Water Tanks

[MegnMarty]

Hi All

We are Meg and Marty and are new members to this site, having joined up today. We are also new Kedron owners, having picked up our van in early November 2007.

We are extremely happy with the van and are enjoying it as we head around Oz on a 4 -5 year trip. We've been gone 3 1/2 weeks so far and are just loving the lifestyle.

I have a small concern about the usable water in our 2 main tanks. The capacity is 160 litres. They ran out today, so I filled them and was only able to put in 120 litres before they overflowed. I would expect to loose some capacity due to the siting of the outlet from the tanks, but not 40 litres.

Has anyone else found this to be a problem, and if so, what has been done to rectify it. We are heading to the outback in the new year and would like to be able to utilise all the water we carry. Any comments/thoughts would be appreciated.

Regards

Meg and Marty

[Kimbo]

Hi Meg and Marty

And welcome to the group

Are you sure that the tanks filled fully and you didnt get an airlock??

[Jacky Jacky]

Hi Meg & Marty,

We had the same thing happen to us the first two trips and then worked out we were filling with too much water pressure and the tanks were not filling. Ours is a 2004 XC with the one filler for shower and general water tanks plus a separate filler for the drinking water. We found you need to slowly fill the tanks over some time to enable them to fill properly.

The tanks are linked by a hose so say the first tank fills and it takes time for water to flow through the hose into the next tank and so on depending how many tanks you have. The newer vans have separate fillers for the tanks so it may be an airlock as suggested by Kimbo. Just turn the pump on and let a bit of water run through the kitchen tap and that may help expel the air.

[MegnMarty]

Hi again

Thanks for your feedback. I've filled the tanks a number of times now, using both a hose from mains pressure and using a 12v pump and filling from a jerry can. On all occasions I've filled slowly and let both tanks overflow, so I know they are full. I used the water until it was spluttering out of the tap in the sink, due to too much air coming out.

When I refilled the tanks, I was only able to get 120 litres into them, before they overflowed. When I looked at the positioning of the outlets, I can see that they are approximately 25mm from the bottom of the tanks, so it seems to me that I'm not able to access all of the water in the tanks.

As we spend a lot of time in National Parks and other sites where we can't connect to mains water, we need to be able to use all the water we are carrying.

I'm waiting to hear back from Ashley at Kedron to see if he can help, so I'll let you know how I go.

Has anyone else done the exercise above of seeing how much water they are actually able to get out of their tanks? If so, please let me know.

Cheers

Meg & Marty

[Kimbo]

interesting I will have to try mine never ever give it a thought about testing usable

Kedron havnt fitted the 60ltr tanks by mistake have they?? easy to tell by just getting under the van and looking at the size of the drink tank which is 60 litr the 2 shower tanks being 80 litre are noticably larger

Be carefull when filling your tanks that you dont put the filling hose on with tooooooooo much pressure like I did yesterday on the Topender, the tank filled and was spurting out the overflow and I was distracted by someone for a few minutes before I was able to turn the tap off.................well the rest was a big boom and water comming out everywhere, blew the bottom of the tank which resulted in a hole about 6" long by 1/2" wide and not much fun getting the tank out too replace it.

Amazing actually how much mud and gunk (stones and Red dirt) collect in those guards around the tanks and it drops all over you into your eyes and hair when removing the tank.

[MegnMarty]

Hi Kimbo

I've checked the tank size and I have 2 x 80 litre tanks. I've spoken to Ashley at Kedron and he didn't have any answers. He also sais that he hasn't had this issue raised previously.

When we picked up our van, we were told to be careful when filling the tanks. I usually have the inlet valve open 1/2 way and don't turn the tap on too much. The guys at Kedron warned me about some problems that have occurred when the tanks were filled with too much pressure.

Apparently they had a few come back after breaking, so they filled them on a chassis and noted that they expanded around the chassis beams until there was no more give, and they then broke. They now warm customers on how to fill the tanks when you pick up the vans.

It's not much help if you have already exploded your tank !!!

Cheers

Meg and Marty

[Bruce and Sue]

Hi All,

I have been giving the topic of water tanks and the filling thereof quite a bit of thought lately. We are due to pick up our ATV2 in October and I have reservations about the three filling points on the back right hand side of the van on the current models. Our last van had a conventional one skin fitting to fill both tanks which did the job well. I have e-mailed Stan at Kedron asking about the advantages of the new system over the skin fitting. Can anyone out their give me the benefit of their experiences, good and bad.

Waiting to hear,

Bruce :confused1:

[Lionel and Margaret]

I have finally got around to measuring useable water in our general use tanks 2 x 80 lt. With the van level I used the pump till more air than water was coming out. The water meter was read and tanks filled individually reading meter after each tank. Result 61 lt / 68 lt total 129 out of 160. I will be refitting tanks to try and achieve a better result & will post the result.

Lionel & Margaret

[dazmit]

Hi Lionel

I'm assuming you are using your house water meter therefore I'd be a little sceptical about the meters accuracy at such low water useage since they would have been calibrated more for measuring kilo litres and the last calibration would have been prior to it's intallation.

You could probably give it a rough check by filling 2 X 40 litre jerry cans and seeing what the meter measures.

Just throwing a possible spanner in the works.

Cheers

Darryl

[MegnMarty]

Hi all

I don't doubt Lionels results as it is pretty much on par with mine. I've filled our tanks using a 25 litre jerry can on numerous occasions now, with the same result. It means I'm dragging around 30-35 litres of water that I can't use.

Cheers

Marty n Meg

[dazmit]

Fair enough - just checking if it was an accurate measure or trusting a meter with a unknown accuracy.

Cheers

Darryl

[Frank n Di]

I dont know about Kedron vans but a lot of van makers do not use the supplied vent hole in the tank as it is in the middle and on top of the tank( as the tank is mounted hard up to the floor), instead the drill a 12mm hole and insert a pipe on the side and top of the tank and this pipe is sikaflexed in, if this pipe is too long you tend to get a siphon effect and infact you are not getting a full tank of water . but looks like you have to crawl underneath and see if thats the case. but may not be the problem.

Regards

Frank