Materials/Spend
- Water Pump - £59.88
- Accumulator - £27.45
- 12mm Water Pipe - £18.99
- Ball Valve - £4.71
- T-Connector - £3.65
- 20mm Pipe Clips - £6.59
- 12mm Jubilee Clips x6 - £5.22
- On/Off Switch - £2.20
- 1.5mm Cable - Red - £11.99
- 1.5mm Cable - Black - £7.97
TOTAL: £148.65
You can see a diagram of my full water system here.
In order to get water pumping around your system, you’ll need to install a water pump. Adding an accumulator next to the pump in the water system will then give you optimum water pressure and much smoother water flow.
Mounting the water pump and accumulator
The first thing I did was fix my water pump and accumulator right next to each other to the plywood wall in the ‘garage’ of my van, underneath my bed.
I used 30mm wood screws to fix the pump in place, whereas the accumulator came with its own screws to use. I made sure the valves for the two appliances were inline with each other so that the water pipe didn’t have to bend at all.
I then cut a few centimetres of 12mm water pipe and used that to connect the pump and accumulator together. I fixed the pipe in place using jubilee clips over both the valves.
Laying pipework
Out the other end of the accumulator, I fixed in place a short section of 12mm water pipe, fixing it in place with a jubilee clip, and then I fitted a ball lever valve to the other end. I want to be able to isolate the pump and accumulator from the water system if need be.
From the other end of the ball lever valve, I fed water pipe across one of the main beams of my bed to the other side of the van. I fixed the pipe in place with pipe clips in a few places along the beam to keep the pipe firmly in place.
I then fitted a T-connector to the end of the pipe so that I could then run pipe to my shower unit and also to my tap.
Wiring an on/off switch to the pump
It was then just a case of connecting the pump to my 12v fuse box. As part of this, I also wanted to include a simple on/off switch, as I don’t require the pump to be on all of the time.
First of all, I crimped some male connectors to the end of the positive and negative wires coming out of the pump. I then crimped a female connector to a length of black 1.5mm wire, allowing me to connect this to the wire coming out my pump. I crimped a hoop connector to the other end of the wire and then connected it to a negative terminal on my fuse box.
The on/off switch has three terminals on the bottom, one for power in, one for power out and then one earth. I first cut a length of red 1.5mm wire and crimped a female connector to each end. I used this to connect my pump to the switch.
I cut another length of red wire and crimped a female connector to one end and a hoop connector to the other. I connected one end to the switch and the other to a terminal on my 12v fuse box.
I repeated this process for another length of black cable in order to ground the switch. I connected the hoop connector end to a negative point on my fuse box. The fuse box is connected directly to my negative bus bar which is grounded to my van’s chassis.
I used a 15amp fuse for the pump as it will pull a maximum of 10 amps. After adding 25% to this, there isn’t such a thing as a 12.5amp fuse, so I simply went for the next size up. The 1.5mm cable has an amp rating of 21amps so this falls nicely below that.
If you have any questions at all, feel free to ping me an email or drop me a message on Instagram!
