and we're going to open the faucet and we're going to open it and do hot side and
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then cold side and we're just purging the air so the first thing we're going to do is uh we're going to turn the
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water pump on we have a button at the sink so we're just going to turn that
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on and now the uh the water is starting to pump
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okay so that's one side the next thing we're going to do
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is come back you see how I use the switch in the back of the van to
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actually uh cut it off so we did one side and now we're
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going to switch this over to the other side
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okay and then so we did Hot Side the cold side so we purged the air out
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the first time you do this is going to take a while because there's a lot of air in the lines we've already done a first
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fill so most of the air is out secondly we're going to open up our
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wash down and then this is where we have this
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connection so what we have here is uh we have an aqua adapter fitting for the
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wash down straight fitting and then we have a double hose uh like water hose
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connection so that's taking a male to a female so it's a female to
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female um and so you have two male ends going into this coupler uh then we have a stainless
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steel flexible line and that is attached to a uh
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scandic shower spray down right
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here so next all we're going to do is take this right here and we're going
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to insert it and twist and that is going to go into our
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top up here uh then we're going to take this
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line we need to go up to the sink and cut the sink off CU we don't want to uh we don't want
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that working we want the back working because the next thing we want to do is we want to make sure that we
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can pressurize our system it holds pressure and uh it it only uh hey come
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here come here it's thundering outside Nova Nova
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come here come
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here get over here okay so next what we're going to do
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is uh we're going to turn our pump back on we're going to leave the valve off we're going to make sure it pressurizes
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and
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stops okay now this is the point where things will leak if they're going to leak so
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before we do this we're just going to go through and any
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changes to the piping that we have our strainer uh anything in the system now
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the tank is not under pressure it's the lines after the pump that are under
29:29
pressure so we started with our faucet at the front it's closed so watch I'm
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going to un I'm going to open the faucet and the pump will see the drop and pressure and it'll turn
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on and then it'll regain pressure turn off same thing we'll move it to the hot
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side and then we'll move move it back to cold
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side now this pump it's on the DIY van build cheat sheet it is a seaflow pump
30:12
uh I really like it because you do not have to have an accumulator you can have an accumulator
30:18
but you just saw it ramps up smoothly it ramps down there's no like banging of the pipes it's really it's really nice
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uh also it can be run dry if you accidentally drain your tank
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um uh for example next we're going to come to the back so we have our valve here so this
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valve is a multidirectional valve what you have is the valve will open and that
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will pressurize this and then you're going to rotate it either left for cold or right for hot or
30:56
in the middle for hot and cold mixture it's a really nice valve so again we're
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just looking through here trying to make sure that we don't see any type of uh
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leak now when you first pressurize your water system you may hear like a hiss if you
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hear a hiss anywhere that's a spot that's going to leak it just hasn't the water just
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hasn't reached it yet um so we're just coming through checking everything
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um and I don't hear anything we're going to go to the front of the van really quick going to check
31:45
that so we got all our valves here they look good the water filter looks good
31:52
everything's pressurized okay so we can
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uh say that that is good to go final step is this wash down so we got a
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bucket right here and we're just going to uh we got our valve open we're going
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to go to the cold side first CU remember we still have a two line system before it merges into this so we need to get
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the air
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out so pump shuts off now we're going to go to
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the hot
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side and see we got all of our air purged
32:47
out if it wasn't pouring down rain you could probably hear the water pump but here here I'll take the mic off and
32:53
we'll listen to the water pump here so as soon as you're as soon as you
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start spraying you can hear
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this I see here how it ramps up and
33:16
down okay uh the reason you see
33:21
the uh the blue light flickering is because you know you're going to have a
33:27
c in current and that led is uh
33:32
obviously sensitive to that drop in voltage for a second so it's not a big deal it's it's all good of course you
33:39
guys probably didn't even know that
33:44
so but what's cool is that led is what is going to allow you to see the water
33:51
level now before you disconnect this what you want to do is you want to shut the valve off and then bring the hose
33:58
down to the bucket or the ground and just gravity feed all of your
34:05
water out of the line and then once your water's out of the line uh you're going
34:10
to want to grab a rag and just kind of bring it around
34:16
here and then undo this just so you don't get drips um and
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this didn't drip at all so it's again Aqua is a very very nice
34:28
system but we're just going to stick a rag in here and uh you know just get a little
34:35
bit out we got a little door we can close so the trash doesn't get in there
34:40
and then we want to keep this valve push forward the Ford is off back is
34:45
on and again if we had a situation where we messed up and we're leaking we need
34:51
to shut it off quickly we can just shut the whole system off from the back uh I'm going to clean this up and
34:58
then we're going to put the side panel
35:07
on man I don't know if you guys can hear that rain it is raining like
35:13
crazy okay we're going to put the side panel on here and then we'll show
35:19
you how the uh sight the little cutout that we made
35:25
yesterday works
35:43
hold on nope come here uh-uh
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okay so this is our nice freshly painted
36:12
panel So today we're actually going to be dialing in uh where we need to uh put
36:18
the screw holes in but you can see here on the side
36:23
um let's see how I can hold this up so the meantime I'm just G
36:30
to tilt that just a minute and then let's see if you guys
36:37
can I'll move the camera
36:44
here so you can see this is looking really
36:50
cool and so now this it's going to be like that and then
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this is your uh this is what you'll see so when you're not using the water system you'll turn
37:02
this off and then this will just be dark but then when you want to use your water system that is going that port's going
37:08
to light up from behind and you can actually peek in here and you can see
37:14
where your uh where your water level's
37:21
at so uh Nova
37:30
all right guys we're going to end this stream there
37:35
um come here yeah I know you hate
37:41
that come
37:47
here big storm outside all right guys
37:53
um we are going to uh [Laughter]
37:59
we're g to end the stream there take care of Nova here she hates the she hates the storm but uh yeah that's an
38:06
overview of the water tanking system um the only thing that we didn't do was talk about the drainage so uh actually
38:14
let's talk about that we need to cover that in this video NOA you're just going to have to
38:20
uh have to deal with the Storm come on come over here
38:35
let's get this camera that's how you know you're doing it live got a German Shepherd that hates
38:43
the lightning okay so what you're going to do to drain the
38:50
system let's go over that real quick uh this is my recommendation on
38:56
draining the water water system so the first thing we want to do is um so
39:02
obviously this is going to be cut off so we're going to rotate this keep our rag
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underneath there and then just have this pulled out and then keep the rag there because we want to uh you we just it's
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okay to get on the paint but we don't want to get it on the paint so put your rag there until it's done dripping and
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you can see we're completely dry you know nothing nothing crazy happened
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now this is the best way to drain this so the best way is to
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actually use the pump to drain the van so you can double dip here you can take
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your drain valve open your drain valve and then to make the draining process
39:49
quicker go ahead and put in your your line like this and then you're
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just want to turn your pump on and then open your valve and then just use the pump to
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actually pump all the water out of the van and so you got a double dip you're
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you're draining with the drain line and you're pumping the water out uh that's the that's the fastest way to do
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it and then when you're done doing that just going to repeat the same process you're going to cut the valve
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off grab gravity drain the
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water and then take it
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out and that's it nice and easy
40:57
okay guys this will be a live stream to remember with the uh the storm outside so
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uh that's it that is the adz of how to fill and drain the water tank uh for
41:09
John and Susan's build um we're going to keep working we're going to uh drill
41:14
pre-drill the holes for the uh the water tank um we're going to go ahead and
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install those finish panels uh for the the last time and uh that's it water
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system is finished so then we're going to move on to the the next part um
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working on our upper storage and our Electrical uh box for our
41:38
fuses not sure if we'll do another live stream today but uh thank you guys so much for watching make sure you're subscribed uh make sure you turn on that
41:45
notification Bell I go live randomly throughout the week so I don't you miss a live stream um love to see your
41:51
comments if you guys have any questions uh that's pretty much it uh check out the two links below the DIY van build
41:58
cheat sheet um and also Odyssey custom vans which is my custom van conversion
42:05
business that we're doing for John and Susan so if you guys have a question click that link below you can schedule a
42:11
consultation with me to talk about your custom van build and I look forward to uh talking to you very soon all right
42:17
guys that's going to do it for today's live stream um we'll see you in the next one
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