Kenzo said:
Hello Gafferbill and Prof...
I am impressed with your depth of knowldge but I am a man of limited technical knowledge and dont know if the answer to my problem is contained in here.
The submersible is a truma and the pressure pump is a whale so I wonder if the Warermaster IC will work. I am also confused as to why I need one of these. This is a brand new caravan and surely the pressure swithch should not be pulsating / clicking. BTW, I dont think we have an onboard battery charger and if we have I don't know where it is or how to turn it off.... !!!
So, I still have a pusating pressure swithch and am a little concerned about that.
Thanks a mill,
KK
hi KK.
if I could be so BOLD and suggest you forget the exelent technical do-dahs bits , and all that!!.
and for a minute consentrate on the practical side of things. simply put, you have a pump in a container that is powered by the vans 12v electrics this fills the water system with water half of this goes to the taps, (cold) the other half goes to a tank with an element that heats it up, this in turn also goes to the taps (hot) in order to obtain water either hot or cold you turn on the tap the the water comes out, ok so far!!!, in order to keep the taps flowing the pump replenishes the system with fresh water out of the container, and that is all there is to it!!!!!!!.
however there is a complication, and that is without some sort of device to cut power to the pump it will continue to run endlessly, and in a short time the pump would fail.
there are two ways one can do this though either,
1. have micro switches in each tap, so when the taps turned on the pump starts and replenish the water and then cuts the power to the pump when the taps turned off, or.
2. instead of on the taps have a micro switch on a pressure device that controls the operation of the pump by sensing a drop in pressure when the taps turned on,
both types of control will work with the same objective and that is to reduce the time the pump actually runs and exetend it's life,
one problem exists however with the pressure sensed system, this is of course obvious!!! and that is the pump will continue to run even after the taps turned off, until the water pressure rises to a predetermined level and as a consequence will also turn the pump on if the pressure drops for other reasons.
also as the switch operates it emits an audiable click that can de distracting at times if it operates frequently, this can be reduced by manual adjustment (the method is described in the van handbook) but it is always going to do this!! it is a part of caravanning we all have to accept using water from a container,
personally I find it less distracting than the noise one gets on site from a day to day basis, if it does bother you at night turn off the pump at the switch, when water in not required. and back on in the morning.
EDIT,
BTW, if your water pump pulsates as you describe, it will probably be a poorly adjusted pressure valve, I doubt there will be anything faulty in such a new van, imho, the system is working correctly just not at the right time. mine goes out of adjustment just by draining the system,(end of stay) it is the first thing I do after setting up once everything is connected at the site.