Serving Roadtrek owners over twenty-six years

A s-i-l-e-n-t Water Pump?

In Memory of Harvey Tetmeyer K5LJM - Silent Key 5 Feb 2005

Following is Harvey's pump conversion:

I must admit, I have never been terribly thrilled with the regular "builders grade" water pumps that come in most RVs.

For the manufacturers..
they are small,
they are easy to install,
they are cheap,
they usually last through the RV warranty period
and RV designers never go RVing.

For the buyer...
they are cranky when they suck air,
they make the lights flicker,
they make noise in the radios
and they are noisy... boy are they noisy!

They are not as noisy as the furnace... the hot water heater... the air conditioner... the vent over the range... the generator... or the Dodge security system when you accidently set it off at 3 AM... but they are noisy.

Being thrifty, I have never upgraded... until now.

Expensive pumps were not that much quieter... until now.

I asked on the CyberRally if anyone had tried one of the new sensor controlled, variable speed pumps. Larry Nunn responded that he had tried a Flowjet Sensor VSD 4.5 and it worked great. Besides that, it was quiet.

After counting my mad money... several times... I decided to give it a try. I'm glad I did.

The new pump (item 5) is a little longer but has basically the same water fitting locations. I thought at first I could use the existing fittings but soon realized they came out of the floor in the wrong places... even for the old pump... which was mounted in a terrible bind. I took Larry's advice and bought two 16 inch flex hoses with 1/2 inch connections on each end (items 4 and 8) and a brass male coupler (item 11). The water inlet, plastic "L", plastic "T" and water outlets (items 1, 2, 10, 3 & 9 respectively) are original plumbing. The drain for the sink (item 7) had to be worked around. The fuse and radio filter are in the black plastic box (item 6). They come with the pump as well as a water filter like we have on our water tanks. The four rubber pump support ears can not be seen in the picture but are attached to the cabinet with the original screws.

This arrangement looks a bit crowded but the new pump does not reduce the useable space under the sink. The flex hoses minimize the coupling of pump vibration to anything else. Care was taken to keep the water connections from touching as well.