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Episode 196 – RV Water Lines Made Simple: How to Replace a Faucet Without Leaks

13th February 2026 • The Smart RVer: DIY RV Maintenance and Repair • Eric Stark

Eric Stark: 00:00:00

In staying on the road today, we're going to talk about RV water lines made simple, how to replace a faucet without leaks. And then in quick tips, I'm going to give you two links to two digital catalogs today. And these are going to be must have catalogs for every RVer.

And then an RV Envy. We're going to explore RV water fitting repair kits. We've already been selling them.

We've made a new addition to it, and I want to share that with you as well. I'm Eric Stark. Welcome to the Smart rver podcast. If you'd rather be camping than sitting a repair shop, you're in the right place.

I'll walk you through practical DIY maintenance and repairs that keep you on the road. Today is episode 196. So welcome back, Smart RVers. So we got a great show today. A lot of good information about the water and replacing a faucet.

So I'm going to probably go through here a little bit quicker than normally I'd like to, but there's a lot of ground to cover and I'm going to do a little history as well. Kind of explain things more than just doing the faucet, but kind of what leads up to it.

Your panic reaction when you open a cabinet and you see all these water lines screaming at you, hey, look at me, look at me. Causing confusion. Right? So we're going to walk you through that.

Whether you're a seasoned RV expert or just a newbie, you know, we're going to make sure you got the confidence and the know how to do this. So as a reminder, subscribe to us on your favorite podcast channel, iTunes, Spotify, iHeartradio. We're on them all.

So you can not only subscribe, but you can share it with your friends as well, because everybody needs to know about this DIY maintenance and repair for their RVs. So, RV water lines made simple, how to replace a faucet without leaks. When you're all done, that's what's important.

We're doing this episode on the premise that I'm going to be replacing two faucets in my rv, the kitchen faucet and the bathroom faucet. And so I'm going to be doing that. Not right now, because my RV is winterized.

Like today, it's 13 degrees out, little bit cold for doing that kind of stuff. So I'm going to wait until the weather warms up where we don't have any freezing temps at night. But I'm laying it out right Now.

And so this is kind of, you know, gets it going in my head, too. What I'm going to be doing this spring is a couple of things on my list. I got the faucets on order. They'll be here next week, which is pretty cool.

Then they'll sit in my trailer until it's time to install them. So, anyways, I'm going to be doing this at my house as well. I'm not going to be doing it here at the shop.

And so I'm not going to have all these extra fittings. I'm not going to have any specialty tools or anything out of the ordinary.

I'm going to basically have the same things that you have when you're doing this at home. And that's kind of the purpose of this. There's a couple reasons why I'm doing this episode, but that's one of them. We're doing it the same way.

And so when I tackle an RV repair on my rv, I always do it at home. I never bring it to the shop. I just like doing it there just, you know, just the way it is. So it's kind of like what you're doing at home as well.

So you understand as well when you.

When you start digging into something like this, like maybe you've already opened up a cabinet or taken a panel off and you see all these water lines, you're like, oh, my God, what the heck is going on here? Look at all this stuff. And you start screaming, ah, they're going to get me. Well, they're not. They're just water lines.

And what makes it more difficult is they're in these tight places. It's, you know, spaces. It's hard to maneuver sometimes.

So just make gives you that feeling like if you touch something, you're going to break it, then you're going to create a leak and it's going to ruin your weekend. Well, that's not really how it is.

What you need to do is just get in there, look at the cabinet, open it up, or the space you're going to be working in, and you look at all the spaghetti of plumbing and just say, hey, you know what? I just need to calm down and look at it. Maybe even mark some of the lines.

If you're not sure, just put some tape on them and maybe a little note where it goes to. And after a minute or two, you'll realize that there's not as many lines as you think.

And they're pretty straightforward where they go and what they do. And you look at the fittings and okay, this has got that. This has one, a crimp on fitting. This one has a flare it fitting.

All right, I got it figured out. I know what water lines go where I can do this.

So just for reference here, this is kind of going back a little bit to the beginning of buying an rv, basically, maybe the first day he ever had one. The RV has two ways of getting water into the plumbing.

First, you can hook it up to city water, which is, you know, the campground, your house, a pedestal. Wherever you're hooking up a garden or not, a garden hose, a water hose from a outside source to the side of your rv.

That's what we refer to as city water. And then you have your fresh water tank inside the RV that has water in there.

And your water pump pulls from the fresh water tank and then fills those water lines inside the rv. So even though it comes in from two different sources, it's still just one set of water lines in the rv. There's not two sets of water lines.

And you know, sometimes people think that, and that's what kind of makes it more scary to do. There's like, I don't want to touch this stuff. I don't know what's what.

And you look at all these water lines, it always sounds and looks a lot worse than what it really is. So that's why I'm letting you know about this. And, you know, the only thing you really have to know is that the water lines are pressurized.

When the pump's on, the city water's hooked up, and we'll get to more of that in a minute. And about fittings and some of those things, don't panic. This stuff's pretty easy.

It's just you got to take a moment to kind of see where it is, what it is, and how to tackle it. You know, my point about doing this home is, you know, I'm going to basically be using the same types of tools you guys have.

Now, I've been a mechanic in the past, and I do a lot of crazy DIY stuff around the house. You know, I could build a house if I wanted to. So I have a lot of tools. But when it comes to RV stuff, tools are pretty basic.

You don't need a whole lot of tools. You don't need a bunch of specialty tools.

In fact, for a job like this, I'm going to say you might need an adjustable wrench, you know, a crescent wrench style wrench, or a set of small wrenches. Probably not though a pair of pliers and also channel lock style pliers, maybe a Phillips head flathead screwdriver.

A driver with some bits, you know, like a drill with some bits or a driver with some bits. A flashlight or a headlamp. You know those things you put on your head. A towel or towels and a little pan and a bowl to catch some water.

When you disconnect the water line and your phone because it has a camera in it. And taking pictures is like cheap insurance. You can take a photo, it's there, you don't have to try to remember where it's at.

And also, speaking of cheap insurance, having some seals around that work in your water fittings. Most of the seals are the same.

Whether you have best packs, you have flare it, you know, if it's a half inch female swivel connection, the seal that goes on there is probably pretty standard. We sell them part of our kits, which I'll get to in a little bit here. Yeah, so it's pretty basic there.

So those things are inexpensive and they're just good to have on hand. Okay, so before we really get into anything here, we've got to make sure that this is going to be a boring, uneventful process.

So make sure your city water is turned off if you're connected to it. So if you have the hose going to the side of your RV and it's filling your RV with water or you know, the water lines, not your rv.

That'd be funny, right? All that water. Have a little boat in there floating around. Go fishing now. Just kidding. Make sure there's no city water hooked up or turned on.

If you're on the water pump. Make sure the water pumps turned off.

Because what will happen is if you go to open up a fitting, crack a line, your water will start spraying out like crazy, you know, and it won't ever stop. You'll be waiting. Well, I just got to let the pressure to go away. Well, the pressure won't go away because it's under pressure.

So make sure you turn those off. And now on that water pump, when you turn it off, if you're concerned about somebody else, turn it on.

Or you might bump the switch because it's where you're working. Tape the switch down in the off position or pull the fuse for the water pump, whether it's on the pump or or in the fuse panel.

That way it can't come back on. And then open up your faucets. If you're going to be doing two faucets, one Faucet, open up either one or both. Both sides, hot and cold.

That'll let all the water drain out. It relieves the pressure. That way there's no surprises. You're not going to crack that line like I said, and water comes spraying out.

Now, you will get a little bit of water, but it's not going to spray out. It's going to dribble out. So don't panic there.

If you're doing a bathroom faucet, it's not nearly as scary because generally you have two water lines going up to the faucet. Pretty straightforward. But if you're doing the kitchen faucet, the water pump might be nearby. There's lines that are going to go to the tanks.

And you might have a winterizing kit on the water pump, which has another line, another valve, another fitting, a little lever, and say, oh, my gosh, what is going on here? Don't panic. It may look complicated, but it's pretty simple. But you are going to see Pex tubing, and it might be blue, might be red, might be both.

You might see white. You might see some old gray quest fitting. Depending on the year of your rv, you might see some braided flexible lines.

They might be white braided lines. They might be just vinyl lines. They might be stainless steel braided.

They generally will have fittings on the end kind of built into them, like what you'd see in a house. That's okay. And then the fittings, of course, are plastic.

Some are brass, but they can be fragile sometimes, depending on the age and how they're installed. Sometimes fittings are put in at these really tight spots. There's a lot of strain on them. So sometimes just touching it might create a leak.

And that's what we're going to talk about some of these little things. But don't panic. All this stuff is normal RV stores. Most RV stores are going to carry all of this and some of the braided lines.

Like if it's a stainless steel braid line, you can get that at a hardware store.

If your RV store doesn't have it, just make sure the collar on it or the nut is taller because sometimes those braid lines have very short nuts and they won't screw onto the fittings because of the way they're designed. They're designed for brass fittings and not plastic. So make sure it has a tall collar. Then when we're tightening things up, we'll get to it again.

We just don't want to over tighten them. In case you're thinking about that discuss that. Get it just so. Okay, so now we're going to get into removing the faucet. So we're digging into it now.

You know, if you're not in your rv, you know, imagine you're there and you've looked at this, and maybe you've already seen some of this. Maybe you've done one faucet and it was kind of a hassle. Now you're thinking about doing another one.

But visualize it so you want to put a towel underneath the faucet in that area where you can be working, or towels. Depending on the what's going on in there, it might take several to kind of COVID it.

You know, one of the reasons why it's good to do that is one, to collect the water so it doesn't run under the walls and keep things wet. And two, when you're all done, you want to be dry in there.

And so the more water you catch in the beginning, the better it is, because you don't want water to be on the floor. It'll dry. But how will you know if you have a leak? Sometimes it's harder to tell.

That's why you want to have the towels or a little pan to catch that water. And sometimes more water will come out than what you anticipate. You know, depending on the line, it might drop down a little bit.

You might get a half a quart of water, a little cup. It just depends. So just be prepared for that. Here's an important thing, too.

When you're loosening the fittings on the faucet, if you can, it's easier said than done because you're in a tight space.

If you hold the water line in place so it doesn't twist or drop down, it's better because sometimes the water line can turn and it might damage something else, or it might drop down, or you. Or you let it fall, even though it's not falling very far.

Just the way that with the water can maybe spin it on another fitting and then that creates a leak. Be surprised sometimes that other leaks will creep into this. So that's why it's. Being careful is part of the process.

If you go in there like a gorilla, you might be replacing a whole lot of fittings or re clamping connections or retightening things. So try to avoid that and also to give you some more room in there if you're cramped for space. This may or may not apply to your rv.

Sometimes there's drawers you can take out, get them out of the way. And might not directly be able to help you, but it might indirectly help you.

And also, if you have a panel a, sometimes there's inspection panels you can take off, maybe four screws, get that out of the way. It's easier to do some of these things up front than once you're into it, you know, you're less likely to, oh, my gosh, I better take that panel off.

If you already have it off, it's out of the way, it's done, and then you're not as in a big of a rush doing it, less likely of damaging something, yanking on something you shouldn't have. So you're going to get into this spot and try to make it easier to get there.

Now you're doing it so you've moved all that stuff, everything out of your way. You've seen what you have. And you're disconnecting the water lines.

You drop one down, you unscrew it, and remember, they turn to the left to loosen, right to tighten. So left to loosen, it drops down, some water leaks out. Okay, good. Now you go to the second line. Do the same thing.

Now, this sounds easier as I'm walking you through this, but it's going to be harder in real life in a lot of cases or in some cases. I don't want to scare you and say a lot of them. Like I said, bathroom faucets are easy. Some kitchen faucets are simple, too.

They have an access panel that takes you right into the back of them, depending on how your RV is laid out. So you take those lines and now they're there. And another thing, too, I should have said this earlier.

If your water lines are the same color and you're not going to be able to tell how they go back on because of the way they're designed, sometimes they could cross over hot and cold. I mean, it's not the end of the world if you hook them up backwards. Just your faucet will be opposite.

But you can put a piece of electrical tape on the cold line or the hot line. You pick, and you can even mark it on the wall or the bottom of the sink. You know, cold is electrical tape, cold is black tape.

I have a lot of colored tape at home. Red, bling, blue, yellow, all the different colors of electrical tape. So I can mark things accordingly. And that makes it easier.

And you just have to mark one side, mark the cold or the hot. And then, you know, so that way when you take off the water lines, if they do cross over, it's not a Guessing game.

You just, oh, there's the cold one. It's got the tape on it. Put it back up.

So now after you take the faucet out, you want to clean off the counter, get any silicone off or any silicones or sealant some of them might have put in there, the mold, the dirt, the nasty stuff, get it all spotless, clean, set your new faucet in.

And as I say that I'm thinking about, I've been describing a, a faucet that basically has two stems that come out of it, which is kind of a more common faucet in RVs.

Although newer faucets have a single stem, so a double stem faucet, they always have half inch pipe thread, male pipe thread, and they're always 4 inch or 8 inch on center. Maybe that's the faucet you have.

Now if you have a single lever faucet and it just has one spout coming out of it, you know, might be an inch and a quarter in diameter, that'll have pigtails coming off of it. And an RV faucet will always have half inch male pipe thread on those pigtails.

And I say RV because on the jungle website and the garage sale website, they sell faucets as rv, but they do not have the half inch male pipe thread that will throw you for a curve if you get the wrong faucet. So make sure you got half inch male pipe thread because 99% of the time that's how the RV is plumbed.

Half inch pipe thread fitting throughout RVs are pretty clear that way. Propane is like 3, 8 flare and plumbing is half inch pipe thread. Whether you have one or the other is kind of the same thing.

And you know, I should have said something about that as well. When you're before or after you disconnect the water lines, you have to undo the nuts that are holding the faucet to the counter. They're round nuts.

They have a little deal or a deal on each side of it where you can get your hand on there to twist it. Or a pair of pliers. It might be awkward to get to by hand or pliers, but it's very doable.

And Home Depot, Lowe's, Ace Hardware, probably your local hardware store, they have tools for doing that. They're inexpensive. They might make your life easier to use one of the tools.

So you can check out the tools before you ever start, maybe peek at your faucet, see what you have. They even have tools for the single connection faucet or just has one. One hole in the counter like that.

Inch and a quarter nut or the thread size, inch and a quarter. So they have tools for that as well. And either way you have to take that nut off to get the faucet out. Or nuts. They're not any more difficult.

One isn't worse than the other to do. They're both pretty straightforward. And your new faucet, which you're already going to have it more than likely. We'll show you how it's put together.

I would buy the faucet first, and that way you have it there so you've made sure the counter's clear and clean. Nothing there. You set the faucet in, it fits, it's going to work. There's not any issues.

The stems are going through the counter, the water lines are right there. Okay, you're good to go. And. And there's no issues.

The stems being the same size makes it easier because sometimes those water lines don't have a lot of play in it and you have to actually extend it a little bit, which is kind of a pain, but it's doable. So it sets down in there. You hook up your. You put on your nuts to clamp it to the counter.

This is easier with two people in a lot of cases because you're not going to be able to hang onto the faucet. Put your arm up on the bottom of the faucet, the top of the faucet, to hold it in place while you tighten it.

Although if you take your time and tighten it up slowly, if you're by yourself, you can generally get it good and tight without that faucet moving. And that's just it. You don't want the faucet. You know, you get all. Get it all tight.

You hook up your water lines, you stand up and look at it, and it's crooked. You know, one side's right next to the sink, the other side's off by three quarters of an inch. Oh, man, what did I do? Then you got to go do it again.

So make sure you get it tight and straight. Look at it before you put the water lines on. So if you have to adjust it, you can adjust it.

Having a second person is easier sometimes just to hold it in place while you tighten it up. But it's doable by yourself. So you do that. You connect your water lines and this is critical. Take your time putting on the water lines.

Make sure you're not cross threading them. We hear about this all the time. People buy a new faucet, they return it. Look, the threads are ruined.

It didn't come out of the box that way, I guarantee it. It's because they're trying to put the fitting on crooked because they maybe they can't see it.

They're doing it with one hand, they're not paying attention to it. So eyeball that water line, make sure it's straight going right up to the bottom of the faucet. Take the fitting and make sure you can spin it freely.

Don't push the water line. Pull the fitting and put the fitting on the thread and turn it to the right slowly. And it's going to go on very easy. It's not going to go on tight.

So it should be able to go on by hand, you know, two, three, four turns, pretty easy. And then it's going to start tightening down on the seal. So get it hand tied on the seal and then give it another half, three, quarter or full turn.

If you can't do it by hand, do it with a pair of pliers or a wrench flare. It does make a wrench for their fittings. Makes it easier in some cases, but pliers do work. Just be careful not to scratch up the fitting.

So, you know, little burrs on there and you go to tighten it up or loosen it. That's it. You do both fittings, both water lines, and you've installed the faucet. Now we got to check for leaks though.

You're not just going to walk away from that. That would be a bad thing. That's what a bad technician would do. And you guys are the smart RVers. So we're going to do it the smart way.

So you have the water lines hooked up. Now we're coming down to the pressure test. This is it. This is where the drum roll comes in, right?

And everybody's looking the intensity of the moment. The crowd is cheering, hoping it all works out well. So you decide, okay, I'm going to turn on my water pump. I'm not going to hook up to city water.

I'm just going to do my water pump. That's fine. But you might say I'm going to hook up city water. Either way is good. Just remember to make sure you do it slow.

Like if you're doing city water, maybe have someone else turn it on while you're eyeballing the fitting. Because here's what can happen. You turn on the water and they just turn it on all the way. You're not paying close attention.

All of a sudden you hear this spraying Noise. It's a catastrophic failure. Water spraying everywhere, because you didn't notice that the seal fell out of the fitting and now water.

So that's why two people are paying very close attention to it. When you have the water pump using the switch, you don't want that to happen.

So you go slow at that and make sure there's no major leaks right away, like a seal falling out of the fitting. You didn't notice it. And by the way, always put new seals in those fittings when you're doing this.

Whenever you're working on plumbing, throwing in a new seal, they're cheap, it's easy, good insurance. All right, so you turn on the water, you don't see any leaks. And also, I leave the faucets open. The hot and cold, I just leave open.

That way the air comes out first, and then water will start coming out. So turn the faucets off.

You let it sit eyeball underneath the sink, and use a flashlight and make sure you've already dried off the fitting so you're not thinking a leak is there. When it's just old water and use a flashlight, you can always spot the leaks easier so there's no leaks.

Turn the hot and cold on, maybe one at a time.

Turn on the cold for, you know, 10 seconds, 20 seconds, turn it off, Just check for leaks, Turn on the hot, do the same thing, check for leaks, and then maybe run them both. And then it's up to you. You can leave the pump on for another hour and make sure there's no leaks. You can listen for the pump.

If it makes that noise, starts to run, then you know there could be a leak. It might be another leak. Maybe not what you did, but another leak.

If you're using the city water, just turn it on, bring it up to pressure, do the exact same thing, check for leaks, and if there's no leaks, you did it. You're done. Now you are a certified RV technician. Well, not really, but you're one step closer.

You install the faucet, no leaks, and that's totally awesome. And that's what it's all about. The smart RVer taking care of their RV the do it yourselfer way and doing it right.

Okay, so as a bonus, I'm going to have a sheet, a checklist sheet that it's going to be downloadable and it's going to be in the. The link will be in the description of this podcast.

So if you want to, you can download the sheet first before you ever start and kind of give you an Idea. And I'd also recommend just looking in the cabinets, seeing what you have cooking before you ever jump into it. Get your new faucets first.

Maybe take a picture of them if you're unsure when you go to the store so they can show you the right one, get you set up right. All right, that brings us to quick tips. And today in the quick tips, this is going to be really simple. We're to going.

I'm going to have two links in this description or the description of this podcast that are for two separate catalogs. And these are major distributor catalogs. And by the way, you can't buy from these companies.

One of them does have their phone number on the back, but they won't sell to you. They only sell to dealers like myself, RV store owners, dealerships, ever, how you want to look at it, whatever you want to call it.

But they don't sell to the retail public. But these catalogs are chock full of products and some of it, you know, as duplicates. They carry the same brands.

That's kind of normal with distributors in the RV industry, but it gives you an idea of what's available for your rv. Like if you want to do a faucet upgrade, you can see all the faucets, everything in there, in all these faucets are RV faucets.

So they're not residential or something else that you're going to have to buy fittings and try to convert it to be rv. They're made for it. Everything's rv and so there's no prices, but it gives you an idea.

And so if you're interested in anything, after you get the catalogs, you look at it, hey, you know, and you can use this link forever. Just keep it handy. That way you have access to this catalog. You can put it on your phone, your tablet, whatever you want to do.

Then if you have any questions about anything, you can give me a call. The phone number will be in the description, as I said. Or you can go to the smartrver.com and use the Contact Us page.

In RV Envy, we're going to talk about the water fitting repair kits that we've put together for RVers. Now, these fitting kits are absolutely awesome. And actually I have one of these kits at home in my rv.

That's why I don't need all the fittings when I do a repair job at home, because I just have the kit basically and I go through and I grab the fittings and build my own kit. Basically, it's the same kit that we sell on our website. So it's nothing else.

I'm not like holding back some fittings that I'm not going to tell you about. Oh, I don't want to let them know about this secret fitting I have. It's not like that.

So it's basically the same thing actually, without all the hoopla. I don't get a bag or anything nice with it. I just get fittings not the same. But yeah, fittings are the same. So it all works.

These fittings are great to have.

And the reason why is, are these fitting kits, if you're at home or you're out on the road, you're camping, you get a water leak, a fitting brake, something like that, you'll have PEX line, you'll have clear tubing, you'll have white tubing, you'll have all the fittings, you'll be able to fix it on your own.

So if you look at your RV and see what your fitting combination is, whether you have all flare it, where you have all PEX type or clamp type fittings, you can buy the kit accordingly. And we've added a new set of fittings to this. They're called Aqualocks. They used to be called ctech.

They're kind of like, oh, I can't believe it, I just forgot the name of them. Oh, well, it doesn't matter. They're push in fittings. So you don't need to have any special tools. You don't need to have two hands.

You can push the line right into the fitting or push the fitting onto the line and they lock in and they make a great watertight seal. And these are good enough where they could actually put behind walls in an rv. There's a residential version of it, Shark bite.

So Sharkbite fittings, it's the same thing as the Aqualock, except shark bites have brass in them and they're a much heavier fitting. So for RVs, they're not the same thing because they're too heavy.

You start putting all these shark bite fittings in there, your water lines are probably going to start breaking and leaking because of the weight bouncing down the road. You don't want that. So the Aqualock fittings are the solution for that.

And the reason why we're doing these is because sometimes a fitting can be so hard to get to that all you can do is just like kind of push a water line and there you go. So that, you know, you maybe cut off the old fitting, push on a new fitting and push another water Line into it. Let's say it's a coupler or a tee.

That'll make life easier because that can be a disaster. And, you know, we found ourselves in those situations working on RVs. Everybody does. It's like water. I mean, wires and things.

Sometimes, you know, it's one arm, you know, stretch out as far as it can be, or you can't see anything. You're going by feel, and it can be a nightmare. So these will make it easier. So these are available on sunpromfg.com now. That is our website.

I've never really explained that. I've just said it's ours, mine, blah, blah, blah. But the Smart RVer is part of Highway 93 RV and SunPro Manufacturing. It's all one company.

And Sunpromfg.com is our website where we've been selling sunshade products on it for ages, for decades. And we've been slowly adding different products that we present through the podcast. So they are available there. So check them out.

You guys will absolutely love it. These kits are ideal to have in your RV in case of an emergency. And if you find a kit and you need it modified, you can give us a call.

We can make some modifications to it to personalize it, but they're curated pretty good right now, so it's a pretty good kit. Okay. As one final reminder as we come to the end of the show, sign up for our newsletter.

As I said in our previous podcast, that we're going to be getting on the ball on this. Some people have been signing up, not getting newsletters. We just haven't been good at that. So we are changing the game here.

We've been working on things on the backside, trying to make the podcast better, and the newsletter is going to be part of it. More information for you, and it's not just going to be the humdrum garbage in your inbox. We don't want to do that, right?

To give you something of value every time. So our next episode is going to be episode 197.

And today it escapes me what that's going to be about, but it's going to be a good one, that I guarantee. Episode 197. So that's going to do it for today's episode of the Smart rver podcast. Thanks for listening.

I'm Eric Stark, and if you'd rather be camping than sitting in a repair shop, you're in the right place. Until next time, take care of the little things and enjoy the trip.

More Episodes

Episode 196 – RV Water Lines Made Simple: How to Replace a Faucet Without Leaks