Water pump repair…Jan. ’12
I hadn’t used my RV for a couple months when I arrived at Mt. View RV Park in Amado, AZ. My water tank drain valve had broken on me a month before and it would have to be replaced before I could fill the tank here in NM. I wasn’t about to go into Mexico without an almost full tank of treated water. It only took me a day to get here from Dan’s house and I like it here so I’d paid for 2 nights, with plugging this leak the goal. After I found the parts in my plumbing box, I capped it off. See the picture below.
But after filling my water tank with fresh water, I noticed a puddle of water around the pump. Checked all the pipe connections and everything looked good. Turned out that the pump itself was leaking around a seal. So I capped off the water pipes and pulled the pump. There was some rust on the screws and that white powdery deposit all around the front seal cap. Pulled that all apart expecting to find a broken part since the pump is 18 years old…but, nothing seemed broken. Even the rubber seal was in good shape. Just looked like the corrosion and deposits that kept the water inside the pump had broken free in a couple areas, allowing water to rapidly seep out of the seal area inside the pump section. The motor area was in good shape so nothing needed to be done there. I just pulled the pump section apart and cleaned it all out.
After capping the pipes and removing the pump from the water compartment.
There really wasn’t much in there as far as crud goes, but the drip was constant so I hoped that a good cleaning would help it.
Pump opened for inspection.
I cleaned it all out, got all the crud off the assembly and seal and slathered it with Vaseline. The rubber seal was oddly shaped and I knew it would be difficult to find a replacement so I was very careful with it and I hoped the clean up and Vaseline would work to stop the leak. While I was working on it, I checked the pump to motor seal but didn’t spot any evidence that it had been leaking. After getting it put back together, and installed in the water compartment, I had one tiny leak. Just a small drip maybe once a minute. Turned out that I only needed to tighten the plastic input pipe nut to take care of that. I wonder how many of these perfectly good pumps are thrown away each year because it’s too expensive to just have them repaired or cleaned up.
Almost reinstalled and ready to go.
Once I had it reinstalled, I did the dishes to exercise it a bit and no leak. It’s now months later and still working well with no leaking.