Plumbing
The fresh water fill is a Perko unit with an integrated vent. I had to look really hard to find one I thought would work well and last. Most of the fills on the market either have no integrated vent or they are cheap plastic. There are a lot of nice fills available but I really wanted to avoid unnecessary holes in the Boles so I wanted an integrated vent. Eventually I found this one. Last I looked Perko has marked it a "Legacy Product" meaning they no longer manufacture it.
I installed a Sea Flow 42-series pump. I had considered a Pentair Shur-Flo unit but a few things steered me to the Sea Flow. First there's a video on YouTube that shows the Sea Flow handles pump surge better than the Shur-Flo. Second the Sea Flow mounting plate is solid rubber (vs hard plastic) so it should reduce vibration. And third, the Sea Flow came packaged with the filter that is an added cost with the Shur-Flo unit.
The pump plumbing may look a little convoluted but I added a drain for the fresh water tank and also a winterization drain for the pressurized side of the pump. I used a stainless ball valve to control the winterization drain. You could also use this valve to pump water from the fresh water tank rather than wait from gravity to drain the tank.
The drain valve is pretty cool. They are typically made of plastic and need replacement more often than you'd like. I found a aluminum flange on eBay that uses a standard brass needle valve. The total arrangement was 2x the cost of the plastic valve but should need to be replaced as often, and when it does it should be an easy screw-out and screw-in replacement of the needle valve.
After the pump I added a loop of hose to reduce pump surge noise. These types of pumps are notorious for surge noise.
Before the fresh water reaches the sink fixture is will run through a Water Drop ultra filtration water filter. I'm not sure how this will work out, but thought I'd give it a shot. You'll notice there's no water heater since this will mostly be a fair-weather camper. The fresh water from the Water Drop filter will feed both the hot and cold lines of the sink faucet.
On the grey water side of the system, I used a Hepvo trap rather than a P-trap. They use a 1-way valve to prevent backflow of gases and waste. These are becoming more common on RVs as they save space and avoid other problems you can encounter with P-traps.
From the Hevpo the drain flows in 1 1/2" ABS (vs PVC) to the grey water tank. The grey water tank drain uses the same 1 1/2" ABS and drops down through the floor to a Valterra 1 1/2" grey water dump valve that is located just behind the street side wheel. It's tucked up nicely so it's not very visible and hopefully won't get caught on anything.
They grey tank needs to be vented so that it can fill easily and in the event that gases build up. I think these are typically vented into the black tank venting, but I don't have a black waste system so I needed a dedicated vent. I chose a small marine vent that's typically mounted to the side of a boat. It's designed to reduce exterior water from entering. The model I used can also be serviced from the exterior in case it becomes clogged (say by a bee nest). I mounted it high so that any rising gases wouldn't rise into the windows.
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