In 2020, we became ambassadors for ABCO RV, and they designed a custom water panel for our 5th wheel. In this post, we’re excited to share about our new ABCO RV water panel and the benefits it has!
Let’s start by telling you more about who ABCO RV is and what they do.
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What is ABCO RV?
Anderson Brass Company (or ABCO for short) is a family-owned business located in South Carolina. Their beginnings date back to 1931, which is pretty impressive!
All of their products and parts are made, manufactured, assembled, and tested in the United States, and they specialize in brass valves and fittings.
They build their products to last!
Our custom ABCO water panel
When ABCO reached out to us about making a custom RV water panel for our fifth wheel, we were so excited!
Do you prefer video over reading? Check out our YouTube video below!
All of the connections and valves on our water panel are made of brass instead of plastic.
This makes them much more durable and means they will last much longer than a typical plastic connection.
Alright, now let’s go over the details of what our custom-made water panel is comprised of.
Our Adventures With TuckNae logo
Our custom water panel includes our Adventures With TuckNae logo which I think is super awesome! The personalization during our design process with ABCO was great.
Black tank flush
The black tank flush is where you hook the hose up to flush your black tank with fresh water. This cleans the black tank out.
City water inlet
In the city water inlet, you hook your fresh water hose to the trailer to fill your water tanks for drinking water, sinks, showers, etc.
Shower valve with outlet
The shower valve is where you can attach your outdoor shower connection and have hot or cold water to wash a dog, clean mud off your shoes, etc.
Air compressor
Our system was designed with an onboard air compressor. Our particular model came with a Viair air compressor that has enough pressure to fill our 110 PSI tires.
It also has an on/off switch, pressure gauge, and connection for your air hose on the water panel board.
The air compressor sits behind the water panel in the basement compartment with all of the plumbing.
Water heater bypass valve
This allows you to winterize your trailer (if you need to do so) without passing the antifreeze through your hot water heater.
Four-function water fill valve
This is a four-way valve that you can turn to select the option that you need at any point in time. The four options and their functions are as follows.
City fixtures
You would use this option when you are hooked up to fresh water.
Dry camping
This is the option to use when you are boondocking and need to draw water from your fresh water tank.
Tank fill
This is what you use to fill your fresh water tank.
Winterize/sanitize fixture
You would use this option when winterizing or sanitizing your trailer water lines.
Installing our custom water panel
Tucker was able to complete the installation of our new water management panel all by himself.
It involved undoing the original plastic connections, removing the stock water panel that originally came on our trailer, cutting and painting a new piece of plywood to replace the old panel, and screwing the new ABCO panel to it.
Once he had the new panel in place, he siliconed everything so that it was sealed. He had to redo all of the pex plumbing, which required watching a few YouTube videos, haha!
He trimmed some of the plumbing back, rerouted some of it, and then connected it to the proper new brass connections on the ABCO RV water panel.
Our installation was done in freezing temperatures during winter, which we do not recommend, haha! It made things take longer, and we had to deal with some frozen pipes.
The process probably would have gone much smoother had the weather been more cooperative.
ABCO is really great to work with, and if you have any questions during your own installation, they are very helpful!
The benefits of installing an ABCO RV water panel
All brass valves and connections
One of the main benefits of the ABCO RV water panel for us was that all of the connections and valves are made of brass instead of plastic.
Plastic wears down a lot easier and can crack resulting in water leaks which can cause a lot of issues.
Having brass gives us better peace of mind, knowing they are heavy-duty and won’t crack.
Brass valves are also easier to use when connecting hoses, and you don’t have to worry about the plastic stripping out.
5-Year warranty
It speaks for itself that ABCO RV is willing to warranty its water panels for five years! You can find more information about their warranty on their website – abcorv.com.
Condensed amount of knobs and switches
The new ABCO RV water panel has significantly fewer knobs and switches than our original water panel.
This simplifies things and makes changing from city connection to dry camping easier when boondocking.
How to learn more about ABCO RV water panels
To learn more you can visit their website www.abcorv.com or follow them on Instagram, Facebook, their Blog, or YouTube.
We hope you have enjoyed learning more about ABCO RV and our custom water panel installation and that you will check them out!
Have any questions? Let us know! Happy travels!
We haven’t tried traveling on RV. This post is very detailed, will be helpful for RVers.
Thanks!
It looks great! Love that it’s personalized to y’all too! Philip has had to do some stuff with pex whenever we switched out our kitchen sink faucet and added a bidet sprayer in our bathroom. You learn to be really handy when living in an RV haha 😂
Soooo true 😂😂
Great post Janae! A few things stuck out to me: I love that the brass pipes make them less likely to crack. Love that it’s family owned and made in the US too!!! I think my husband would be interested in looking into this company more. Thanks for sharing!
Thanks so much Laura! They are such a great company!
This is AMAZING! I would love to switch ours out one day. We had hooked up our heated hose before we left and realized the next morning that it was flooding our whole under storage😭 the plastic couldn’t hold the weight so we had to mess with it and run to the store a few million times before it worked again😅 this would be a much better solution! Thanks for sharing this love!!
Oh nooooo! That sounds like a nightmare haha! 😅
I never would have thought about doing an upgrade like this but now I am intrigued! Thanks for sharing – I shared with Eric so we can look into it.
You’re welcome! 😊