Leave water on ?

zorky wrote:
One more question is do you only turn on the hot water heater when your lines are full of water? I don't want to burn anything up. The dealer really explained nothing.

Yes. Do not turn on the water heater if its tank is empty.

If you're starting with a drained system (which, for the water heater, can be readily verified by removing the drain plug), you fill the water heater by turning on water and opening a hot tap somewhere. A lot of air will come out the tap, as the water fills the heater tank and the air is displaced. When eventually you have water coming out, you have a full water heater tank and can turn on the heater.

If you get water coming out the tap within just a few seconds, the water heater is probably bypassed and still dry.

Some people use the relief valve on the water heater to let the air out rather than a hot water tap somewhere. The basic idea is the same.

If you have an electric element in the water heater and run it dry, the electric element will burn out very quickly (as in seconds). If you run it on gas, a safety thermostat thingy can rather quickly operate...and it's generally a one-time use device, and somewhat expensive and involved to replace. Don't dry fire the water heater.

If hook-up is available we usually hook to water, leave the water pump off and use water from the hook-up. Generally no reason not to unless there is a threat of freezing, then I would use from the tank. I used to not keep the water tank full because of the weight but now I try to keep it full. Never know when might need to stay without water hook-up. No good reason you can't use out of the tank except refilling the tank can be a hassle.

I think most of us turn off the City Water at the spigot when leaving the parked trailer abandoned for awhile. This is to prevent some sort of water accident happening inside the trailer while you are gone.

Nothing worse than coming back from town from getting more supplies and having water running down your trailer steps...

Roy Ken

A water pressure regulator and an in line filter are must haves if you are going to connect to "city" water. Also it is a very good idea to shut off the city water anytime you are not in the RV. If something starts to leak, left unchecked it can literally ruin your rig.

Excessive water pressure (unregulated), has the greatest potential for disastrous damage but foul water, which we have encountered any number of places coast to coast, will be almost as big a PITA to correct once it gets into your tank and plumbing.

Most places we just fill the tank with filtered water and run off of the pump.

:C

zorky,
To answer your 2nd questions, Just make sure that the water heater tank is full before you turn it on. To check this make sure that the bypass to the water heater is turned the right way and water will run from your hot water faucets. The bypass is used to keep water out of the heater in off season periods when you winterize your RV. Remember, when you winterize you must drain the water heater from the heater tank itself using a siphon hose.

I leave mine hooked up and on when in a CG w/hookup. I do turn it off at faucet if we leave for the day. I also use a pressure regulator at the faucet some campgrounds do have high pressure mine is set for 40psi max.

When we pull in to a space, I will hook up the power and water hose, and leave them in that "on" position til we leave.

Ok thank you for the advise. I understand now. On mine the fresh water inlet is for hooking to water supply. And the potable inlet is to fill the fresh water tank. We are only using water supply for shower and toilet. Cooking and drinking we will use bottled.

One more question is do you only turn on the hot water heater when your lines are full of water? I don't want to burn anything up. The dealer really explained nothing.

We have always used camp ground water hookups but after reading all these different topics and comments we are going to be changing it up. We are going to try this season to fill our water tanks and use them.
We usually only fill out water tank when out on our property where we have nothing.

As for waste tanks we leave both closed until full and then dump.
Once we are ready to pack up we dump them and use the factory clean out system. And when we return home and do a full cleaning we sanitize and add the chemicals.

Since you are a newbie, I'm not sure if you understand some of the basics. They have been discussed in this thread but not explained, exactly.

You have two water sources:

1. "City water" - you connect a hose to the city water connection and leave it turned on at the spigot. The pressure from the hose pushes the water to your sinks, toilets, etc - so turning it off will turn off your water. Most folks recommend buying a water pressure regulator so that excessive pressure won't burst the lines in the RV.

2. Your fresh water tank. You fill it with the hose, but it's not "connected", per se, and is not pressurized. In most cases, it doesn't even have a threaded connector - so you can't connect it and leave it running. Once you fill up, you are done with the hose and spigot. You have a water pump on board that needs to be turned on to provide pressure from the tank to the sinks, toilet, etc. Many will recommend that you turn the pump off when the water is not in use or at a minimum when you are sleeping/leaving the trailer. This is the tank that you should sanitize once per year as mentioned earlier.

Hope this helps!