How do you hook up to city water?

by Alyce

(Benicia, CA USA)

Question: I tried to hook up to city water and when I turned on the water I had water leaking from under the motorhome. Does that mean that a hose is disconnected or was I doing something wrong?

Answer: The water under the motorhome can be a number of things. The best case is that your fresh water tank is full and the overflow hose is releasing water. The worst case is that you have a broken fresh water tank. Between the two extremes, many things could be the source of the issue.

First rule out the obvious. Most RVs have a lever/switch that directs the water to fill the fresh water tank versus going directly into the RV faucets. If you want to run directly off the city water source, you may have to flip a lever/switch to do so. If this hasn’t been done, it could just be that your fresh water tank is full and you are trying to add water where there is no capacity – thus overflow.

After you have eliminated the full tank theory, I would crawl under the motorhome and attempt to look for the source of the leak. Just make sure that there is no way for the motorhome to start rolling or for it to drop down on top of you. Those are our thoughts given that we can’t see the problem in person.

Comments for How do you hook up to city water?

Jun 20, 2012 water leak
by: Paulette


This happened to us once, what I found is that the screened washer (looks like a little cone) had been put in backwards and it was pressing a valve (or something) that was at the top of the water inlet. I reversed the washer and everything worked fine, no more leaking.