The morning we left Jetty Park for Vero Beach after discovering the shuttle launch was not going to happen, we decided to pack up quick and beat the crowds to the dump station.
It was early but we still weren’t first in line. Everyone was heading out, except for those just waking to make breakfast.
As we dumped our tanks using our new clear hose adapter, René glanced at the nearby rigs, smelled the air and said, “Yum, Bacon and Turds!”
Why did we get one of those clear dump hose adapters, you ask?
No we don’t have have some strange desire to watch our bodily fluids flow down the drain. We’d been having a holding tank level issue, and the adapter does clearly show if/when the tank is done draining. Quite clearly indeed.
Since the day we picked up our rig, we’ve been told about how the sensors in RV holding tanks never quite read correctly. Our black water tank is the only one that ever gave us false readings. Understandably, those sensors often get fouled up with toilet paper, turds, or perhaps bacon. But we had never had bad readings on either of our grey water tanks, until recently.
The levels read high after just a couple days of use. Then when we left St. Augustine, our tanks seemed to drain quite slowly for the amount of grey water we were carrying. Thinking there was nothing that could foul up the grey water tank sensors, we feared the worse. But any reason to head to the nearest Camping World is good in our books. Off we went.
After speaking with a friendly, knowledgeable clerk, we came to the conclusion that is could be just about anything from sensors fouled with soap scum to construction debris clogging the drain valve. Preparing for the worst and hoping for the best we bought a good extra strength tank sanitizer with maximum biodegradable power and headed on our way.
Why don’t Camping World locations have a dump station or even a hose for customers to use? You’d think they would cater to the crowd they serve!
We stopped at the first Flying J we saw. There you can fill up with fuel and fresh water, while dumping your tanks, all in one spot! You can even get propane at most of them too, but I digress.
We dumped the whole bottle of goop down our shower and sinks then added a bunch of water. You would think this much extra strength solution, with all the sloshing around from our drive to the farm would make a difference. It didn’t. Well, not really. But check out the Do-It-Yourself full-hookups we made for our selves by tapping into a cleanout drain on an outhouse at the farm!
Upon giving our tanks another good dumping, our bathroom grey water tank still reads nearly full. And this is after leaving the grey water valves open for a few days! The kitchen tank finally gives us a good reading, but the full black water level is just something we’ve gotten used to.
So my only words of advice for anyone wondering what to do about false holding tank level readings is to just get used to it. Know your own levels. And dump when it stinks. Another word of advice is to avoid the RV sites right next to the dump station!
Perhaps NASA’s fuel tank sensors that kept the Shuttle Atlantis from taking off are the same kind we have in our holding tanks!
wonderful memories!, i could tell ya some stories, oooh hoo hoo !
Tanks but no tanks says I!
You beach-billies are something else and with all of your new-found knowledge I can only imagine what’s next, fecal races maybe? Whose swims faster in the new tube? Call it, “NastyCar” as they like that sort of thing in the South, or, how about “Indy-gestion” races?
We (Juli and I) live on an island here in Southern California so every little black banana that we harvest in the morning has to be pumped to a treatment plant.
It’s kinda magical if you think about it, it’s also a marvel of Roman era technology. Take the word plumbing. The word “plumb” enjoys its etymology from the latin term for lead or lead piping (take a look at the Periodic Table, lead is Pb).
Turns out the Romans were keen on driving their butt snakes out of town by way of lead causeways. The plumber of yore (whose cheeks probably shown through his or her toga) was a civil engineer of sorts whose job it was to prevent all of the associated diseases (unknown in the medical sense back then but think Cholera, dysentery, etc.) that afflicted communities every once and while. This person was a paid servant of the state and enjoyed stature and decent pay, you could almost say they were “flush”.
Even the Space Shuttle has it’s own “spin” on a stylized latrine, there unit sports a fan that draws our little still-borns right into a tank not unlike R&Js (spin, get it, spin?). With no gravity you’ve got to draw that murky mass into its first but not last holding cell.
All the best,
Eric
“Yum, Bacon and Turds!”
Thanks for the visual!
Not the best lunch time reading. :-b