The Problem that Never Ends

If you've been following along, you know that our launch into fulltime RV living got delayed into the depths of winter. There were many reasons for this, but a big one was discovering that our water pump had died. We were having problems with it during our maiden voyage, which all the professionals said could be fixed with a simple adjustment. They couldn't. We would have realized it sooner, but we were winterized and therefore not using our water. Long story short, we did some diagnostics, guessed it was a faulty pump, and got it replaced. We hit the road the next day.

At the first couple of campgrounds, we had full hook-ups, and therefore were sourcing our water from the campsite and not needing our pump. However, we did experience a couple of nights that dropped below freezing. When this happens, we disconnect our water and draw from our tank. This is when we noticed that the new pump was starting to behave like the old one. Instead of cycling on and off at a normal rate, it pulsates really fast.

This causes the water flow to pulse out of the faucets, and also causes our lights to flicker because it's drawing power every time it turns on, which as you can hear, is about 2-3x/second.

After a long talk with ATC's warranty department that included several attempts to troubleshoot, we determined that this pump, like the last, was not properly drawing from the water line. However, if pump dies on us once, shame on it. Pump dies on us twice, shame on us. We can't assume this is 2 faulty pumps in a row. Now we think there is in fact some leak, or air somehow getting in and messing with the pressure the pump needs to draw from the lines. Think about if you're drinking from a straw, and there's a little perforation in it. The liquid won't draw properly from the straw, and you'll have to put in more effort to suck your drink through the straw. Case in point: our water pump is really sucking.

This isn't something we can repair on our own, so it's been added to our list of warranty repairs when we go our our service appointment in mid-May. Until then, we're going to try and have water hookups as much as possible. Reason 1: We're afraid that if we continue using our pump, it'll die like our first one did. Reason 2: Because we don't actually know the problem, we can't say for sure if using the water pump is safe. Whenever water and electricity intermingle, it's better to be safe than sorry.

Hopefully we can solve this issue come May, but it means that boondocking is pretty much off the table for a couple of months. This was something we were really looking forward to - getting out of the RV parks, into nature, and living off our own resources. Guess that's going to have to wait a bit.