Sorry if this got covered on another thread, but if so I couldn't find it.
Here is a pic from my SMB manual showing how to fill a single water tank from the inside. Easy enough. But as we so often found, our SMB manual did not match the SMB we bought. The manual showed a much simpler single tank set-up.
Our 2010 Ford E-350 EB50 has two 16 gallon tanks under the rear bench seat/folding bed. Each tank has a PEX pipe outlet, both come together in a T-fitting which then leads the single outlet pipe up to the yellow-handled big brass "Apollo" valve. Water goes through the valve and on toward the water pump. The brass valve seemed to have a third direction the water could go, which would be straight up, but this route is sealed with a garden hose style screw cap.
So I had always assumed (I know, to ass-u-me is to make an ass out of you and me!) that by attaching a garden hose to the top fitting and flipping the valve handle then water could gravity feed down into the two tanks. Way better than the funnel system shown by SMB and mentioned in several previous thread. So after owning our rig "Moby" for a mere 8 years I finally got around to rigging up the blue jug and hose system shown in the photo. This was going to be great. I was already patting myself on the back for such great work.
But it was a big fat fail.
With the valve handle in the normal up position no water flowed out of the blue jug, just as I figured.
But when I threw the valve 90 degrees to the down position no water flowed into the tanks. Instead the water flowed from the blue jug, through the hose, and into the pipe leading to the water pump. It was as if I had installed an IV-like system to take the place of the SMB water tanks. To confirm it I unhooked the garden hose, and of course the pump soon ran dry. By re-attaching the hose, or by throwing the valve back to the normal position the pump soon had water again.
So it seems like some sort of three-way valve needs to be here if this is going to work. Or am I missing something? Please somebody, slap me up the side of the head and tell me what I am missing here!