Camper/Caravan Fittings You Need to Know

Would you like to know which caravan fittings we use in our jobs?

Check out the video below where we show you the caravan fittings and where to get them.

We get a lot of questions about what type of quick connect fittings we use for the water side of things. We use these Ryco fittings. The reason we like these is they’re fully brass and we think they’ll just last a lot longer, especially if you’re in camping with a bit of salty water and stuff like that. And they don’t seem to seize up as badly. We buy these in bulk from our supplier over here in Perth. But you can get them online from a place called Auto Megastore. They’re in Queensland, Their logo’s like a little forklift. Type “Ryco” in a search bar and all these fittings will come up. What you’re after is the female and this is like six mil or quarter they call it.

The reason we use a female is because it gives you a couple of options. So just for instance, if you need to go through a thin bracket, to have that going through there and to hook onto as it comes out the side of your van, all you need to buy is this brass hex nipple. You can get these from Reece. The product code number is 208525. So that’s like six mil to 15 mil.

How It Works

So you put thread seal on that or loxeal. And then you can just pop that through. The female will screw on there. It bites in tight so it seals there, but then as you keep tightening it up, it snugs it up and it gets nice and solid. So whatever bracket you hold it onto becomes nice and solid. And then from then over you get the John Guest fitting. This is for the bog-standard hose pipes that they use on the Jayco caravans like the MDC ones. So they fit on that.

That’s the 12 mil John Guest and this is onto 15 mil female and it’s got a rubber in there as well. So then what you can do is the female goes into the male. You screw that in against the seal. And then you’re off and running to the John Guest. And you can put tees in and do whatever you want.

All Thread

What happens if you’ve got the wall of a caravan you want to come out on or something a lot thicker? Then all you need to do is to buy this stuff called All Thread. We don’t know if you can get it at Reece, it’s a bit specialised sort of thing. That’s six mil all thread or quarter inch is the other one they use.

You can buy them in 150 mil lengths or 300 mils. So what you can do is you can screw that into there. And then you can push that through the wall and that’ll come out the other end. You just got to make sure the thread’s just long enough to grip it. And then you can get this called a brass reducing bush. And that’s six mil to 15 mils. So you can get that at Reece too. The number on that is 207035. So your female goes onto the all thread and you can make sure you put thread or thread seal or loxeal on, it is even better. And you can just screw that on like that.

You can tighten it in nice and tight like that. And then you’ve got another solid fitting. So that could be coming out of your van. And then again you get your female fitting, the John Guest fitting, that goes on like that. And then you convert it over to the John Guess pipe and then off you go, you’re on your way.

More Fittings

The other thing you need to buy from the Auto Megastore is the matching piece to this. So that’s what it looks like and that’s the bit that goes into the Ryco fitting. And then on the other end is the barb end. So you hook to the barb and then that just pushes in. Now you can get different types of these. You can get that to have a quarter inch or 10 mil female or male thread or whatever you want to connect onto. But this is the one we like to use.

And then what you do with that is you buy this. This is just eight mil hose from Bunnings. The kinetic brand. It’s food safe and all that stuff. You can just buy two meters or five meters or whatever. The reason we get that is it’s the perfect size to push the barb fitting into. So all you do is you heat up your kettle, you stick that last little bit into boiling hot water for about 30 seconds. And then you push it in there, put your hose clap on, never going to come off. And so when you got that on and that can clip into your Ryco fittings and go up to your Joolca supply, or to come back into it.

Joolca Connections

Now if you ever want to hook this pipe, this eight mill onto the Joolca, then these are the things you got to buy. It’s an eight mil hose connecting. You can get these from Bunnings. Whenever we’ve been there, they’ve never run out. Buy a couple of those. It fits perfectly with the other hose. Click it into your van and then you just cut it to length. Put your pipe eight mil connector on there and then that can just go clip onto the bottom of your Joolca hot water system.

Now if you want to set this up with these coming out of the bottom, so you’ve got the cold and the hot and you don’t have a Joolca or you just want to test it, you just loop it. So what you need to do really, normally it would coming out here, the cold would go through the Joolca and then go back into the hot. Now if you’ve got that and you haven’t got your Joolca or you just want to test it, what we usually do is when we’re testing them, we just get the two meter hose, put the two fittings in, clip it into the cold, clip it into the hot, and then it’s like it’s going through the hot water system. And then you can check that there’re no leaks on the hot side, that the mixers are on the right way, and stuff like that.

If you need any other help, give us a call. We’ll be happy to help.