Gravity Water Fill

A number of FT owners did just that. I am thinking of doing the same thing but I have not gotten around to it yet. They just cut into the tank and screwed in a fitting and ran a hose up to a fill port. They used some kind of plastic weld to hold the fitting in the tank.

You can also get a pump, from a 12v (Shurflo) to one that goes on a cordless drill, to produce the pressure you need.

noticed you have a national tropical,I have a 2001 national tradewinds and on mine behind the compartment door which is in front of the right rear tire was a big plastic shield (wall) I removed the plastic panel and to my surprise was the back end of the fresh water tank and low and behold a riser pipe with screw in cap,just insert hose and turn on water,works great also there is quite a bit of new found storage on top of tanks for light items.Hope you are this lucky.

Kiwi_too wrote:
You can also get a pump, from a 12v (Shurflo) to one that goes on a cordless drill, to produce the pressure you need.

I used a marine bilge pump set in a bucket to pump water myself. I certainly wouldn't go hacking into the wall or tank on my RV.

bumpy

I had a similar setup and wanted to be able to fill directly. I just drilled a hole near the top of the tank and installed a galvanized fitting to which I attached a hose fitting. I leave my fill hose connected directly to this fitting and have found the tank fills much more quickly than it did through the factory setup. If, for some reason, I want to use the original fill valve, I just unscrew the hose from the tank and attach it to the original fitting.

In order to fill the tank from a non pressurized source, I could use (haven't yet) an old 12v SureFlo pump that I have. I attached a section of hose on each end: one that screws into my direct fill fitting or the original fitting and the other that drops into whatever water source is available. Good luck
jor

I rv wrote:
noticed you have a national tropical,I have a 2001 national tradewinds and on mine behind the compartment door which is in front of the right rear tire was a big plastic shield (wall) I removed the plastic panel and to my surprise was the back end of the fresh water tank and low and behold a riser pipe with screw in cap,just insert hose and turn on water,works great also there is quite a bit of new found storage on top of tanks for light items.Hope you are this lucky.

Hmm, never removed any of the panels. I can see the side of my water tank but not the top. I'll go remove a panel and see if it's as easy as that.

I don't know how the Tropical plumbing is configured, but my '95 Coachmen has a valve setting that uses the regular pump to suck water from a bucket or jug to fill the water tank, or with a different setting, to suck RV antifreeze from the jug to winterize the water lines. It should be possible to modify the Tropical to do the same thing with a little creative plumbing.

Part of the problem I'm trying to solve is also time to fill the tank. When using the regular fitting there is some type of pressure valve in there that limits the water flow and pressure into the RV system, but it also limits the amount of water that flows into the tank when trying to fill it. Although I've never used a stop watch on it, it probably takes at least 30 minutes, maybe more, to put in 100 gallons of water from empty. I usually just turn on the water and wait for it to come out the overflow and turn it off, but I can't tell you how many times in that 30 minutes I've forgot about it and walked away only to flood out a campsite or my driveway. So that's the real problem I want to solve. The second issue is being able to dump water directly into the tank. I've tried the water pumps in the past and it worked fine until my pump gave out one day and I've never replaced it.

I've never installed one on any coach that I owned, but my Winnebago has the hose end water compartment like you on the drivers side it has a selector switch on it and, I have a gravity feed on the curbside my coach came that way from the factory!

Dutch_12078 wrote:
I don't know how the Tropical plumbing is configured, but my '95 Coachmen has a valve setting that uses the regular pump to suck water from a bucket or jug to fill the water tank, or with a different setting, to suck RV antifreeze from the jug to winterize the water lines. It should be possible to modify the Tropical to do the same thing with a little creative plumbing.

And I have that, but the way it is set up it only sucks water from the bucket and into the plumbing and not into the tank. I know one thing you can do that I've seen on here is people put a hose fitting on their outside shower and then attach that to the inlet to fill the tank. Then they pump water from a bucket and turn on the outside shower and let it fill the water tank. But again, I can do all that, but I would really just want to be able to dump the water in to a gravity feed opening.