Water Pumps
Can anyone tell me if it is possible to buy a water pump in France that will fit a UK caravan. Are the connections the same throughout Europe. I am planning to tour for several weeks in France and have considered buying a pump as a spare but am reluctant to do so if I can get one that will fit should mine become faulty.
Regards
CM
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Am I right in thinking that a phone call to Red Pennant insurance would get a replacement pump sent out? Has anyone any experience of how long that takes?
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We had ours develop a fault last year while in the Lot. Luckily it was under guarentee and the makers sent us out a new one. We did have to stay on site for a week to wait for it though.
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We carry quite a few spares, including a pump, we are on out third in 10 years, we do use our own facilities a lot.
As well as possibly having a problem finding an accessory shop, you may find spares are very expensive. A new tap cost us 80 euros in Austria, a Thetford freah up kit was at least £30 more in France than here.
Some parts are just not obtainable abroad, yes Red Pennant will ship spares to you, you just pay the cost of the parts. On one trip we had 2 shipments, a gas hose, and a complete set of 20 wheel bolts.
Italy is particularly tricky for spares in our experience.
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I caried a spare pump for about 25 years and the designs all changed! Never used it. I am sure that you can get a dealer to post one but you would have to hang around. Chasing down suppliers when abroad can be quite difficult. Nowadays I take no spares because so many things could go wrong but fortunately seldom do. I would think the toilet flush pump is more likely to fail based on my own experience but a water pump failure is extremely inconvenient. Pity they don't fit foot pumps any more!
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Re my post above I'm having another go as I WON'T be outwitted by the unwieldy software on this board
I have just replaced the flush pump in my son's Thetford loo. £13.00 delivered in 48 hrs from Amazon. Dead easy due to the sensible design of the loo and Thetford's excellent 'How to...' video on their website.
The seals on the old one had leaked and the motor rusted solid.
I'll try again to post the (resized) photo which defeated me last time......
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Only problem with carrying a spare is the price. Just had a look for the water pump in our Bailey. The cheapest on eBay was £75 and it was not clear from the description / pictures if that was the correct one. The cheapest I could find that I was happy as being a direct slot in replacement was £85 + delivery. Still cheaper than from Bailey they wanted £175 for the same product. There should be a law about such ridiculous mark ups.
Before anyone has a go at Bailey, Swift were no better on our previous van. Charging £5 for a small plastic component that must have cost 2p to, produce, and I could not source that anywhere else.
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I do carry a spare water pump but only because I sort of inherited one, and I would not go out of my way to purchase a spare. Abroad if it happened I could quite easily muddle through until I was near or could get one in my travels, after all its only a submersible with a long lead attached so anything compatible would do.
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We've carried a spare submersible (just pump and leads rather than the whole assembly) for years and actually did need it last year - but in the UK.....
It was less than £20 from ebay IIRC and is a generic one with less flow than the original but fine for emergencies.
I think a pump is one of the few things that it's difficult (though not impossible) to manage without.
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Depends which pump you want to have, it need not be exactly the same one as is in the van, as long as the spec is equivalent.
We carry a Shureflow as a spare, under £50 from our local accessory shop, so not too bad.
If we had no working pump, we would either have to buy one, get one sent out, or cut short our trip, for us it is an essential.
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It is a rather long story, but since you asked........
When we got our van back in 2008, we decided to fit locking bolts on the alloy wheels, these we bought from our dealer.
Some 3-4 years later we went to Italy via Austria, and on arrival at Lake Garda I noticed that one of these locking bolts had broken off, the remains of it was still in place.
Despite carrying several spares, the 4 original bolts were not in the spares box. Yes, it took a while to be allowed to forget that by OH!!
So we hunted around locally for a bolt, without success. It was coming up on Easter, so we tried some MH dealers further afield, without success
We contacted Swift, who did offer to post us a spare, though not till after the Easter break, and ironically discovered that the bolts were actually made in Italy, and the factory, now closed for Easter, was only about 80 miles away.
Meantime I had extracted the remains of the bolt and could see it had sheared off, it was not loose. I then removed one of the other locking ones, and one of the originals to compare them. From reading the markings and and some research I found that the steel used in the locking ones was much weaker than the originals, and probably the reason why it had failed.
Having drawn a blank in Italy, and keen to get on with our trip, we contacted Red Pennant so see if they could get bolts to us faster than Swift.
After discussion about the problem with the inferior material of the locking ones they said we should not only replace all the locking ones, but also the other 4 on the affected wheel as they may have suffered, and if doing that then perhaps we should just change ALL the bolts to be on the safe side! Sending us 20 bolts would cost no more than sending 8.
These were dispatched that same day by courier, and arrived 2 days later.
We no longer have locking wheel bolts.
Told you it was a long story!
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In defence of the manufacturer prices of spare parts you must remember that they hold vast stocks if you consider every part for every model back as far in time as they choose to go. This takes space, which is expensive, and also is some sort of system to tell staff what stocks they have and where they are located, and to search out a single part to dispatch as a one-off transaction.
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I take your point Nav, but the whale pump in question is available from a lot of other sources at over £70 less. It is used by a lot of different caravan manufacturers and also in boats. If it was 10 years or so after the van had been made and they were stocking something that could not be easily sourced elsewhere, the ridiculously high price might be more acceptable. As it is they are in my opinion just being greedy and presumably hoping folk won't research prices.
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As it is they are in my opinion just being greedy and presumably hoping folk won't research prices.
That's exactly what happens Steve.
When in the marine retail business folk would come in and browse all the GPS's, Radar, Cookers, Bilge pumps, Sea toilets etc.etc., requesting information on all the features and taking up hours of my staff's time wanting demonstrations (not the sea toilets of course - for those they just went through the motions). Then having picked our brains and played with equipment they went away and bought cheaper online where the seller didn't have to cover the cost of maintaining a chandlery, customer parking, providing customer service and employing knowledgeable staff.
Many of these online sellers supply from 'consignment stock' which remains the property of the manufacturer but is held in their warehouse and which they don't pay for until they ship it to the end user. They do not have to invest capital up front before they sell an item.
Some hold no stock and merely advertise the product and transfer the end user's details to the manufacturer who ships it using the advertiser's details on labels and delivery notes.
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I know many people have already answered but I thought it might be useful to add that we replaced a whale pump and bought the replacement from Narbonne Accessories. They have a chain of accessory shops across France, and are generally very helpful.
As part of trying to fix it my other half took it apart and found it to be full of black gunge, along with the pipework, so we now rarely use our caravan water system preferring to drink fresh water drawn from the site taps, and use the sanitary blocks for showers, loo and washing up.
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<<....other half took it apart and found it to be full of black gunge, along with the pipework, so we now rarely use our caravan water system preferring to drink fresh water drawn from the site taps, ....>
I never suffered any ill effects from using tank water for everything and religiously used Puritabs in every tank fill, then one day I had to go under the m/h to check something and to my horror the transparent pipes were black with internal sediment and gunge. I replaced the pipes but ever since have only used fresh water for tea, coffee, boiling veg etc. from a 5L 'day container'. However, I still wash, shower, brush teeth and wash up with water from the main tank without 'issues'.
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Hi this might be a bit late in the day for you but we bought a universal pump from Towsure for less than £10.00. We were in the South of France when it packed up on us and was glad I had decided to have bought a spare pump. It took 5 minutes to wire it up. It served us the rest of the holiday. I bought a new pump when I got home and I still carry my spare with me. Hope it helps.
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