Fresh water tank fill overflows at 40-45 gallons

[judybuddy]

Had doubts about our water capacity after our first outing.

Water pump started sucking air on the second night.

According to the test panel I had filled it to 2/3'rds full. Should nave been about 70 gallons as the unit is supposed to hold 105 gallons fresh water.

Drained the low point drains with all faucets open when we got home.

Then I filled the tank. It started overflowing a little too early for me so I held my hand over the fill hole and forced the water in. something gave and the water started flowing again. Continued filling it till it overflowed.

I then started draining the water into a 5 gallon bucket that I had marked off in 1 gallon intervals.

I only got 72 gallons out. I was bummed.

Now to get serious.

I removed the screws to the bottom cover so I could see the tanks. I measured them and got 54x31x7 which equals 50.727 wet gallons times 2 equals 101.454, based on outside measurements. That is close to 105 and I can live with a little cooperate rounding up.

Not being happy with those results and about to take off on a week long trip on the 7th of June and we will be boon docking the entire time I decided to do the fill up again. Only this time I will fill it 5 gallons at a time and keep track of the test panel and mark the tank.

Guess what, it only took 40-45 gallons before it started overflowing. Looked at the tanks and they were less than half full.

So tomorrow I will start pulling hoses and see what is going on.

Here are some photos of the tanks at overflow level. Disregard the numbers I wrote on the end of the tank. They will be removed and accurate ones will be made. The rear tank is a little higher than the forward one, I think.

Buddy

 

[cookie]

Buddy,
if you search you will find a few people have had a similar problem. You will also find their fixes. Seems it has to do with the vent hose. Mine would never fill either. The dealer tied the vent hose up high so it would not fill with water. I think that fix needs to be looked at again because last weekend I had the same problem again. I took a hose and held it agains the vent hole and blew into it. I think I purged the water out of the hose because after I did that I was able to fill again.
Goodluck

 

[jnbhobe]

I rerouted the vent lines on my 3370 this weekend tied everything up and ended up with an extra foot of vent line kept all the lines above the tank and everything seems to work well

 

[judybuddy]

You guys hit it right on the head. I will have to try and remember to do searches on here in the future. Ours is working now.

 

[kbsplus2]

I'm curious to know if your pump tap is on the back tank or the front tank? And if your pump sucks air, are both your tanks empty? My pump sucks air and I still have 30+ gals in the tanks and the tap is on the back tank and it is situated higher than the front tank. And with the fresh water drain on the pump line I'm going to have 30+ gals in the tanks when I winterize. Any thoughts on that?

 

[Yianni]

If this is a continuing problem with Heartland trailers, it's difficult to understand why the factory can't do it right. I really don't want to spend all this money and then have to drop the underbelly to fix something this simple.

 

[Ben Berger]

After our selling dealer charged heartland for fixing this problem last year (unsucessfully) I have gone to an independent repair shop and have spent over $800 dollars in repair time trying to have this problem fixed. Thanks dealer, thanks heartland.

 

[me15]

I had the same problem with my Razor, I pulled a panel off to see what was going on. My problem was the fresh water filler tube that goes into the tank was going all over the place. It was going up and down and around things. I cut about 2 ft. of it out, and secured it so the water would have a more direct rout into the tank, and now it fills just fine.

 

[h20skih]

We had the same problem also. I did the trick of buying a new 10' drinking hose & cut off the male end & stuffed it in the fill hose as far as it would go. Had to twist & push alot but got about 8' in. Started filling tank til water started backflowing out & panel inside showed it was full finally. I haven't measured the amount that went in but at least i got the tank to full or about. Maybe a simple-temp solution.

 

[porthole]

Interesting picture of the tanks.

So if a "100+gallon" tank is actually two tanks you will never get the capacity of the tank unless the discharge is on the bottom.

In the one picture above the hose actually goes up over the truss, so the first time the pump grabs air the water below the hose level will stay in the tank.

I had similar problems in my boat, 4 - 30 gallon fresh water tanks.
The outlets were all in the front and the tanks were angled slightly down to the rear - so even empty they had 15-20 gallons of water in them. Those I repositioned.

I also had "fill" issues. That I changed by installing a valve and tee in the city water intake. Now all I have to do is just open the valve with the city supply hooked up.

I would suggest - if you do this, that when opening the valve you are diligent about standing right there and wait. If not just open the valve 1/4 - 1/2 turn and let the tanks fill slowly.

I did the valve-tee thing in my recently sold Sunnybrook and also tee'd in a line to the black water flush. This way once the hose was hooked up it stayed until we left the site.

I most likely will do the same to my new 3010 when it comes in.

 

[Brenrick]

Hello,

We are having the same issue with our 09 Big Country 3300 RL. When we left for our first trip over the Memorial Day weekend (dry camping) we thought we had 75 gallons and the meter read full. We did not originally fill the tanks, the dealer had them full when we picked it up-so we thought! Then after only using the restroom a few times on Friday night, the meter read 1/3full the next morning!!!! We went and explored around outside thinking maybe we had some kind of leak and nothing was leaking. So, just conserved water and prayed we would not run out over the next three days.

When we came home, we pulled the fresh water tank drain valve located under the rig, let it drain, closed it and attempted to refill the tank. The water kicked back after 7-8 minutes and would not accept anymore water. We now have the BC at the dealer and gave very specific details of the tank issues. The meter is all over the place and non of it makes sense. I hope they fix this, this is a real PITA!!! I will keep you all posted if they fix the problem and what they did to fix it. I always suggest to anyone who is dealing with the dealer, to have them show you what they fixed and demonstrate it before leaving.

 

[itsbeertime]

My dealer actually filled ALL the tanks and showed me the levels on the panel, but I'm still not convinced 100% after hearing all the water tank stories. I'm going to buy one of those flow meters you put on the end of the hose and fill mine and see just how much goes in.

 

[Brenrick]

That is a good idea...I did not even think about that. Maybe Camping World here in Sacramento, Ca has them.

 

[itsbeertime]

You should be able to get them at Lowes/Home Depot, too.

 

[zigfreed]

My trailer has the same issue. Who ever is putting these tanks together is not very bright. My front tank is about 2 inches lower then my rear tank. The fill tube runs to the rear tank. The water pump tube draws from the rear tank which will empty first. The vent hose is lower then the top of the tank and does not drain back into the tank. If any water gets into the vent hose it will gather in the low point of the hose. I am less then impressed with the setup.

 

[boatdoc]

One would think Heartland would fire the guy that plumbs the tanks in. This problem has been going on for several years now and they still can't get it right. I just keep a 2' piece of 3/8" rubber hose in the UDC and when the fill starts to spit back I put one end of the hose over the vent hole and blow like **** in the other end untill the water gets blown back in the tank and starts to fill again. Not fixed but works.
boatdoc

 

[kbsplus2]

water tank issues

Fellow Razor owners: Does anyone ake issue to only being able to use 2/3 to 3/4 of your fresh water capacity and not the full 100 gallons? I also have done the math and it appears that this is the case with all our trailers and have not been able to get resolution with heartland. Anyone else have any luck getting it fixed? If so who did you work with?
Thank you for your help

 

[Mazeppabob]

Fresh water fill and drain issues

I was curious if any other owners were having my problem and it looks like quite a few are. I took Razor back to dealer under warranty because of fill problem, just didn't seem like we had 100 gal. tank. They rerouted the fill hose and it seemed better. However every time we went camping we would run out of water right away. I finally took it to a local non Heartland dealer after warranty exp. and paid them too look at it. They took the underbelly down and took some pictures to show me the problem. There are two 50 gal. tanks sitting on angle iron. The fill goes into one tank and there is a crossover tube between them which is near the center line above the angle iron. The water will flow faster into one tank but flow slowley through the crossover. We could get it to fill if we did it slowley. However you can never get more than about half the water back out because the crossover is near the center and also the pickup for the pump is not near the bottom. The second dealer could not see a solution. Just said it was a very poor design. What are the chances Heartland would admit to a design problem especially after warranty?

I'm wondering if I could somehow add a fitting and hose to each tank near the bottom so that I can get more of the water out. I have not actually seen the tanks so don't know if there are any reinforced areas to put a expansion type fitting. Someone told me that the walls of the tanks are too thin and would eventually crack. They did say that most tanks have several reinforced areas around the edges for flexability in installing fittings for different types of instalations.

Does anyone recall if their tanks do have these reinforced areas. I won't be able to look at this again until summer. It sucks having 100 gals but only about 50 usable. I'm wondering if I end up with 30-40 gals of stagnant water sitting there when not camping?

 

[jimtoo]

Hi Mazzeppabob,

Welcome to the forum with your first post.. I see you have been a member for a while, so you know we have a great bunch of people here with lots of information.

You did not give any information as to year or age of your Razor. I would suggest you get your VIN # and purchase date and any other information you have and call Heartland Customer Service and explain your problem in nice way.
877-262-8032 / 574-262-8030

Jim M

 

[Kboydston]

This has been a problem with other campers I have had. take a old hose an cut the male end off. Insert hose deep into tank and fill this way. it will keep you from back washing as well as a presure purge.