RV Lifestyle & Repair Editors

Dumping an RV Black Water Tank: Tips and Tools

RV Lifestyle & Repair Editors
Duration:   2  mins

Description

To make sure your RV plumbing system remains in tip-top shape and your cab doesn’t take on any unpleasant aromas, you should consistently and completely clean the RV black water tank. Dumping the black water tank is a relatively intuitive process, but there are additional steps you can take and tools you can use to guarantee you’ve given it the thorough rinse necessary for comfortable living conditions. In this lesson, we teach you a few handy tips that are essential to maintaining a spotless RV black water tank between road trips.

After highlighting the important precautions you should always consider before and after dumping a black water tank, Dave Solberg introduces some of his favorite inexpensive hose attachments that ensure a mess-free job. You’ll learn how to utilize an affixed clear plastic elbow and basic garden hose to see exactly when the tank is emptying and clean. With Dave’s tips and tool suggestions, you can rest easy knowing your black water tank is in good shape!

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A few tips when dumping your black and your gray water tank is first of all, you don't want to open this cap here not knowing that there's any moisture inside or any fluids and stuff like that. I would recommend putting on a cap like this. This one has a little garden hose, so when I put this on here, I can actually put a cup underneath and just open this and I don't have a whole bunch of water shooting in underneath- nice piece to have. Then make sure that your valves are closed. Before you dump you want them close, but you also want to keep them closed if you're at the campground. Now, some people come into the campground and if they stay there for long periods of times they are gonna run their hose down into the bottom. Well, first of all, you don't want any of that odor coming up in from the lower section, but also what happens if I leave these open and just let all my sewage and water goes down in the fluids are gonna drain down in but the solids are gonna stay up in the tank and then they're gonna get, they're gonna dry up and I'll have a tough time ever getting those out. So make sure you keep this closed. As you use the tanks, you're gonna you're gonna have more liquid in there to dissolve everything. You're not gonna lose your chemicals. You know, when, when you leave this open your chemicals are all gonna flush down as well. When I drain the tank, also, I like to use one of these clear hoses or elbows here and just add it onto here and then route it down through the bottom of it. Some of them will come, these, these will swivel in most cases allow you to add this and the reason I put the clear is I want to know when my black water tank is starting to get clean and then that'll tell me, sometimes you open it up and it sounds like it's done, but it's not quite. So this will literally show me that it's cleaning up. I also want to run water through the black water tank. I don't want to just open it up and let it drain and, and that's it. I'm gonna run some water, once I get it going, I'm either gonna have to put a garden hose down the toilet or I'm going to use a flush wand inside. Some models have a black water tank flush it would be right on there that I'd hook up a garden hose to it. And then when I'm done to drain, to clean the hose out, now what's nice about this unit here is when I've got this hooked up onto the unit here, I can actually put a garden hose on this and clean my hose with this, you see you've got a corrugated hose inside so it does need to be cleaned. If you don't have this model here you can get this handy little cap. This just hooks right on the end. And I can put a garden hose in here and turn it on. They don't have any splash going on. If I just take a regular hose, try to clean this up, I'm gonna have splashing with all these ribs and things. So, just a few tips to make it a lot easier to clean up a pretty messy situation.
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