TrailManor Owner's Forum - View Single Post - Is it "easy" to move the freshwater tank?

07-11-2010, 06:39 PM

I searched the forums to see if anyone has attempted to move the freshwater tank. I did not yield any threads/posts addressing this possibility.

I am curious. Would it be "difficult" to move the freshwater tank rearward by 2-4 inches? I am not sure how it is mounted to the floor but it appears to have something to do with a small piece of box beam aluminum or some such. The one picture I have of the area does not show the drain hole so perhaps an additional drain hole would have to be made.

My reason for asking is I am going to be installing my inverter this week, likely Tuesday. There are two locations under consideration on the forward wall: either on the port side settee forward of the water tank or on the starboard side.

There is already a few inches of space in front of the water tank. If I moved the water tank farther back, I could create enough room to accommodate the inverter and some air gap for ventilation purposes. I recognize that relocating the water tank is a headache but it would provide two benefits: 1) it would put the inverter in an equipment locker with water pump/accumulator, solar controller, and water tank. (no one but me is ever going to be poking around in this compartment although I suppose one could imagine some horror stories involving mixing water with AC). 2) routing romex on the port side of the TM is very simple.

If I put the inverter on the starboard side, it creates two headaches: 1) I have to route an additional romex cable underneath TM to port side if I want to do anything elegant with respect to switching between shore/inverter power. I presume that to do that job correctly entails peeling back part of the floor skin to reveal the cable tray the existing romex is routed in. 2) the starboard side settee is used for frequent storage by family so I would need to create some form of protection around the inverter to keep wife from stacking pillows or something over the vent holes or dropping something across the terminal posts.

I am currently thinking about going the easy way out from a wiring perspective: install inverter on starboard side and "permanently" disconnect AC outlets from shore power instead of routing a new parallel run of romex from starboard to port. (AC would then only be available via the inverter but there would be no possibility of backfeeding inverter with shore power).

However, if I could move the water tank rearward by 2-4 inches or so, it would really make a robust inverter install a lot easier as I could use auto transfer switches or a simple manual DPDT switch or whatever.

Thoughts?

Thoughts?

07-11-2010, 06:39 PM	#1
M&M Hokie Guest Posts: n/a	Is it "easy" to move the freshwater tank? I searched the forums to see if anyone has attempted to move the freshwater tank. I did not yield any threads/posts addressing this possibility. I am curious. Would it be "difficult" to move the freshwater tank rearward by 2-4 inches? I am not sure how it is mounted to the floor but it appears to have something to do with a small piece of box beam aluminum or some such. The one picture I have of the area does not show the drain hole so perhaps an additional drain hole would have to be made. My reason for asking is I am going to be installing my inverter this week, likely Tuesday. There are two locations under consideration on the forward wall: either on the port side settee forward of the water tank or on the starboard side. There is already a few inches of space in front of the water tank. If I moved the water tank farther back, I could create enough room to accommodate the inverter and some air gap for ventilation purposes. I recognize that relocating the water tank is a headache but it would provide two benefits: 1) it would put the inverter in an equipment locker with water pump/accumulator, solar controller, and water tank. (no one but me is ever going to be poking around in this compartment although I suppose one could imagine some horror stories involving mixing water with AC). 2) routing romex on the port side of the TM is very simple. If I put the inverter on the starboard side, it creates two headaches: 1) I have to route an additional romex cable underneath TM to port side if I want to do anything elegant with respect to switching between shore/inverter power. I presume that to do that job correctly entails peeling back part of the floor skin to reveal the cable tray the existing romex is routed in. 2) the starboard side settee is used for frequent storage by family so I would need to create some form of protection around the inverter to keep wife from stacking pillows or something over the vent holes or dropping something across the terminal posts. I am currently thinking about going the easy way out from a wiring perspective: install inverter on starboard side and "permanently" disconnect AC outlets from shore power instead of routing a new parallel run of romex from starboard to port. (AC would then only be available via the inverter but there would be no possibility of backfeeding inverter with shore power). However, if I could move the water tank rearward by 2-4 inches or so, it would really make a robust inverter install a lot easier as I could use auto transfer switches or a simple manual DPDT switch or whatever. Thoughts? Thoughts?