CY 3010 Fresh Water Tank - Some water is inaccessible - Discussion

[smday]

Coley,

It shows that you guys at HL are reading this. Has there been a FIX to using all the water and draining the water out of these units now. As i am concerned i asked my dealer if they can check this and fix it before i pick it up on Monday. They told me you guys had fixed the issue months back and on the new units its not a problem anymore. I am going to be really upset when i drive 2600 km's to go get my 3850 and find out when i do my PDI that it is still an issue and i am going to have to fix it when i get back home. On my previous Keystone Raptor they installed drains in the bottom of the tanks and the water take off for the pump was also on the bottom of the tank. Why do yours come off the side. That would fix one major issue that seems alot of us Cyclone owners have.

 

[kbsplus2]

water tank fixes

I appreciate all the help I have seen for fixes on the HL forum but don't understand why the owners have to stand behind what we buy instead of HL standing behind it? What is the point of spec sheets and warranties if nothing matters to HL anyway? My customers in my line of work expect me to deliver what I promise. Why should I expect any different? Anybody else feel this way? Does HL care to respond to this post for all on the forum to know where we stand?

 

[dougw]

I had decided to fix this myself because it would have cost'd me more in gas getting it to a repair place then just to replace these boards and add drains to the bottom. I'm still trying to hunt down someone to do plastic welding of new drains. If that becomes to much of a hassel I will just install the bulk head fittings instead.

With that being said, I found no broken bolts or any other malfunction of materials, short of the plywood, that would lead me to think that any thing other than weight of the water broke the boards. All bolts were in place and and every thing seemed secure at the time I removed the brackets, bolts, boards, ect.

It also seem odd that both boards held up by separate materials would break the same. Both metal straps were still installed and I removed the bolts holding them. The more I think about this the more I believe that any little bit of water in the vent line would have kept the tanks from venting during water fill up. With that being said I believe that the tanks in my case were filled enought to bend the boards enough to break.

We'll also see if any of this will fix the 1/3 full light from staying on all the time.

Doug

 

[Manke3010]

Hey again Dougw,

I spoke with Inca Plastics today about spin welding the tank fittings on our poly etheline made tanks. I think Heidi recalled talking to you.
She said it would be $30-40 roughly for a fitting on each tank.
Couple questions for you.
If we have them install these drains on the bottom of each fresh water tank, this will allow us to drain 100% of the fresh water whenever needed. You were planning on cutting an opening for these "new" low point drain fittings to drain through the underbelly, right?

Also, are you having them do anything to your tanks to assist obtaining 100% draw from the water pump that we're all having issues with?

I spoke with Joe at J&L yesterday and he tells me that he raised the tank that has the single draw line in it enough so that the factory draw line is roughly 1/2" from the bottom. He said they filled the tanks with a certain amount of water, drained them through the faucet until the pump gurgled and there was about 1/2" of water left you could see through the outside of the tank. Joe says this is about a couple gallons at most that is inaccessible which is a good improvement from where we began.
I trust him, I would also really like to see this with my own two eyes as well...

Assuming I can now draw roughly 98 of 100 gallons, I'm still very curious what it is your doing to access all of your fresh water through the water pump?

Btw, HL did tell him to use a larger, 5/8" plywood backing to secure the tanks as they acknowledge the factory board is not holding up...

Thanks Doug.

 

[Manke3010]

One more thing Doug, did you just T off on the existing vent line to run the additional over flow vent line to the ground?

You did this so it doesn't spew out of the hose port and into the front storage control panel area, right?

 

[kbsplus2]

My 2cents on the "raise the tank" is that still leaves that much more water that you won't be able to get out of the tank that does not have the draw off of because now the center crossover pipe will be raised that much more. So that will trap that much more water in the 2nd tank. I guess that is only if you have the 2 - 50 gal tank setup like I do.

 

[dougw]

First the vent line, I cut the existing vent line and added a new "T" coupler and added the lower portion of the hose. My thinking was it was an easy fast way to see if the tanks ever reached full with out spilling into the compartment.

As for the new connectors I'm adding (hopefully on Monday). I'm adding these as new output connections pretty close to the corners of the tanks on the left side and kind of close to each tank. I will be "Y"ing them into the existing water line that goes to the pump.

Between having a more "flat" board platform for the tanks to sit on, I'm hoping I will get most of the water out of the tanks as well as hopefully geting the 1/3 light to turn off. I'm trying to come up with a more stiff board system to have the tanks sit on, In hopes to eliminate as much of the "low point" that happens in the center of the tank. While this will still happen I'm hoping to keep it to a minumum. With all that I'm hoping that the existing drain line will be able to empty the tanks as well.

So in short this new connectors will not really be "drains" but water exits into the water pump.

I'm not sure who J&L is but on my trailer there is a little bit of room to shim the far side of the tanks maybe 1/8" or 3/16" that might help to push the water over towards my new drains on the left side, but I don't think that will yield my help in the end. If I wanted every last drop out of the tanks if I were to ever fully drain them I could just ramp the trailer on the right side to lift it that way.

Interesting on the board replacement. There is just enough room to put 5/8" I think. I was thinking of using it myself but decided on stiffening the 1/2" boards to minimize the bending effect, hense low point in the center of the tank.

Doug

 

[dougw]

FYI, for all. I personally really like this trailer and have found it well built so far. I'm very comfortable in it and enjoy it a lot. I think that this water thing was / is an easy fix for HL unless I'm seeing and doing something that is way off. My last trailer had 2 tanks in it and both water outlets were on the bottom and it was "good to the last drop"<G>

 

[dougw]

Just some information if any one wants it. I got the 2 water tanks out and I'm ready to get the new drains installed. I noticed though that the existing spin welded on fitting protrude ~ 3/16" to maybe 1/4" inside the tanks. This is just a ruff guess since I can't measure this but you can see the lip inside the tanks.

So, even if the water outlets were on the bottom of the tank, you would never be able to get "all" the water out of the tanks. So installing one of the bulkhead fittings might just be an easier way to go unless you want spin welded fittings instead. The both probably protrude about the same inside the tanks when installed.

Also here are some measurements from my 2010 3010 trailer's water tanks. I'm not sure this would help any one either but who knows. These are ruff from a tape measure.

The tanks measures 53.75"l x 30.5"wx7"h. The common sensor line is 7/8" from the bottom. the 1/3 full sensor line is 1-5/8" from the bottom. The 2/3 full sensor is 3-1/16" from the bottom, and the full sensor is 5" from the bottom.

The cross over between tanks is 1-1/8" ID and the center is 1-3/4" from the bottom. The main water pump exit fitting is 1/2" ID and center is 1-1/8" from the bottom.

So you can draw this and see where the water line ends up before the pump starts to draw air. (on paper of course<G>).

Doug

 

[porthole]

OK, not much of an artist here, but ............

On my boat I have a 15 gallon ROTO molded tank (same as our water tanks).

I use it to keep engine oil available for the Detroit's and it is plumbed into my oil change system.

In order to get all the oil (or almost all) I put a fitting in the bulkhead fitting similar to the picture below.

Basically it is a piece of bendable copper pipe and it is the pick up. As you can see I can bend it to make it sit almost on the bottom of the tank.

I may try something like this in the spring when I look a lot closer at the tanks.

Unless the 'ole soothsayer comes up with a good fix before then

 

[dougw]

I thought about that based on one of the earlier posts that used copper tubing. after looking into that idea I found myself worried that the tubing might gouge a hole through the plastic tank when it bounced around and the water sloshed around and such.

I just did some calculations based on my original blue lines that showed where the water stopped pumping at. the forward tank at 1-1/4" of water left and the rear had 1-3/8" left. based on 50gals per tank at 7" full, each 1in of water would leave 7.14 gals of water (50gals / 7in). with that I left 9.8gals in the front tank and 8.9gals in the rear for a total of 18.7gals of unused water, not counting all the extra water that was in the bottom of the tank when it flex's.

If by adding new fittings leave 1/4" in each tank, or 1/2" or water total, I would now only have ~3.6 gals of unused water (7.14 gals per inch * 0.5). This of course depends on no bending of the lower portion of the tanks that would hold more water then that. Since my new boards are a lot more rigid, I should be able to minimize that extra water.

 

[Manke3010]

I for one am interested in what your posting Doug, so thank you.
You mentioned possibly going today to get those new fittings installed, so if/when you do, would you mind snapping some before and after photos for us to view?

I waited on the sidelines for what I felt was long enough for HL to come up with a fix for this before I sent it into the shop to address this, along with a few other issues, but clearly I didn't.
I'm not 100% confident that what's been done will have given me full draw (or near full draw) of the fresh water, given what you've been posting here. I may have to go grab my tanks off the trailer and run them over to that shop if you're successful with this fix.
Thanks again all.

 

[rtataryn]

Doug,

I second Manke on that. I'm very appreciative of your time to post and show what you're doing. I'll begin my fix as soon as we thaw here - I expect in March - and I'll post it too. I'm still somewhat amazed that a specific, common, engineered solution hasn't been offered up by HL. The word from HL was that each situation is potentially uniquely different and may require an individual solution, however it's pretty obvious from your posts that we all have the same problem and all have roughly 20-25 gallons of un-usable, unreachable water in the bottom of our tanks.

I look forward to seeing your results too Luke.

Rod

 

[dougw]

I had 3 new fittings / outlets installed this morning. He charged me $30 total for them and installation. However I did have to take a 1/2 day off of work to have it done.

My plans changed just a bit from the initial just "T" the new outlets together into the existing hose that goes the the pump. I'm just going to connect the 2 tanks together to keep the water flowing between them. Then the 3rd new outlet is going to connect to the water pump. It is still on the aft water tank. I'm going to take the old outlet to the pump from the tank and set it up as a second freshwater tank drain. That way I'll have 2 freshwater drains that will / should drain the tank faster.

I'll take photos as soon as I can. On a foot note the new drains I added do not protrude into the tanks as far so hopefully I can get even more water out of the tanks.

Doug

 

[JohnDar]

Just a thought

I realize this would not address being able to utilize all the water in the tank(s), but to fully drain it, would it be possible to run a line down the gravity fill port until it hits bottom and use a pump to draw out what does not drain by itself?

I'm thinking more along the line of getting it all out to winterize without having to replumb the tanks as you have done. This would be more for those of us with only one fresh water tank.

 

[Manke3010]

I had 3 new fittings / outlets installed this morning. He charged me $30 total for them and installation. However I did have to take a 1/2 day off of work to have it done.

My plans changed just a bit from the initial just "T" the new outlets together into the existing hose that goes the the pump. I'm just going to connect the 2 tanks together to keep the water flowing between them. Then the 3rd new outlet is going to connect to the water pump. It is still on the aft water tank. I'm going to take the old outlet to the pump from the tank and set it up as a second freshwater tank drain. That way I'll have 2 freshwater drains that will / should drain the tank faster.

I'll take photos as soon as I can. On a foot note the new drains I added do not protrude into the tanks as far so hopefully I can get even more water out of the tanks.

Doug

Again, thanks for your contribution Doug.
I look forward to hearing how much success you have with this new setup.

As a side note, I just got off the phone and more or less conversed with 2 of the service reps that handle our area and I'm now fully confident (at least at this point) that we are totally on our own with this fix (at least with coming up with a resolution).

So the factory draw line was about 2" from the bottom which makes sense why we have 2" of water unaccessable.
Are these new fittings you had installed only 1/4" from the bottom of the tanks now?
I can see following the above statement that would require 2 new fittings, what was the 3rd new fitting for?

Also, to your concern with rubbing if we installed a flare like Porthole suggested, HL said using a softer material like PVC or what have you, especially if it was, say 1/4" from touching the bottom of the tank, "is definitely an option".
These two options seem the best to me at this point....

 

[dougw]

I realize this would not address being able to utilize all the water in the tank(s), but to fully drain it, would it be possible to run a line down the gravity fill port until it hits bottom and use a pump to draw out what does not drain by itself?

I'm thinking more along the line of getting it all out to winterize without having to replumb the tanks as you have done. This would be more for those of us with only one fresh water tank.

you would be able to get most out of the main tank. you would never be able to get the water from the front tank because the pickup / cross over is ~2in from the bottom. If that was all you were concerned about then, the easiest thing would be to slit the underbelly cover and disconnect the 1' line that runs between the tanks. Empty the tanks like I did. I used a small hose and started a siphon. Then just re-tape the undercover back up. Now if you had a really long flexible tube that would fit into the 1/2 line you could also drop that down the main air vent line into the forward tube. I'm thinking that won't work very well since it would have to make a 90 deg bend into the tank.


As for the 3rd fitting / connector. I experimented with my model fuel tanks with the "T" idea. what happens is what ever tank sucks dry first, the pump then sucks air no matter how much fluid is in the second tank. So I went with the idea of the new cross over line between the tanks to try to keep both tanks as equal as possible, water level wise, and put the 3rd exit fitting on the rear main tank so if nothing else it would drain fully and the gauge readings will now show empty. so even if there is any water in the front tank, I now can see that the main rear tank is empty and it is fill up time.

Until I can really look into these new fittings I'm sticking with ~3/16" protrusion into the tanks. This will always leave a little water sitting in the tanks. I'm figuring a few gallons as posted abouve.

I know how I would do this if it was on my rc airplane / helicopters fuel tank. it would have a flexible pickup line in it. I'm not sure how it could be done here since the tanks are pretty well sealed up and getting access is pretty hard to do any thing inside the tanks.

I'll take some photos of the tanks now they are out and post them tonight hopefully.

DW

 

[dougw]

Ok, here are some more photos of the tanks. Sorry about the mess in the background<G>

http://helibuf.com/pictures/water tanks fixed/

picture #250 shows the original layout

#251 shows the cross over tubes between the 2 tanks. That is the hose that connects the 2 tanks

#252 is the main water fill inlet

#253 shows the original water outlet to the pump and what will be the new water balance between the front and aft tanks below the original outlet.

#254, 255 is the outlet fitting that will connect to the aft tank.

#256 is the 2 new fittings on the aft tank. I'm planning on the new cross over tube to connect to the front fitting and the new outlet to the pump connected to the aft fitting.

#259 shows how high from the bottom of the tank the existing cross over tube sits. any water below this will not pass to the other tank. Hence my new cross over line I'm adding to supplement this action.

#260 shows how high from the bottom of the tank the old water pump outlet sits. which in the big picture isn't so bad but between all the water in the front tank and this tank adds up to a lot of water that isn't accessed. You can also see the new fitting I've added as well. these new fitting protrude about 3/16" into the tank so some water will still sit in the tank.

#262 shows the sensors and where they sit from the bottom of the tank. If you look straight down the bottom of the tank towards the far end you will see the old water outlet to the pump. This is why the 1/3 light never goes out since there are almost at the same height.

#263, this is going to be how I will plumb the supplemental cross over line. the hose will be between these 2 fittings on the bottom of the tank.

that's it for now, I have my new boards ready to be installed and the new tanks. all I need is some new 1/2" parts and get the trailer back together and see what happens. After all this I sure hope this works<G>.

DW

 

[rtataryn]

Doug,

THANKS a TON! for posting these great pics and explaining the problem and what your solution is. These pictures and explanations are GOLD - and are very much appreciated.

It's pretty clear looking at these why we are all having this problem and it makes me wonder about the answer I was given when I phoned the regional Heartland service manager. As I posted back in Post #60 of this thread he stated that "he has seen this issue before and has found it was caused by the draw tank being higher than the fill tank. If the fill tank is raised a bit, and/or the draw tank lowered it should solve the problem."
Obviously that would do nothing to solve this problem considering where these existing fittings are.

Anyway, It seems you've come up with a very good solution to the problem. I look forward to hearing how it works when you put it all back together.

A couple of questions:

1) Since you now have added new fittings to the "bottom" of your tanks, and will have a connecting hose attached to those fittings, these will obviously extend downward. Are you cutting holes in your support board for these fittings and hoses to drop through? And then what about the bottom cover? It is right below the support board, so are you going to drop the hose and have it exposed or visible through the bottom cover?

2) Since you're adding these new fittings to the bottom of your tank, as you did, Why not put them directly in the center of the tanks which were sagging under the weight, creating a natural low spot. Or I suppose you could have them on the side as you did and maybe raise the other side of the tank slightly to get more water over to your new drains. Thoughts?

Thanks again Doug, great work.

Rod

 

[dougw]

To answer your questions I sent up some more photos to the same directory.

http://helibuf.com/pictures/water tanks fixed/

#266, 267 #268 shows my new boards with the cut outs in them that the fittings will drop through. I had some left over roofing paper that I taped down to the boards where the tanks will fit. I did this to eliminate any possiblities of "chaffing" of the tanks from either the wood or the tops of my screws I used to mount the backing boards to the bottom.

#269 shows where I left the "tunnel" for HL's existing metal strap to run through. I showed that in some previous photos. The strap is is just off center and I didn't want to interfere with it. This is why I didn't move the fittings towards the center. That and I now believe my new boards are stiff enough to almost eliminate most of the flexing. As the tanks empty that flexing should be reduced as well. Another thing I wanted to try to reduce is if that tank keeps flexing and flexing, I didn't want the fitting to fail or plastic to splinter and leak. I don't think it would but, what the heck. If the tank bottom stays flat then there shouldn't be too much water left and having the fittings to the side shouldn't matter much. Maybe having the notches to the side might be stronger then holes in the middle of the boards as well, who knows.

#270 shows the fitting partially installed. I might have to carve alittle so the tube doesn't hit the board or I might just use straight down fittings.

FYI, I've put about 350lbs on the boards supported by the edges like it would be installed. The amount of flexing is very small. I figured as above, that as the tank emapties that should decrease.

DW