Installation of the WaterBoss Water Softener
in the Windseeker, our Tiffin Allegro Bus

Why use a water softener? Many parts of the country have a problem with hard water... water with excessive mineral content, especially calcium, that causes calcium buildup in all your pipes, fixtures and appliances which use water. Over time this can cause very expensive repairs. It also causes hard water spotting and makes bathing more difficult. The most common and effective solution is a salt based water softener. Home-based systems are very effective and easy to operate, but they are usually too large and heavy for a motorhome like our Windseeker.

Several years ago I purchased an On-the-go Portable Water Softener (left) for the Windseeker. The portability is a handy feature and I bought the larger unit so I wouldn't have to do the salt regeneration as often, because it is a manual process. It is not difficult but takes a good hour to complete. While staying in the Thousand Islands Campground for the summer, the water was very hard, and I was having to regenerate twice a week which grew rather tedious.

So I decided to install a WaterBoss 700 Water Softener. This is a household grade softener which is available from Home Depot. I chose the WaterBoss 700 because it is a good quality unit, adequate for the job, and small enough to fit in the basement of the bus. It measures:

18.75 in. X 14.75 in. X 25.75 inches in height

And it weighs about 85 lbs plus the salt... so maybe 100-110 lbs at any given time.

I did a trick installation in one of my sliding Joey beds in the Bus' basement on the passenger side of the bus. The basement doors are higher on the passenger side than on the driver's side. Like a home unit, all you do is add pellet salt (about $5 a bag) once or twice a month. Quite an upgrade for the ole Bus! At first I thought the height at 25.75 inches ruled it out. The basement openings on the passenger side of the bus are just 24 in. high. But then I realized that if you remove the cover, it just fits in the sliding "joey beds" and can be slid in and out for easy access to add salt.

With the cover off, it's a tight fit, and you still have to unclip the electronic controller, but after that it just clears the opening. Once inside you can reach under, clip the controller back on and replace the cover. We just need to remember to remove it all again before sliding it back out. At first I thought I could just do a simple velcro attachment of the controller down lower, but no... there's some sort of magnet actuation and the unit will NOT work unless the controller is clipped in place. Fortunately it is simple enough to clip and unclip the controller for easy access.

I plumbed the WaterBoss with PEX and connected it to the sewer for auto regeneration. I decided that I could use 1/2" PEX tubing for the water lines. I ran it from the hose reel in the plumbing bay on the driver's side, alongside the holding tanks across to the passenger side. PEX is flexible enough to then bend around the tanks in a wide arc and pass thru the various openings at the tops of the basement walls to reach the forward joey bed compartment where I have placed the WaterBoss. I could have placed it in the rear joey bed compartment, but that is where I keep my toolbox, and I didn't want to move it, because I can more easily access the toolbox there (which I do quite often) without having to duck underneath the passenger side slide.

I used Sharkbite fittings for the PEX. These are simple to use and require no special tools... and have become almost a standard in the plumbing industry for small jobs. I only needed four fittings, so this was the simplest way to proceed. Just cut the PEX to length and slide on the leakproof fitting. I used four PEX to 1/2" pipe fittings (pictured at left) which attached directly to existing 1/2" pipe fittings in the plumbing bay for the IN and OUT connections.

Over on the passenger side at the back of the WaterBoss, I connected the PEX to high quality drinking water hose which is much more flexible than PEX. I cut it to the right length to extend when when you slide the joey bed out, and then it just bends in a loop when the bed slides back in. I used 1/2" pipe to male hose adapters to then connected the PEX to 1/2" hose insert fittings on the drinking water hose, held in with stainless hose clamps. I bought the necessary adapters to connect the IN/OUT ports on the WaterBoss to the drinking water hose with regular garden hose fittings.

In the plumbing bay I also fitted a pvc tee fitting with a shufoff valve to a garden hose fitting with backflow preventer to be used when washing the car or the bus with soft water. The other aspect is the drain. The WaterBoss does a regularly scheduled regneration of its media bed like all salt based home water softeners. This needs to be an always available connection. I thought about running a hose outside the bus to a Tee in the sewer line, but this would then mean I need to connect it up every time I set up in a campground. Plus some park managers might question this connection. So the optimal way to do this is a stealth connection (yellow arrow) inside the plumbing bay connected to the drain valve.

I purchased a Camco clear 5 inch sewer adapter and carefully mounted a brass pipe fitting connected to a shutoff valve converted then to a garden hose fitting, and then added a backflow preventer just as extra measure of safety. The hardware store guy called it a "Franken Fitting". For the drain line, I ran garden hose to it with the same routing as the PEX. This is a semi permanent connection. I can now simply connect the water hose to the coach just like normal when setting up camp. And everything is ready to go automatically. I just turn off the WaterBoss when not connected to sewer. We don't need a softener when using our fresh water holding tank, since I would always be refilling it with softened water.