When we purchased Footloose the overall plumbing system was
in pretty bad shape. The previous owner had allowed some of the original CPVC
pipe to freeze and replaced portions of it with clear polyethylene tubing
and hose clamps. The water heater had also been replaced and it was a mixture
of galvanized pipe, flexible residential copper tubing and CPVC.
The original plumbing manifold and interface was fabricated out of Galvanized
pipe which, over the last 15 years, had rusted and was making a mess in the
house plumbing system.
My primary winter project was to replace this mess with a functional
manifold and interface that would suffice for the life of the coach.
Closer investigation of the original system revealed that Jim
Williams (original owner) had attempted to create a dual manifold system that
allowed the storage tank to be utilized in conjunction with city water input
to provide an excellent filtered drinking water system.
Above is a simplified drawing of the basic setup that was present in Footloose
when we got it.
Note that The city water input goes through a check valve and
is connected to the coach water supply. The Coach pump water output is connected
directly up to a separate coach supply line labeled Coach filtered water Supply
and then goes thorough another check valve to the main Coach water supply
line.
The nice thing about this arrangement is that the second check valve keeps
the pump water supply and the filtered water supply isolated from the city
water supply, yet it will still supply the main Coach Cold water supply when
city water is not present or at a lower pressure.
The second(filtered) supply line was in place and terminated
underneath the kitchen sink but apparently had never been used.
I purchased a .5 micron low flow filter and plumbed it into a new dedicated
filtered water faucet on the kitchen sink. The filter is also under the sink
and it works great. We always carry at least a half tank of fresh water and
now always have a known source of drinking water even if we are on a bad campground
water source.
Since this approach worked so well, I kept it in my final design
for the reworked water system. Below are photo's of my new dual manifold system
that will be installed in Footloose as soon as the weather warms up enough
here in Va. to spend some time out there working on it.
The top manifold in the picture below is fabricated from
PVC "T's"
From left to right is the pump water input, gated water output to a small
surge tank, gated filtered water output to coach, and a riser to support a
standard well pump pressure switch for pump control. Immediately to the right
of this is the brass check valve that isolates this manifold from the main
water manifold.
The valve above the surge tank output above is on another "T"
and will serve two purposes:
It will allow me to drain the surge tank after it is shut
off with the in line valve for winterizing.
I plan to install a male hose fitting on it which will provide me with
another pressurized output from the pump.
It is not visible here but the pump input line has a 1/2" bibbed hose
adapter on it.
Below is a photo of the Main Water manifold. I used PVC Crosses
here
From left to right are City Water input, Check Valve, House Water Output(left,top),
Tank Fill Water Output(left,bottom), Pressure Gauge(center,top), Pressurized
Water Output for my Sewer Solution(right,bottom), and Interface to the Top Manifold(far
right,Top).
I will be feeding the City Water input through two in line filters.
The first one will be a 5 micron filter to catch large trash and the second
one will be a 1 micron carbon filter that will get the smaller stuff. Our home
is on a well and I have found this setup works quite well since the 5 micron
filter actually keeps the more expensive 1 micron filter from plugging up and
extends it's life.
The pressure gauge was installed here so I can monitor city water
pressure when available and it will allow me to monitor the pump pressure when
boondocking. I can also use it to adjust the pressure switch.
Here is the whole photo showing both top and bottom manifolds
Note that my Coach Cold water line is plumbed up adjacent to the pump input
line. There is another 1/2" bibbed adapter up there.
The assembly above was custom fabricated to fit across the
front of my 120 gallon fresh water tank in place of a section of 1 inch foam.
This is the only place I could locate it and still have it convenient for
use. If you look closely at the riser for my pressure switch above, you will
notice that I installed two 45 degree elbows in it. It was necessary to do
this in order to keep the baggage door from hitting the switch. It is that
Close!
12/12/2000
Below is a new photo of the manifold installed on the face of my fresh water
tanks.
Note that all of my top connections here
extend back over the top of my tanks where the pumps and surge tank is located.
The large PVC line in background is the tank vents. The PVC line at far left
is my city water input from the filters.
The original assembly has been installed on a section of plywood which in
turn was inserted against the face of my fresh water tanks. I have two 60
gallon tanks sitting side by side and the brass elbow and T at bottom are
the tank outlets. There was originally two pieces of foam insulation on the
face of these tanks but I chose to remove it and use the area for my water
manifold. I have just installed the aluminum strips for my new accu-gauge
monitor panel on the left tank here. The City water inlet has been plumbed
to the left and up to the top of my tank where it will have a hose bib for
attachment to my filters. The line immediately below this with the valve in
it is the tank fill line that is plumbed over to my tank output manifold.
I inserted a garden hose type swivel connector in it so I can remove the main
manifold without impacting the tank manifold (none of the other lines are
directly connected to the tank manifold).
The next valved line simply extends around the corner of tank,
then out to a male hose connection for my Sewer Solution. Both tank output
interfaces are 1/2" so I installed a 1/2" street elbow in the right
tank and connected it to a 3/4" T in the left tank with 1/2 " clear
tubing. I came out of the 3/4" T with 5/8" clear tubing feeding
my 3/4" PVC tank manifold around the corner.
10/2001
I was having problems with my pump running when connected to
city water and determined that the in line regulator (above filters in left
photo above) that I installed to protect the system from extremely high water
pressure was the culprit. It was allowing the instantaneous lower manifold
pressure to drop enough to trigger the pump switch in upper manifold when
a faucet was opened in the house system.
This situation allowed for good continuos water pressure but it was cycling
my pumps unnecessarily and emptying my storage tank.
I finally resolved the problem by installing another manual shutoff valve
between the two manifolds as shown in right photo above above. I now shut
this valve when on city water service.
Here is another photo of the tank manifold.
Everything up to the pump input lines is 3/4" PVC.
The 3/4" cross at front has a 3/4" PVC valve behind it (behind my
gray water output line and not visible here) that feeds a second 3/4"
cross, visible above and in back of photo above, via an elbow and two 45's.
This is the pump interface and the 3/4" valve allows me to isolate the
pumps from the tanks for filling or winterizing.
The top port of the lower cross is reduced to 1/2", valved,
and is then plumbed to my tank fill line from the main manifold. The extra
valve is not essential here but I felt that I may have to remove the main
manifold for some reason with water in the tanks and this will prevent it's
loss. The bottom port of this cross extends down to a brass tank drain valve.
I used it here because it is shorter than a PVC valve and I recovered it from
the original system.
The top port of the upper 3/4" pump interface cross is
reduced to 1/2", valved and has a male garden hose connector on it. This
will serve as a suction input to the pump system for tank filling out of portable
container or for winterizing the system when the 3/4" isolation valve
mentioned above is closed. The ports on each side of the top cross are plumbed
up to the top of my tanks, reduced down to 1/2" , then each has a hose
bibb to interface with input to my two parallel pumps.
The output of the two pumps will be plumbed together with a brass T then back
to the main manifold using clear plastic 1/2" tubing.
I also came up with a cheap Anti-Viberation table to mount the pumps on which
is illustrated on this page.
Below is a link to a diagram for the complete plumbing manifold
system in Adobe Acrobat format. This diagram was done primarily to identify
the parts I needed to order to fabricate the manifolds most of which were
ordered from Plumbing World at
about 1/2 of what they would have cost me at local Home Depot.
