RV Waste Tank Tips: How the Waste Water Valve Works
RV Lifestyle & Repair EditorsDescription
The RV waste tank is one of the more important components on an RV when it comes to enjoying yourself out on the road. After all, a properly maintained RV waste tank will make for a much cleaner, odorless, and more peaceful trip.
You can find the RV waste tank in various spots throughout an RV based on the size of the rig and the requirements of the waste and water removal systems you utilize on your vehicle. While the location of RV waste tanks may vary, the dump valves or dump station will always be located on the driver’s side of the vehicle. This is designed to keep the odor, smell, and mess that can be associated with dumping the tanks away from the patio or entertaining side of the rig.
The valve is a key component in the removal of gray water (shower and sink runoff) and black water (all the other stuff) from your RV waste tank. The waste water valve is essentially a sliding door that keeps water from rushing through as soon as you open the bayonet. This simple mechanism makes the waste removal process cleaner and more organized.
The grey water and black water tanks have their own separate waste water valves. Some models with multiple tanks have a valve for each tank, which requires opening several valves for both gray and black water. Others have a single valve that dumps all the black water tanks and all the gray water tanks. It’s important to locate the individual valves for your model.
One tip that most seasoned RV owners have found the hard way is to drain the black water tanks first, then the gray. The gray water is cleaner and helps clean the drain hose, making final cleanup easier.
The dump valves in your wastewater system are going to be located right by the bayonet, where we're going to dump our black and our gray water. The larger valve here is a three inch valve. We see the larger pipe for the blackwater. We're going to have more solids in that. This is our gray water. It's going to be our shower and our sink. And you see it comes right off the tank. It's got a series of seals in here reduces down to an inch and a half. And then our valve. This is a sample of what the valve is and it's just, they call it a gate valve. So it just slides up, makes the connection. So when it's in this position, like here it's going to keep any of the fluid from coming in. It's going to open up like that when I want to dump my tanks. And so this is the bayonet and what you want to do before you open this up, make sure your valves are closed. You don't want any fluid in here because it's going to come in and go all over. You also always want to wear a protective rubber glove, a waterproof glove like this, just a temporary one. Cause there's pathogens in here that we don't want to get on our hands and stuff. So open this up slowly. If you've got any moisture, even if these valves are closed it could be leaking a little bit. And so I want to make sure I don't have any fluid coming through here and we see that's good. So we hook up our bayonet and then to dump our tanks we just simply open the valves one at a time and it'll come through and dump our tanks. Now, this one's really easy to get at because it's a basement model in a heated service center. We start looking at some of the travel trailers will be underneath. Some of we'll have two different locations for for black or gray or a really long one. Some of them are really hard to get at. These valves are way back underneath and you almost crawl underneath to get them. They do make a cable extension. So I can hook onto this, replace the valve in here hook onto it and bring it out to the side and actually have a nice easy to operate handle on the side of the unit.
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