Filling water tanks on van

hi peter w
yes its a smart quick fix idea and has merit if your on your first trip away with your new van
but it should not be required if the van plumbing was made properly in the first place

(so that the air displacement only had the proper air bleed hose to come out of)

by that I take it you mean the tank air vent holes

if that's the case then the vent holes need enlarging
I recall a lot of discussions on here about that problem with in particular on vans with 2 or 3 tanks
one should not have to wrap anything around a hose before inserting it in the filler neck in order to force air displacement through the tank breather to be able to fill it
if that's the case then there is a design problem with the tanks and I would be more inclined to fix it with a better breather system
rather than have to keep wrapping stuff around the hose every time I had to fill the tanks
I prefer permanent fixes rather than fidelly temperary things which is just some thing else you have to do in order to fill your tanks when it should be as straight forward as pushing the hose into the tank filler neck and turning on the tap
cheers

if you havnt noticed, the filler on the water tank is in the middle..
kind of stupid realy, but they are off the shelf items like that.. bit pathetic realy.
and a prick to fill gravity style..
nothing but solid pressure fills it, and quickly.

i just throw the hose on the end tap and fill from drain point.


soo easy, super quick..

when its full it will blow out the breather, and clean that while its their added bonus.., unless you have a filter of some sort......

better way !!

I have a short length of hose with a click fitting to fit the end of a standard hose with click fittings. I push 100 - 200 mm of this hose down the filler pipe. That gets the water in quicker. I have seen tanks split when charged with mains pressure, that's why I will not seal all the gap where the whole hose goes into the filler pipe. I have seen others remove the fitting off the end of the hose to be able to push it down the filler pipe.

I built my own 100L stainless steel water tank and mounted it under the ute tray. The tank has a filler at the lowest point and a breather at the highest. Both are 3/4" hose, which I thought would be enough. Air can move out of the way easier than water I reasoned.

What I have found is that even when filling from the standard garden hose attached to a snap connector, the air just can't get out of the tank quick enough. When filling from full mains pressure the tank starts to blow up like a balloon and the tray of the ute starts to bend and distort with it.

That is a fair amount of pressure accumulating in there. Probably only a few psi, but acting over a large area can exert a fair amount of force and has the potential to split seams or stress the mounts.

The only solution I have found is to only turn the tap on 1/2 way. It takes a bit longer but won't rupture anything.


For your application, I'd get some 12mm poly irrigation pipe and a snap on type hose connector to plug in the end, should only be a few $$. You can get connectors that have dust caps on them and a blanking cap if you are worried about contamination.

Stick it all the way down the filler neck so the water goes straight into the tank, not into the hose that goes to the tank. The thin wall of the poly pipe will allow more air to escape without blowing the inflowing water back at you.