i recently purchased a heartland north trail model 21 fbs. after removing all of the plastic undercover "coverup" i discovered a similiar problem that i had with a rockwood 5th wheel i used to have. the manufacturer of the fresh water tank had the outlet molded in apx. an inch above the bottom of the tank. that plus the bellying of the tank left a lot of water unusable. so just as before i drilled and tapped a 1/4 pipe plug hole in the bottom of the belly. in doing so i carefully measured the amount of water that drained out after the pump started running dry. it was 16 gallons. the heartland specs claim 36 gallons of fresh water. i installed a 3/8 pipe plug in the original outlet and replumbed the new outlet back to the inlet line and gallon by gallon measured how much water to fill the empty tank. 46 gallons exact before overflowing. a little arithmetic says that i only had 30 gallons of useable water before the mod and now i have 46 gallons. may not mean much to "plug ins" but to boondockers it sure does. why was i carrying around 16 gallons of unusable water ? didn't the tank maufacturer know how to design a tank or didn't the heartland spec engineer know how to order it made. who knows. just one of those things to scratch your head about.
fresh water tank capacity
- Thread starter wizard
- Start date
no pics at this time. i could take one but it would only show an outlet line coming from the bottom of the tank. i would not recommend this mod for anyone without the skills. but i would be glad to answer any tech questions about the procedure. or if there is enough interest i could do a much more detailed procedure. wizard
troybuildsit
Member
did you leave the underbelly cover off?
yes, i removed the complete underbelly. in my opinion i think any underbelly is a mistake. i want to be able to see exactly what's going on anywhere under there and be able to correct things that i don't like. i don't use my rig for winter camping so the heated space is not desired plus it uses a lot of unnecessary heat. i did put a piece of gorrilla tape over the belly heat outlet. if you wanted to preserve yours you could just knife out a section covering the water tank and replace it after the mod.
ChopperBill
Well-known member
I had the same problem with my 3055. There was plenty of room above the tank so I could push up the tank opposite of the pump intake and shimmed it up with some 2x4's so it would slope towards the pump. It then would use just about all the water. It did mess with the level sensors some what. When you got down to a 1/3 it would not last long until empty.
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