Simple Fix to Broken Pex behind toilet in 320s

crosstrnr

On my last trip out I discovered that my water pump was not pulling water from the tank. (The system ran fine while connected to city water.) After too long spent in diagnosis, I determined that there was an air leak in one of the PEX elbows behind the toilet. I really did not want to attempt the access panel route found in this post from a few years ago.

My brother-in-law came up with a rather elegant solution:

1. We drilled a hole from the sink area into the area behind the toilet.
2. We ran a new PEX pipe through the hole and out the access panel, where we attached the NPT end with a crimp connector.
3. We pulled the PEX pipe back through the hole and connected to the intake side of the water pump. No elbows -- just took advantage of the natural curve of the PEX pipe from the roll.
4. Back under the sink, we cut out a section of the old PEX pipe and connected the new PEX line into the existing line from the tank.

Here's what didn't work -- trying to remove the old PEX from inside the behind-toilet area. We were able to take the elbows off the walls and cut out a section of the pipe, but the two PEX lines in that space were twisted around each other and there was not enough room to get the bad line out without potentially damaging the PEX line to the rest of the trailer plumbing.

PEX Under the Sink

• The purple mark is the old hole from the PEX line from the water tank to the water pump. I plan to seal off the old hole.
• The red marks are the new hose (new hole not visible, but behind the sink drain)
• The shutoff valve goes to a new faucet I installed last summer.

PEX Behind the Toilet

• The PEX circled in purple is the old PEX line that we tried to cut out and remove. The second purple mark is the location of one of the elbows that was removed.
• The PEX circled in red is the new NPT connection to the intake side of the water pump. Note the natural curve of the PEX.