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egarant's avatar
egarant
Explorer III
Sep 22, 2015

How I STOPPED a pulsating water flow...

Well let me first tell you what I had done over the past year to try and stop a pulsating water flow to the kitchen sink and bathroom sink. This pulsating also make the pipe rattle a bit making the whole water pump use a bit noisy.

I installed the Shurflo hose kit on both ends of my water pump.

I replaced a major 90 degree fitting that was 1 ft from the output of the water pump with a straight fitting.

I replaced my Shurflo 4008 water pump.

I had purged all the lines of any air.

What FINALLY dawned on me is that MAYBE the water restrictors in the faucet fixtures were too much for the water pump....

I had replaced the stock sink aerator with one that pulled down to get a different spray. I had noticed almost immediately that there wasn't enough pressure to allow the second spray pattern to stay, it always fell back to the default stream.

My little brain started to think.....I took off both of the faucet aerators and ran the fixtures.....no more pulsating!

I went to Home Depot and changed out the existing 1.5 gpm aerators for the max 2.2 gpm models. They work PERFECT!

I swear to god I did a little jig on the kitchen floor, who would of thought that the back pressure caused by the water restrictors, just like the elbows in the plumbing, would have such an effect.

I HIGHLY recommend trying this out, it worked for me!

Mr. E
  • I tried the accumulator tank route. Yep, it works well, when you are not changing altitudes significantly like we do here in the west. We live at 160 feet above sea level, but we travel upwards 10,000 ft. The air pressure is much thinner as you gain altitude, therefore the bladder in the tank expands and renders the purpose of the tank useless.

    When we traded the fifth wheel in for the Class C, I decided not to install an expansion tank.

    Here's a change I did to our current unit:



    New pump and plumbing - it helped a lot. It still pulses, but it's much quieter.
  • I don't know what make er sise of tank u had. But the one I installed till worked fine true all the mountain passes.
    Frank
  • Mine has done fine through the Rocky Mountains. I don't know how high I went though. I did cross the continental divide a BUNCH of times.
  • Well I went ahead and put in an accumulator on top of already changing out the OEM faucet restrictors from 1.5 gpm to 2.2 gpm. I never had a puslating flow out of my shower head, so I looked up the specs and low and behold it is a 2.5 gpm restrictor....no problems there!

    I mainly added the accumulator to see what effect it would have on giving me a stronger flush in my toilet which is the farthest distance away from the water pump.

    WOW! Just like home! AND, you can almost NOT hear the water pump, seriously! Before I had to wait for the pump to ramp up to get a good flow to the bowl, not any more!

    In the future, I will always do those three things to any RV in the future, no matter what.

    1. Change out all the faucet restrictors to 2.2 gpm
    2. Install the Shurflo pump silencing kit
    3. Install an accumulator

    I am one happy camper!

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