We were at the midpoint of our short break here in Ireland, granted, we live here, and most of the places we're staying in are already known to us, but we're living fully in the van and a few things have happened since we set off.

Now, the water pump in this van has been the bane of my life since purchasing the vehicle. It was leaking when we picked it up (upon reflection, I think it still might be, I'll get into that in a bit), and it worked intermittently with no real reason as to why it stopped when it did, it just did. The last major occurrence before this one was just last weekend when we were staying in Portrush. Couldn’t get a drop of water out of it at all, however, when we parked up in Coleraine at the local ASDA store, to grab some supplies, it decided now was the time to do its thang! I’d forgotten I’d left the tap on in the kitchen a few days earlier, so when we got back, the van was surrounded by water as the grey tank tap was open too.

The only way we’ve been able to access water was through our 2.5-litre bottle. I always bring it anyway, so I can boil that up for a cuppa, but now the dogs need water, I have dishes to do, a right old pain in the hoopa-doopa.

Well, we'd been away 'proper' this time, and with a water pump behaving itself I was happy and content, until day 2. the bloody thing stopped again. To say I was annoyed would be an understatement. 

It stopped just when Kathy, my wife, was about to have a shower. With that, the very next morning I headed to my friend's house which wasn't too far away from where we were staying and I set to work stripping down the water system to see what was going on.

Now, you have to realise I've spent £500 on out-of-warranty repairs from the same company from who I'd bought this van, I've been told the pump was a very difficult item to get hold of, and that it was botched together, under difficult circumstances, and that I was lucky they had the skills to do such a repair. That was the first attempt at a fix that cost me £350. The second attempt was a call-out, repairs were done at the home. Some sensor was calibrated incorrectly and it has now been resolved and shouldn't give me any problems, a further £150 spent. So, a total of £500.

I'm no expert in these areas by any means, but I would regard myself as a bit of a smart cookie, and an even faster learner. I've even built a campervan from scratch (see previous posts). I peeled back the seating area to reveal the water tank and pump, just to see what was going on. To my mind, the original water pump is in situ. It has not been replaced at all. There were loads of holes from misaligned screws being taken out and put in again from the previous repair attempts, the heating duct stuffed under the floor instead of being reattached to the heat vents (I had wondered why no airflow was coming out of those for a while), and a damp floor (concerning).

I was barely into dismantling the water tank from its fixing when I just happened to jiggle the outlet pipe that feeds the main system, and it kicked in straightaway. A loose pipe! This whole damn time!

It was reading as an empty tank and cutting out, even though the tank was full, an airlock in the system prevented it from burning out the pump, smart, and annoying at the same time.

I still moved the tank out of the way to grab a picture of this ‘hard to repair’ pump and found a replacement on eBay for £63. I’m not buying it just yet, but it’s handy to know that I could fix this whole thing myself if need be.

With everything working, I set about putting everything back together in the way it should have been, with due care and attention. I’m ordering a plastic board to stick under the van around the water tank to prevent road surface water from being sprayed up in there causing me future problems.

With all that done, we headed off to another beach location in Culdaff, County Donegal to watch a glorious sunset together, with Milo (one of our dogs) doing his usual “I’m off on an adventure” antics, confident that finally, we have water flowing as it always should have been