All campers with a sink and toilet have three tanks: fresh, grey, and black. Depending on the size of your camper, you may have more than 1 of each. Older campers are easier to identify because most do not have their belly wrapped, whereas newer campers may still have this insulating wrap still in place. Tanks were discussed and researched a lot on our first trip to Inks Lake.
Rusty: We are going to use the camp bathrooms.
Carin: Hmmm....it's freezing. No.
Rusty: Yes, I don't want them to get full and have to dump more than once.
Carin: Then what's the point in having them? I paid XXXXX for this trailer and I'm going to use ALL of it. And I mean ALL. OF. IT.
And I did. It was cold and my toilet was CLEAN (brand spanking new never been pissed in CLEAN)...unlike the over flowing toilet in the men's room one morning. No. Thank. You!
So, we compromised and I used MY toilet. See how that worked?
The first rule on tanks is it's helpful to know how many you have. We were told we had one of each but for some reason, our control panel had 3 grey tanks. This mystery will be solved later. It's also helpful to know how much each of those tanks actually holds. Based on the specs, our grey tank holds 78 gallons and our black and fresh water tanks hold 38 gallons. That can be hard to visualize but we have a 20 gallon fish tank so double that on black.
The second rule on tanks is to take care of them. The electric sensors are extremely sensitive and are known for not reading correctly. It's been recommended to me to use the GEO method (Get Everything Out). It's simple really.
1) Water is your friend in your tanks (especially black).
2) Leave your valves SHUT at all times unless dumping.
3) Before each trip, dump about a gallon of water with liquid laundry detergent (about a capful) and water softener down your toilet and kitchen sink. The soap keeps everything nice and slick. And the water softener helps to break down solids. So far, knock on wood, this is working and our sensors all read E. NOW.....
The third rule is the sensors are not accurate. 1/3 means "not empty", 2/3 means "1/2 full", and full means "7/8 full". And when the grey water backs up into your bathroom sink.......it means, FULL. It happened..............
Our first day/arrival we were concerned about freezing temperatures so decided to fill our fresh water tank and camp off of that the first day. We had issues with priming our lines (something we'll need to work on later just so we know how to do it) and therefore filled up our grey water tank (grey water #2) pretty quickly. By the 2nd day, this tank was reading 2/3 full with grey water tank #1 reading 1/3 full (now remember, we were told we only had 1 tank so this puzzled us). The black tank still only said 1/3 full. So we dumped. And it wasn't that big of deal. Wear rubber gloves. Don't pull the valve until you're ready. No biggie. I really don't understand why people get so weirded out by this!
BUT...grey tank #2 still read 2/3 full. A little confused but not really too concerned, we went back to camp. Grey tank #1 said empty so there must be something stuck on the sensor..right? We continued camping and enjoying ourselves until Friday evening after I had finished the dishes. I went in to the bathroom and noticed that grey water was backing up into the bathroom sink! If there was 1 tank and we dumped, WHY was the bathroom sink backing up. I would have figured the bathtub would have backed up first. We only had 1 day of camping left and the black tank only read at 1/3 full after 2 days post dump so I got creative so we didn't have to dump.
What do you do when your grey tank is full but your black tank is not? You use a giant bowl to catch your grey water and pour it down the toilet! I figured this killed 2 birds with 1 stone. 1) We didn't have to "fold" back up and go dump 2) It put extra water in the toilet so that when we did dump everything was nice and fluid like. It worked. Even with dumping ALL of our grey water down the toilet the tank only read 2/3 full when we pulled out. Win!
Just don't throw any utensils down the toilet!
But the problem still remained as to why the tank filled up so quickly and why the sensor wasn't working. I just assumed that the sensors were doing what sensors do and not working. The only way to really figure out our holding capacity was to measure how much water we could actually hold. So, I decided that when we got home I would take a 5 gallon bucket and count how many buckets of water I could pour down the kitchen sink. That would tell me how many gallons and MAYBE rinse off the sensor. Right? Sounds like an awesome idea.
And it was! 7 gallons later.........YES, 7 GALLONS, the kitchen sink overflowed with grey water that was obviously from our camping trip. WTF?! I thought we dumped that! And now the grey tank #2 read FULL. You think? Curious, I started to fill up the bathtub to see what would happen. 40 gallons later grey tank #1 started to read 2/3. So... We obviously have at least 2 tanks. And the real problem presented it's self. HOW do we empty tank #2?!
At the dump valve, there were 2 obvious valves to pull and we had! One was black and the other gray. So, again, I pulled the gray valve and WHOOSH! Water emptied from the hose into the yard. Great! I run around the trailer and check the sensors..........not great. Grey tank #1 now empty. Grey tank #2 FULL. WTF?!
Now I'm obviously not the typical wife. I'm not above getting down on my knees in the mud to crawl around under the trailer looking for a mystery grey valve. Forest River has a great little forum community here: Forest River . Someone mentioned that maybe they accidentally covered up our other valve with the belly wrap.......oh please no! Finally, I found a silver handle just behind the slide. It didn't look like other tank valve so a quick call to the dealership for a "WTH is this and how do we get this tank to dump?" call.
After discussing what this strange handle could be, we were advised to pull it and see what happened. I mean, seriously, what could possibly go wrong? The trailer is still under warranty...... We heard the whoosh of running water and then........NOTHING.....now what......Our wonderful sales guy who really shouldn't be taking my calls for these things (love ya Chris) talked me into pulling the black tank valve. We dumped so it should be completely empty. Right? (Oh please let the black tank be empty.)
WHOOSH! A FLOOD of water (78+ gallons in fact) rushed into our yard. And so now we know.....The kitchen/galley tank valve is under the trailer by the slide out. So the order in which to pull valves at the dump station is now: black tank, grey tank #2 by slide out, and grey tank #1. We're still not sure if we have a third grey tank even though we do have 3 grey tank lights. Just another mystery to be solved during another camping trip down the road!
Until next time!
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