These faucets require special precautions to ensure safe and clean water.
While most faucets have the valve right at the hose connection, faucet hydrants have the valve up to 3 feet underground, actuated by a long rod.
When the valve is off, the hose connection at the top and the drain hole at the valve underground are open. The drain hole is open to allow water to drain out of the pipe so the pipe doesn’t freeze. However dirty ground water can flow back through the drain hole into the pipe and insects can get into the pipe at the hose end. The drain hole is closed off when the valve is on.
The possible contaminants in the pipe need to be flushed out before hooking water up to the trailer. Just turning the valve on and let it flow for a bit will get most of it out, but this is not enough, because when you turn it off to hook up hoses the drain hole is open to ground water infiltration.
Solution – Use a hose Y fitting with valves (shown below).
- Attach the hose Y fitting to the faucet
- Turn on the faucet hydrant by pulling it up as far as it will go, then open the Y fitting valves to flush the hydrant piping. Turn off only the Y fitting valves. Never turn off the faucet valve, until you are packing to leave. If you do turn it off you need to disconnect the hoses before turning it back on to repeat this step.
- Hook up hoses and flush water through to get air out of the hose, if its been awhile since they were used, flush them longer to get any odors out before hooking to the trailer. Make sure you have a pressure regulator (and filter if used) installed in the hose line before the trailer.
