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This is the inside of my bathroom cabinet and we're looking at the "city water" connection from the back side. The black box is the inside of the outdoor shower.

I've been paranoid about water leaks since we bought this thing and started living in it about 18 months ago, so I left the panel that closes this compartment (and under the bathtub)off so i can give things a regular looking at.

This is our first time in cooler weather and a moist climate (north Idaho). We're here for the duration, so I need to find a solution for the moisture.

I found the white hose in the picture had some drips on it day before yesterday so I removed the fitting on the outside and was able to get almost a half turn on the hose, so I figured that was the end of it. I replaced the bullshit self tapping sheet metal screws with some stainless #10 screws, re caulked the outside of the fitting and put it back together.

This morning I noticed it was damp under there again and a couple of drips on the hose. I also noticed condensation along the bottom of the wall and in a line about 1" wide and 3' or so up the wall outside the cabinet. There's no plumbing in the wall beyond the hose connections so I'm assuming that it's just condensation following one of the aluminum" framing in the wall.

TLDR:
I have two questions;
1- Is there a way to modify the water connections to avoid having the failure prone area inside the wall, or a better setup all together?  I'm going to at least replace the hose because it looks like it may have a slight leak from the crimp at the end that's visible in the picture. The rest of the plumbing is 1/2" PEX. I'm also experiencing a failure of the check valve in the water pump that's allowing water from the system to fill the fresh tank while I'm hooked to city water and I'd like to install a manual valve to prevent this but I haven't been able to find parts to do so beyond a ball valve and 1/2" barbed fittings in the white hose between the pump and the PEX.

2- to control the condensation, should I just run the biggest dehumidifier I can stand to trip over and work around?

Thanks for any tips!

I would put some insulation around the hose to help reduce condensation.

Silicone/caulk is practically useless on a camper. You want butyl tape around any penetrations except for the roof. Use lap sealant on the roof seams and penetrations.

Your leak may be coming from the white hose. I believe there is a gasket in the female end. Also the city water inlet may have cheap plastic male threads. Maybe look into a replacement with brass threads.

Mine 100% has plastic threads. Good call on swapping it out with brass.

Is there a solution that's better than this style of fittings for this application?

What are those kind of fittings called (on the white hoses)?  I'd love to find a check valve or ball valve to put in the one between the pump and the plumbing to stop the city water from filling the fresh tank. (As opposed to taking the pump apart and rebuilding the check valve in it)

I have a 2021 Gulf Stream. The first time I used it, I noticed a leak under the kitchen sink. Took a look and the faucet connections were loose. I checked all of the other water connections and every one was barely finger tight.

Ours is an '18 forest river "hyperlite".  We didn't buy it brand new but I had a similar experience with our bathroom sink the first day we spent in it.

I ended up putting regular residential sink valves and a real faucet in it. It's pretty bad when the cheapest faucet at home Depot is a huge improvement over the factory one. Lol

What type of fitting is on the other end of the white hose? It looks like a faucet connector type hose.

It does look just like the connection on the bottom of faucets on both ends. The end opposite of the one in the pic goes into a T that's crimped into the PEX cold water line.

Looks like it's called "FIP"

THANKS!

FIP= female iron pipe. A standard supply hose you can get at Lowe's or Home Depot should work. I'd look for a stainless braided one.

If it's 1/2 on both ends something like this should work. Would still replace the plastic city connection and seal with butyl tape.

What type of pump is it or do you have a phot of it? Most of those are simple to repair.

I have a rebuild kit for it saved on Amazon. It just seems like a manual valve will be more durable for the long run with few downsides.

I'll update this instead of starting a new thread to cry about RV things.

Since my last post, I replaced the leaking hose and replaced the check valve in the pump to stop it from filling the fresh tank when I don't want to.

Today's catastrophe is that it's been below zero and our drain hoses that are outside of the skirting froze solid. NBD, right?  My wife discovered this issue by attempting to drain the black tank. Now I have a 15' hose with an elbow on the end full of ice, a 10' hose that's half ice and half "water" and probably at least 2 more 10' sections that are full upstream from the "y" that goes to the dump(and the frozen hoses)

To make matters worse, while I was under there questioning life's choices, I found a steady drip coming from between the gray tank and the drain valve. I suppose I should be thankful that it's not the black tank, I suppose.


Now for more general complaints about the build quality of the RV, it's an "ultralight" type RV. Forest River calls it "hyperlite".  It has a floor built from a layer of foam between two ~3/16" thick layers of wood veneer (similar to door skin).  There was a soft spot starting in the kitchen that lines up with the inside corner of the slide when it's in that's gotten worse with continued use (we've lived in it full time since the summer of '22) and I'm starting to notice more spots getting soft in high traffic areas.

My loose plan to fix the floor is to peel the linoleum up inside and basically build a new floor down the middle of the trailer out of actual floor decking. The worry about that is having to build the patch up to the same height as the original floor so that the slide will still work.

I'm hoping to put that off until summer though.

I'll have to do something about the gray tank leaking much sooner though. The trailer is skirted with rigid foam insulation so I don't want moisture building up under there.

I wish I could take my knowledge now back to when I was originally shopping for a trailer.

I'd have probably bought an older 5th wheel, or at least steered away from anything built with a floor like this one. I know that we've used this thing for about 5x it's expected lifetime but it's still disappointing to see it literally falling apart when it's not even 6 years old yet(it's an 18).

Thanks for listening to my venting. Now I have to go try to find somewhere that has RV supplies out in the middle of winter at 6:30pm so I can drain my tanks and go to bed so I can get up at 4 to go to work tomorrow.

I'd love to answer any questions about full time RV living. We traveled around a bunch, then bought property to build a house on.