Country Fill on a LM 365

[Mark-Roberta 051995]

Good day everyone - hope all is well. Here is a scenario that I am sure that I may be missing something or maybe it just doesn't work.

During dry camping I want to pump water from a 55 gallon drum into my holding tank on my 2017 LM 365 Charleston. Her is my process that I tried.

1. Fill 55 gallon drum up with water while in my P/U truck
2. Insert garden hose into the drum of water (submerged of course) and attach to my UDC
3. Turn the knob to "9 o'clock" position based on the instruction on the door to fill the tank - this clearly descibes per the instruction to "country fill" the tank
4. Turn on pump - let it do the work

This is where nothing happens - I even tried priming the hose and still nothing. I can hear the pump running but it does not want to suck the water through the hose from the 55 gallon drum. The hose is not kinked or knotted and is going straight from the drum to the ground and up to the UDC. The pump works fine if there is water in the tank to supply the sinks and toilet.

Thanks to all for your answers / suggestions

Mark

 

[danemayer]

Hi Prfssr,

The rig's water pump isn't in the path for the Tank Fill, and when you turn on the pump while the selector is set to Tank Fill, you cut off the path for the pump to draw water from the fresh holding tank.

Filling the tank is usually done by connecting your hose to a campground or home water faucet that has around 40 lbs of pressure pushing the water. That pressure overcomes the spring tension in the check valve where the hose is connected to the coach.

For what you're doing, you need a small external pump to create enough pressure to get past the check valve.

In case you're wondering why there's a check valve, the exterior water connection is teed to the pump output so that either source supplies water to all your fixtures. If there were no check valve, when you used the pump, water would be pumped out of the exterior water connection.

 

[Oregon_Camper]

We dry camp all the time and had the same problem with how to fill the tank.

I originally purchased a low cost pump from Harbor Freight...it failed after about 10mins.

I then purchased a Wayne (very high quality) pump from Amazon. We used this pump all summer and never once got hot or thought about failing.

Link to pump on Amazon

 

[Mark-Roberta 051995]

I have an external pump that I have used in the past on other campers. I did not realize I needed one for this setup as our last fifth wheel allowed us to do exactly what I was trying to do here. I will try it this weekend to verify that it works properly prior to the unit going to the dealership for warranty work.


Thanks everyone

Mark