RVing 101: Bubble Bubble, Toil(et) and Trouble

When new RVers announce to their family and friends what their plans are, the first question usually asked is "But, how will you get your mail?" The second one that occurs to them often ends up not being asked out loud, to wit: "Where do you go to the bathroom?" Many well wishers seem shocked to learn that there are full bathrooms inside of most modern RVs. But a little further along their train of thought comes the realization that if the motor home moves, where does "everything" go?

It goes into two holding tanks: one is called the "grey" water tank - everything from the kitchen and bathroom sinks, as well as the shower and the washing machine go into that. The other is called the "black" water tank because (as you've probably already guessed) everything that goes down the toilet is destined for the black tank. Both of our tanks hold forty gallons; the grey tank always fills faster than the black; in fact a shower or load of wash will take up a full third. There is a small electronic panel on the wall inside the RV with a list of various containers and a small button under each one. Pressing that button lets you know how full each tank is and when either the grey or the black (especially the black) reaches the two-thirds mark, it's time to "dump" (the tanks, that is.)

There is an entire underground culture of black tank tales, horror stories of the sewer connection not being tightly secured, pulling the wrong valve handle, not making sure your hoses are where they should be, etc. but all of these legends conclude with the same ending - a humiliated RV owner covered in a week's worth of excrement or worse, your neighbor and/or his RV being covered with the effects of your carelessness.

Hidden behind one of the storage bay doors is the Crap Command Center. On the upper left is the water filter to remove any impurities from the water supply the campground provides. In the bottom middle is a large red hose connected to a "Y" joint serving both the grey and black water tanks; not visible are two pullout handles, one for each tank. The Red drainage pipe is supported by a train trestle like contraption that keeps it heading downhill into the sewer pipe next to your RV and thence into the ground connection to the city's disposal system.

 Also not visible is a clear, 90 degree elbow connecting the red hose to the Y Valve - that way you can see when the black tank's discharge goes from brown to yellow to clear. It's a fairly complicated two person job (at least for us new-comers) involving using two different hoses to prevent contamination, emptying the tanks in order and being sure to flush out Mr. Black with fresh water to make sure no refugees are lingering behind. If you're prudent (like I wasn't the first time) you open the grey water slightly to make sure there are no leaks - better to be cleaning up the laundry water than the remains of last night's pizza and beer bash. Then, after closing the grey, you slowly open the black. If you just pull the handle out all at once, over two hundred pounds of gravity-fed effluence literally comes roaring into the hose's enclosed space, making it "jump the tracks" and you holding up your wriggling red boa constrictor as you feel the entire week's worth of flushing coursing through your hands. But that's not the worst part. You see, the liquid in the black tank comes out first, followed after a momentary pause by an unmistakable load of you-know-what coursing through the hose at sixty miles an hour for what seems an eternity. I never realized how much my own "black tank" held until I literally got to "hold" it myself.

Now a curious incident happened two weeks ago. We had put our RV into the dealer's for a week but before we did, we made sure to drain both tanks completely. One week later after picking it up, we go to use the bathroom and the toilet bowl is filled and clogged. Huh? We try everything but it won't budge so one of the local Mobile RV Service guys comes out and in less than a minute has unclogged it. But, but...how did it get filled and clogged like that? He just looks at us until we catch on - the guys at the service shop had been using it for a week until they clogged it up and never bothered fixing it. Classy, huh? But it turns out there's another problem. He explains that right under the toilet bowl, the pipe takes a 90 degree turn which means that lots of clogs are in our future. He says that when we're ready he can remedy it for us but until then, we need "The Wand", a wriggling tube flexible enough to get all the way down through the clog but sturdy enough to push through and eliminate the, ahem, problem. The next day we buy one and it works great for the weekly stop-ups we begin experiencing. Behold: The Magic Wand