I had my Class A totaled.

I have waited a few months before posting this due to embarrassment. The wife and I bought our first Class A and traveled for 8 weeks this winter until we had a unfortunate event happen.

We were at St Augustine KOA. We were meeting our friends for dinner when I turned the water on to fill my fresh water tank. It was on low and I had a regulator valve on the end. I left and forgot to turn it off. When we got back from dinner I saw water leaking out the bottom. I realized what I had done. I turned the water off and when I went into the coach our bed was 3 feet in the air, the floor was ripped up. Our sink and headboard closet area was ripped out the wall and destroyed. The tank expanded so much that it bent the frame of the rv. We were devastated. I could not get the slide all the way in. We drove it back to TN with the slide sticking out a few inches. I had the adjusted come look at it and the insurance company totaled it. It was beyond repair.

This was very stressful on my wife and I. I could not believe how the tank was stronger than the frame it never leaked but one little crack.

We are safe and sound and regrouping. What a way to start your RV life. You all have been so nice to me that I thought you would get a kick out of this story. I may be the first guy who had his RV totaled without ever being in an accident.

Wow!  Sorry for your experience.  Hope you don't give up.  We all have made expensive mistakes in life.  Wish you well.

Sorry to hear that. Glad your ok, it is just
Funny that the water didn't come out of the
Vent and continued to enlarge your water tank.

How devastating! Hope your insurance company treated you well.

I?ve always (well, most always) removed the gravity fill cap when filling through the water bay.

I?ll be double sure to remember it in for future.

Thanks for sharing.

Tom

Wow, that sounds pretty crazy. Bent frame and destroyed walls and floors. How many PSI was going in, like 400?

When ours gets full, there's an overflow hose and it releases underneath the RV and makes a puddle.

Now...my smart husband once thought he was filling the fresh water tank when he was actually "filling" the black water tank, hooked up the hose to the black flush port. The fresh inlet and black flush ports are right next to each other. Glad I caught it...when THAT gets full it comes out the toilet. Thankfully that did not happen, that would have been very, very bad.

Live and learn. That's what insurance is for. Soon you'll be going down the road in a new rig and hopefully having a good laugh about it.

Well that sucks, I?ve never considered that as my tank has an overflow, so when it gets full it starts spilling in to the ground, but I have indeed walked off and forgotten it a few times.

That was the frustrating part I had a spot to screw in the hose. And to boot it did not have a pressure release valve or overflow. Very poor design.

Insurance took really good care of us so we are financially flush on this mistake. Thank goodness.

Thanks for sharing, water is bad fire is worse.  I had read another story of someone coming back to a totally flooded RV due to a water heater bursting.  Hopefully the insurance allows you to get back on the road.

Skookum said:

Wow, that sounds pretty crazy. Bent frame and destroyed walls and floors. How many PSI was going in, like 400?

Click to expand...

Those giant airbags rescue workers use to lift wrecked vehicles are only inflated to a few PSI of pressure.  PSI means Pounds per Square Inch.  Due to their large size, they have many of square inches of surface area and this translates into a tremendous lifting force.

Freshwater tanks are the same.  The exact figure will vary by the shape of the tank, but a 40 gallon freshwater tank has something like 2000 - 2500 square inches of surface area.  If you pressurize the tank to 10 PSI, that's 20,000 to 25,000 pounds of force potentially pressing against whatever's next to it.

Normally that pressure will be contained by the tank walls themselves.  As long as it's air that's escaping through the vent, you won't have that much force because air is compressible.  But once the air is gone and all you have is water in the tank the internal pressure will jump to the source pressure because water isn't compressible.

At a normal source pressure of 40 PSI you can have up to 100,000 lbs of force pressing outward from an overfilled tank as it balloons out of shape.  This will press against whatever is surrounding the tank until it's able to expand enough to rupture and relieve the pressure.

Sorry to hear of the loss, but others have done as much.  Years ago a neighbor in a campground did the same thing, but somebody noticed before the damage was quite so severe. Also had a neighbor who forgot about rinsing the black tank and blew the stinky stuff out the toilet.

Was your water tank a flexible bag under the bed, or a rigid container mounted below the floor?  More than a few owners have caused major damage with those under-bed bag types.

I'm so sorry to hear that, at least you won't do that again. Onwards and upwards 

Thanks for sharing your story.

It just one of those thing that you never think of until it happens to someone

Now I know that they used to make an RV with a pressurised water tank. .INstead of a water pump you had an air pump that pumped it up to 45 or 50 PSI and that pushed the water out.. (I use a "Campfire Extinguisher" that works like that but it's only 1.5 Gallons.. (Better known as a garden sprayer)).

Modern RV's use a water pump not a pressure tank.

Assuming you have a water pump. HEaven forbid I do what you did but .. NIAGRA FALLS out the overflow and other than some water leaks inside from that port for some reason.. No damage.

That kind of event is like having a heart attack!!  I was working in my trailer at home and had started filling the FW tank with a hose in the gravity fill port.  The hose just sits in the port and does not screw in.  There is a vent line from the top of the tank that comes out next to the fill port but it is just to let air out of the tank as it fills but not large enough to be an overflow.  So, I forgot the tank was filling and I was back working in the trailer.  The water was from a well pump set to 60 PSI max.

As I was working I started hearing some creaking, popping sounds.  Soon there was a big pop and I remembered the water was on and filling the tank.  I ran out and shut the water off.  Water was spraying out from around the loose water hose in the fill port.  Amazing that it didn't blow the hose out of the port.  A stream of water was shooting out of the vent and hitting the house about 12 feet away.  This water kept spraying for several minutes after I turned off the fill water!

I was lucky.  The tank had bulged, broke and pushed out the plywood support board under the tank.  It also bent a metal beam supporting the support board and tank.  When the tank bulged the sides pulled in and the tank fell down about 6 inches below the forward beam and the aft bent support beam.  No damage to the floor above or the tank....WOW, lucky and what a strong tank!  I removed and straightened the support beam, pushed the empty tank back up and installed a new support board and the straightened beam.  If my tank support board and beam were stronger it could have done a lot of damage to the floor and above structure, so the OP's story did not surprise me.  Lesson learned without major damage.  Needless to say I no longer multitask when filling or flushing.  If someone comes up to talk with me while I am filling or flushing I turn the water off and then talk.

Another water event where I witnessed my camping neighbor learn the hard way was as follows:  We never leave our trailer without turning the city water faucet off.  My neighbor kidded me a lot about this.  One day the city water went out in the campground.  My neighbor had tried his bathroom sink and found the water still off.  They left the trailer with the water on at the campground faucet.  He had accidentally left the water faucet on in the bathroom.  When they came back water was running out of everywhere...out from under the trailer door and out of all storage compartments.  What a mess!!  When the campground water came back on the bathroom faucet likely was spitting water and air for the while.  This knocked the stopper down in the sink, filled the sink and flooded the entire trailer.       

Really sorry to hear that, but thanks for sharing the experience with us. Many years ago, I had (almost) the exact same thing happen to us when I was filling our tank wth a garden hose. I got distracted, and by the time I remembered, the expanding tank had lifted the bed about two feet (it was hinged.) It had ripped the tank's hold-down straps out of the floor and turned a 70 gallon tank into a 75 gallon tank. When I yanked the hose out of the filler spout, water shot out like a fire hose for about a minute. Fortunately, there were no leaks, or further damage.

I never would have thought that a gravity fill system, that wasn't air tight, with a functioning air vent, would have done that, but it taught me a valuable lesson in hydraulics. I hope your experience doesn't sour you on RVing altogether.

Kev

  So very sorry to hear of your ordeal. While embarrassing, no one was hurt and your insurance took care of you! While initially you were likely overwhelmed and embarrassed....that beats a major traffic accident or perhaps a tornado! So.....there is a bright side! Glad that you haven?t given up the dream, sometimes a nightmare, of rv?ing! 

Thanks for sharing and glad your insurance company made you whole.

My first experience with self contained living was on our 40' twin diesel boat. Like our motorhome it has a connection that allows pressurizing the water system with city water. I never used that thinking that if an internal water hose broke it could and probably would sink the boat. When we sold the boat I warned the buyer of that but I think he forgot. A hose broke shortly after he bought the boat. He was lucky and caught it before it sank, but some damage none the less.

On our motor home I never connect CG water to our motor home. I manually fill the tank at the manual fill port. I bought a long nozzle that fits on the end of the hose and I insert that in the manual fill port on the motor home. I can walk away and it will fill. I have forgotten it a few times until I hear water splashing on the outside as water is flowing out the fill port and the vent. No damage as there is plenty of space for the water to escape and if it did pressurize it would simple push the nozzle out the fill port.

A couple of people in our RV club have had minor damage due to water leaks generally due to broken internal hoses. I try and remember to turn off the water pump before leaving the coach for more than an hour or so. Better than letting the CG water supply fill the coach.

On our motor home I never connect CG water to our motor home. I manually fill the tank at the manual fill port. I bought a long nozzle that fits on the end of the hose and I insert that in the manual fill port on the motor home. I can walk away and it will fill. I have forgotten it a few times until I hear water splashing on the outside as water is flowing out the fill port and the vent. No damage as there is plenty of space for the water to escape and if it did pressurize it would simple push the nozzle out the fill port.

Same here.  I always fill the tank with the gravity fill port and use the water pump.  Plus, I try to remember to shut the pump off when we leave the coach.

On mine the "cantleak" valve failed and sent the water to the tank luckily the vents worked and it was running out on the ground instead of damaging anything although the park manager thought the line to my site had failed.

Wish you well and good.