We have a Shurflo water pump with a pressure switch that powers a kitchen faucet and showerhead. The pump pulls water from a 5 Gallon Bosch hot water tank and an 11-gallon fresh tank. All those are in a “plumbing” area under the bed on the passenger side.
Photo Note: I installed an inline filter in the first version of this plumbing. I’ve since removed it. It restricts the flow, which I don’t like, and we filter all the water coming into the van, so as long as we keep the system inside pretty clean with regular shocks, then we’re good. If it starts to stink or taste bad, we’ll have to figure something out.
Problem 1: The water pump is loud
As I installed it initially, the water pump was very loud when it kicked on. I had mounted it to a piece of plywood bolted to the van’s ribs. Unfortunately, the plywood was not super affixed to the ribs, so there was amplified vibration.
When I open a faucet, the water pump kicks on, and the line pressure drops below 25 psi. If the faucet stays open, it will pump continuously to restore the pressure. When the tap is turned off, the pump pressurizes and turns off at 35-45psi. While running, the vibrations it puts through the board it is screwed to are significant and loud. The rubber feet on the mount do very little to absorb or quiet it. Don’t be fooled.
“How loud?” you ask. It’s livable but annoying. We’ve lived with it for two years. It works, and I’ve been meaning to fix it. People outside the van asked, “What is THAT noise?” and that’s probably the more annoying part to us. That’s not great attention to be the one with the irritating noise at the campground… like being the person with the air pump for their mattress… don’t be that guy.
Problem 2: Water Pump pulses when the faucet is not fully open
The pump runs continuously when the faucet is open entirely. When the faucet is not open fully, the pump pulses. This is more annoying than Problem 1. The loud pulsing wakes people in the van up, makes you rush through whatever you’re doing, OR makes you use more water by fully opening the faucet when you don’t need to… to avoid the pulse. People outside the van can hear it and make snide comments.
Am I making a bigger deal about this than it deserves? Probably. Am I still going to fix it? Yes.
Problem 1 Fix: Add an absorbing buffer
The standard solution to this problem is to mount the pump to a board and affix some neoprene or foam to the other side, becoming a sound absorption barrier between the board and the floor or wall on which it rests.
I don’t have enough space on the floor to place this soundproof mount, so I built a right-angle mount and then wrapped the outside with a foam mat that I cut, glued, and stapled to the wood.
The foam mats I used are the ones that are puzzle-pieced together on a floor to add cushioning. They sell them at Harborfrieght and use them on garage, basement, gym, and playroom floors. I have used many mats over the years to cushion, insulate, etc., all sorts of projects.
Once the base mount was built, I thought about how I would loosely hold this thing in place so it wouldn’t tip over or slide around. I had some strap tie-downs and planned to use those on the board and the floor to allow me to strap this thing down enough to prevent it from majorly moving… while allowing movement for the vibration.
You can see the metal strap guides on the bottom of the mount. I have used these guides previously to strap down the hot water tank. I also mount the guides next to where this water pump will go. Here’s a picture with red arrows pointing out where those are. You can also see how I route the strap in a loop back on itself.
How tight should this strap be? Hand tight with the ability to shimmy it a little. But, on the other hand, you don’t want to crank this thing down or lose the positives of the foam.
Essential Part of the Fix: I also use these white curly hoses to connect the pump from this mounting platform to the static-mounted water tank and accumulator tank. These lines aim to absorb the shaking that the platform allows. These are key to this solution successfully mitigating the vibration noise. They do amazing. They ALSO will enable a lot of flexibility in the positioning of the mount. I didn’t have to move anything else when introducing this new mount.
Problem 2 Fix: Add an Accumulator Tank
This is a common addition in RV systems and houses with well pumps. The accumulator tank has a pressure ball that maintains the pressure for a while before the pump is triggered to kick on. When you only open the faucet a little, the pump can kick on, catch up, shut off, kick on, catch up, and shut off… The accumulator lengthens the time the faucet can run before triggering the pump to kick on.
The nice thing is that I had one of these accumulator tanks already. I just hadn’t installed it. I didn’t think there was room for it. Necessity is the mother of… finding the room. I could place the accumulator in the space left by moving the pump down to the floor.
Pop-up Problem: after installing and testing, I discovered the pump was bad, so I ordered and installed a new one. Instead of the Sureflo, I went with the SeaFlo (the bonus was that it’s orange.)
The last step of the accumulator installation is to pump the pressure. It has a Schrader valve, and you can use a bike tire pump. I have this battery Ryobi air pump that you can set the pressure. The kick-on pressure for the Seaflo pump is about 35psi. The accumulator must be set at 2-3 psi less than that. What I did was to set the Ryobi to 38psi. When I removed the inflator line, some air leaked out. The impact of that is pretty dramatic, and after playing with it for a while, I noticed that if I disconnected it as quickly as possible, I only lost about 5psi.
It’s super quiet, like SO much quieter. When the bed is actually down, and everything is back in place, it’s almost unbearable. Of course, the pulsing is gone as well, but honestly, it’s so quiet I don’t think I would notice anymore. Outside the van, you can’t hear anything.
Post-install tweaking: Putting the water heater back in exposed a problem with how close it sat to the pump. They touched. The pump rubbed and vibrated against the water heater when it kicked on. To fix that problem, I placed some Fat-Mat sound deadening on the water heater rub spot.
That’s it for the installation.
Update: Ability to blow out the system
So, winter came and instead of adding RV Antifreeze, I decided to add a schraeder valve that would let us blow out the system. We can now use the air pump set to max pressure of 35psi (just under the accumulator pressure).
In order to blow out the system, I let the pressure build and then open sink and shower to let out the water. Then I repeat until only air comes out.
I’m probably going to regret or decide to change this at some point. I really would rather have a low point drain is better than nothing.