Of water filters and pumps 2019 Vista 27PE

[Bryon Carpender]

De-winteriIng my system curious thought occurred my 2019 Winnebago has a water pump, a main filter a hose inlet city water a valve
To fill the tank a two low point drains and over the far right corner a ball valve for the storage tank drain drawing a picture here in case someone else’s is new.

After flushing clean clear water out all the faucets then add bleach to the main water filtration filter holder and run till bleach smells then wait 24 hours to sanitize so far normal

? Apparently the main water filtration filter as it appears the pump water does not flow through the main filter even though it shares the same water inlet never realized that before as my water pump has no strainer filter installed?

Assumed if I put bleach in the main filter hub it would flow nope waited for bleach smell from the pump never occurred.

So I will purchase an external filter housing and a short hoae
To add bleaching at filling the tank and add a strainer filter to the water pump

Seems like that makes sense but I guess the water pump only draws from the water tank so no cross connection contamination, which makes sense

Just an fyi, as something not as obvious

Stay safe and happy travels
BryonC

 

[klook]

You should sanitize the tank as much as the system. Maybe more.

 

[Bryon Carpender]

You should sanitize the tank as much as the system. Maybe more.

Yes both systems why mentioned they are not connected

 

[Morich]

Well? It looks like our online info has taken another hit from the new management at Winnebago?
From what I see, it seems one of the most useful tools has been withdrawn and no longer able to look at interactive parts drawings.
Is that what others are seeing or am I just missing something?
My favorties link no longer works, but in searching I finally came up with this link but it is near totally useless for any DIY searching for solutions!

Winnebago Cortona Portal

cortona.winnebago.com

If this is true and I am just not confused, I don't see much way we can look at details of your sytem, so solutions other than standard issue stuff will be more guess than facts!
At this point, I would have to recommend looking carefully at the manual on how to disinfect the system and go with that as best.
But I do fully agree with the above advise to do the tank as well as most all parts of the system. To me the tank is far more important than worry about the lines as they are likely to have far less bacteria, etc. grow in them than the much larger amount of wall surface to grow on in the tank!

If we use good, well treated water from good sources, we can assume the new water will have a chlorine residual left in that water. But that doesn' kill ALL the bacteria as that would also kill the things that make your digestion work! That is intended to allow for some small amount of treatment left for any thing stray we might get in the lines, etc.
But that small left over treatment is not meant to deal with what might grow in the left over water that might stand in the tank bottom during storage! You might get bacteria, toadstools, or a jungle growing there if the situation is right, so doing the tank before using it to drink, cook, or bath is pretty important!

 

[Bryon Carpender]

Bummer the manuals are very general but better than nothing, and they do mention sanitation of both systems.

But they are not obvious the how or which ones are connected through the one fill connection, which valves but no plumbing diagram’s which would be way more useful

 

[wahoonc]

There are normally plumbing diagrams available on the Winnebago website, however I am getting a 404 error on them, but not the other stuff. I would highly recommend downloading them for your specific rig when the come back up. IIRC on my 2014 all water entering the rig goes through the main filter. What I normally do is blow down the lines to clear them, then add bleach to the filter housing, fill the tank, then use the pump to fill the lines. Flush, rinse, repeat.

Aaron

 

[Morich]

It seems they are moving toward cutting back on info posted online. The plumbing drawings are still not working, so I would assume those are gone for good??? No insider info but it appears to be a company plan to reduce support for us to DIY any repairs.
I am getting a bit better idea of how to use some of the current new version of parts.
But I also find it not very usable and terrible compared to the interactive parts drawings that were online a week ago!
But the new drawing does still indicate there is a small fiter at the end of the pump to stop debris going into the rubber parts. Is that missing on your RV? But then we also may need to check which build you have for that year. Do you have a 1 or a 2 as 7th digit of serial number?
But I would assume both builds would have the same filter at the pump, so is your filter at the pump missing?

But I think you may be missing some of the details on how the port is used to fill the tank as well as direct use of the water.
I'm still getting funky results of snip and sketch on this new system they've given us, but that may improve with practice? Shaky lines is the best I can get right now!!
But looking it over this is what I see:

Hard to follow but best I can get at the moment!
Looking at the back of the wet bay where the fresh water port comes in. Water in the port goes up at angle to what would be the left side of the filter if we viewed from front! Through the house filter to go back through the panel to a tee to go left or right to various parts of RV. It also has a tee to let that water go toward the pump. I have drawn that in blue to make easier to follow!
I suspect but can't see that you have a control knob to change from tank water to direct use? I think changing that knob lets you fill the tank or use direct? Got a knob to change where water flows?
What I can see is water that comes from the left as shown here comes into the water pump filter to protect it, then through pump and back out to meet the pipes for the RV where I marked red meeting blue! One of the tricks to this system is the check valve at the pump to keep water from flowing through the pump in the wrong direction! Pressure water can't go through the pump due to the check valve but when not connected , the pump can pull water from the tank to the RV.

So that leaves me thinking their plan is that the incoming water passes through the whole house filter before going either direction to fill the tank or direct use. So we sanitize all parts on the RV, assume we are using good water to fill or direct use and all is good to go!
But to get the tank clean and cleared, we have to add enough chemicals and let it set and also drive or shake it around enough to get the ceiling of the tank cleared, then drain and flush anything we may have killed before filling with the water we want to use as safe water.
They have really hurt our efforts to figure this sort of thing out in any practical way, but this is what we seem to be facing as support is reduced!! ARRGH!
They gave us great support and now are taking it away........
I've been debating the pros and cons of getting an RV again and this may be the straw that breaks me!
I don't like motels, even when cost effective, but I don't want to buy into a problem RV that I have to have somebody else find and fix problems that I know are sure to come around!

 

[Bryon Carpender]

The two way water inlet valve in city mode goes through the whole filter and in fill mode goes directly into the tank by passing the whole filter

my solution is to add a 2nd filter canister to the incoming water port fill with a bleach solution then turn to tank fill and fill the tank

 

[Morich]

Rather then add a second filter, I normally just add the bleach to a hose and find my hose is long enough to hold the right amount. After pouring the bleach in the hose that is attached to the RV, I then carry the other end to the faucet and connect it. When I turn the faucet on the incoming water pushes the bleach and mixes it as it moves to the tank or through the lines.
Depending on how long the RV has been unused, I leave it overnight and drive it a bit to slosh the solution to the top of the tank as that is where a lot of the small bacteria may collect in a dark wet tank. Don't like to think of those hanging strings of bacteria sticking to the top and dropping into my water later.
One big thing about water treatment is that it can only be an estimate on the amount of chlorine as we never fully know how much is in the water we are treating. The combo of not knowing what amount we need to treat, nor what amount of chlorine is already in the fresh water we add leaves the amount to be a guessestimate at best! That leaves most cases to be an estimate plus a bit extra to make sure that there is some left over after working on all the things we want to kill.

 

[Bryon Carpender]

That’s another way to do it , since their is no filter at the tank / city valve to the fresh water tank aka water pump this adds another Layer of clean water into the fresh water tank which while Sanitized is still likely questionable so another layer of filtration makes me A Little more happy