Gravity Water Fill

[DCKiefer]

One of the feature I have felt our Oliver was missing, especially for dry camping, is the ability to easily add water to the tank from a jug. I know and have used the water pump for sucking water from a jug, but this means moving the bed cushions and dragging the jug into the camper. It also uses unecessary battery power.

 

My solution has been utilize the vent tube near the cube side wheel. I have relocated the tube to a marine water file cab. This cap has a conneciton that points downward about about 45 degrees and is vented. I can now use my five gallon jug to add water to the tank. It is much faster and more convienent than using the water pump. I can also still use the orginal fresh water connection.

 

To do all this I did have to cut a small access opening behing the big drawer under the sink. I'm sure I could have dimantled the front of the cabinet, but this looked to be much too involved.

[eric]

Do you have a link to a source for that fill cap? I haven't seen that type before.

[DCKiefer]

The fill cap is actually one for marine use. The brand is Perko. I used it since it was one of the only ones that the filer tube is plastic, so I could adapt it to the 1 1/4 RV fill tube. Most of the marine fitting are 2". It is also the one of the few that are vented though the cab, plus and extra vent fitting I pushed into the current vent location. This illimates the need to remove the cap to allow the tank to draw in air as you consume water. I will tell you this was not an easy modification. Access is very limited so I had to put a lot of thought into what I was doing. That and some luck made it work. Be very careful about doing any cutting. The area were the current vent tube is located contains water lines and electrical wires.

[DCKiefer]

Just bringing this post back to life since I recently had a question about this mod.

 

One of the main reasons I wanted a gravity fill was that we stay in locations where either water isn't available or isn't located at the camp site. I like to be able to fill the water tank from a couple of five gallon jugs. When we first got our Oliver I would use the hose for winterizing to transfer the water from the jug to the water tank. Over time this was rather inconvenient, since you have to get under the bed to access the hose and valves for this operation.

 

I will admit this is not an easy modification, as you can likely see in the pictures, not much room to work. If you are buying an Oliver, I would highly recommend having this done at the factory while it is being built.

[SeaDawg]

Another well-planned, useful mod, DC Kiefer. We only use the under-the-bed intake when we are boondocking for an extended period of time, and when filling the tank completely from a 40 gallon bladder . It is a bit of a hassle to take up all the cushions, etc. I can see this mod would be seriously useful for easily adding five or ten gallons at a time to get a few more days at camp.

Sherry

[bwright]

Great idea when having an Olive built to include gravity fill.

[eggpiper]

I bought a 12 V water pump from Northern tools, then I just placed the "in" suction side of the hose into a 5 gallon clear used Ozarka 5 gallon bottle, then put the out pressure hose into the water fill connection on the Oliver and attach the 12 volt clamps to the pos and neg sides of the battery posts respectively and pump the potable water into the tank. Empty 5 gallon potable water jugs can be purchased from Walmart or you can use an old Ozarka drinking water bottle.

[bwright]

Thank you for the great idea. This seems to be a nice way to fill the water tank from a jug of water when you don't have water pressure to fill the Oliver. We'll use this idea. Thanks again.

Bob

[ScubaRx]

I bought a 12 V water pump from Northern tools, then I just placed the "in" suction side of the hose into a 5 gallon clear used Ozarka 5 gallon bottle, then put the out pressure hose into the water fill connection on the Oliver and attach the 12 volt clamps to the pos and neg sides of the battery posts respectively and pump the potable water into the tank. Empty 5 gallon potable water jugs can be purchased from Walmart or you can use an old Ozarka drinking water bottle.

 

 

During the delivery process did you not get shown the process of adding to the fresh water tank using the inlet behind the rear bumper and the on-board water pump?

[routlaw]

During the delivery process did you not get shown the process of adding to the fresh water tank using the inlet behind the rear bumper and the on-board water pump?

 

Steve, good point, but I'm still mystified as to how this works. I just winterized our Ollie and it was easy enough to pump the anti-freeze through the system as you describe, but its not clear to me how one might get water into the tank this way. Effectively I came away from this thinking you could pump water from an external container but not get the water from the container into your fresh water tank.

 

Thanks

 

rob