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Help! Opened up tap to drain water out of my Freedom caravan yesterday and it sounded as if the pump was running. Problem is water is all out but the pump won't stop. My battery runs off a solar roof panel and the only way I can stop the pump now is to turn the solar panel off.  My caravan is a bit of a bodge up from previous owners and the pump would seem to be located behind the kitchen unit and is not accessible. I have a water heater which has never worked since I've had the van but that obviously had a lot of water in it. Crept in today and turned the solar system back on again and heard a groan from the pump again. Really don't know what to do and hoping someone may have some idea.

Di

Di

sounds like you have one of these inline switches,if there is no pressure it will keep running the pump.

Does the pump stop if you refill the system? If so it seems you have a pressurised water system  . The only simple answer is to trace the wiring feeding the pump and fit a switch in it. If the pump keeps running when you refill and the taps are off it is probably a stuck or jammed microswitch.

 Hope this helps.

     Pete.

There is usually a "pump" switch on the caravan control panel; ours has one.

I take care not to let the pump run dry, and always turn the switch to OFF when removing the water barrel for refilling.

Allowing the pump to run dry will eventually cause it to fail, and a replacement is quite expensive.

Bertie.

pressure switch or micro switch the pump will run if there is no water and the tap is open. Close the tap should stop a microswitch system. Have a pump isolating switch solves either system.

FM

Thanks for all your suggestions. I have come to the conclusion that this is a 'job too far' for a 60 something widow to tackle so it it will have to go off to a caravan doctor at some stage.

Spent most of yesterday trying to work out the problem. Filled the system up again and tried that. Fine, the pump doesn't start up. With kitchen taps  turn off I drained through the tap under the caravan but for some reason which I didn't expect that brings in the pump. After trying various different things I turned off the 12volt (which keeps my solar panel trickle charging the batteries) and let the water out again. But I am now faced with the option of either having water in the system through the winter and running the solar panel to keep batteries in good condition (and then having the pump start up) or turning that off, draining the water and not being able to run the solar panel! There is no means of switching off the pump that I can see and I cannot even locate the pump as it is well hidden behind the kitchen units and completely inaccessible. I have not had a problem when using the van (apart from the pump being noisy) so I guess the pump has used this as an opportunity to go wrong!

Di

Hi

Sounds like you have a pressure water system, so when the pressure drops, ie you drain the system, the pump will run to try to build up the pressure.

Presumably you don't have a control panel with a "pump" switch, which would solve the problem, but you say that you can "switch off the 12 volts". If that is so, then I would expect that it would switch off the outflow from the battey, but if you say you have a solar trickle charger, that should be unaffected, and continue to charge.

If the whole assembly was supplied with the van, I would be inclined to telephone Freedom for advice, before chancing your arm with a dealer.

Best of luck

FM