Starling Travel

A few months ago, we realized that our old pump faucet was leaking. It was the standard 2-way pump faucet, which is completely useless if you only have one hand free.

The fact that it was leaking gave me an opportunity to change it for the kind of faucet I would have preferred. The same kind of faucet and pump system that I used on my old camp kitchen.

The first problem I ran into was the MASSIVE hole that the original pump faucet was going to leave. Removing it was simple, just unscrewing four screws and popping off the hoses.

Once the old faucet was gone, I had to decide where to put the new one. I would have liked to put it along the back of the sink, like my kitchen faucet at home, but it didn’t fit there, so I put it to the left of the huge hole. I made a paper template to mark where I would have to drill the two holes to attach the new faucet.

Here is a picture of the countertop after I drilled the holes.

The faucet fit nicely. If you notice, I popped open the Hot and Cold indicators and replaced them with City and Tank indicators. The City handle is used when we are connected to water hookups and the Tank handle is for the onboard five gallon tank.

Underneath the counter, the faucet is held on with the black screw-on washers, not screws. This is much more secure, considering that the particle board countertop is twenty years old and can’t hold a screw anymore.

On the City handle, we connected the hoses from the previous faucet using connectors from the lawn and sprinkler section. Honestly, it took THREE trips to the hardware store before we found something that connected securely and didn’t leak. Don’t forget to use plumber’s tape.

On the Tank handle, we connected a siphon pump (found at Harbor Freight). The connector was in the lawn and garden section and the pump uses standard tubing.

Once everything was connected, it looked like this under the sink.

I was very impressed with how good it looked.

That huge hole? We covered it with a plate of aluminum. You can find them in the hardware store near the door hinges. It covered the hole nicely and we have a tad more counter space than we used to have.

When we don’t have city water hookups, we can bring out the pump from under the sink, turn on the handle and pump it with our knee, leaving both hands free.

When we do have city water, the pump hides nicely under the sink. If you look closely, you can see the two holes we drilled for the tubing for the pump, but it’s not very noticeable.

Under the sink, the tubing fits well and no more leaking!

If you have come to hate your hand pump faucet as much as I did, don’t wait until it starts leaking to change it out. This job took only a few hours and has made using the water in our trailer SO much easier.