A Broken Water Line In Your RV Is An Easy Fix.
Do you have a broken water line in your RV and think you need to call a pro to take care of it? Think again! If you can tackle it at home, you can often fix it in your RV. In fact, there are many jobs the average DIY-er can do. This series looks at ten of the most common RV repairs and what you can do to fix them yourself.
To start, let’s look at a mishap many RVers have faced: a burst water line.
This often happens during that first trip after a long cold winter. You turn on your water pump and water starts running all over the floor. Not fun to clean up, but at least it’ll tell you where to look for the break. It might take some time to rummage through all those cabinets and storage spaces to find the problem area, but you can usually find the leak. Once the scavenger hunt is over, your next step is to determine what type of line and fittings you need to make the repair.
Regardless of whether yours are made of plastic or copper (the latter is more common of the older models), most often you can simply cut out the damaged section of line containing the split and reconnect the two loose ends into a new fitting. If the break is significant and requires a large section to be removed, you’ll need two fittings and a replacement line similar in length to what you took out to fix the break.
Just a note – copper lines will require a tubing cutter to avoid deforming the tube, while a utility knife is sufficient for plastic lines.
So what kind of fitting do you need? This might be the tricky part. A compression union fitting is a good choice when you only need to reconnect two good ends of line. Elbow fittings can trap water and might need replacing, and pipe thread fittings often need reinforcing with a couple of layers of Teflon tape. When in doubt, take the broken piece with you to a hardware store and ask for help. They’ll hook you up with the right one.
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