Darren's RV Adventures

Adventures in water tank sanitation. We've had our rig a few years, but we have only boondocked one time.  This season I thought it might be a good idea to sanitize the fresh water tank, both to clean it and that we might go out to boondock a little more this year. Conventional wisdom seems to be 1/4 regular household bleach for every 15 gallons of capacity in your fresh tank. For those of you who have ever used bleach to purify water might look at that volume with a little suspicion.  I know I did.  But, something to keep in mind is that this is to clean the tank, so we're not really purifying the water. Dilute your bleach in a gallon or two of water, and take appropriate safety precautions.  Chlorine Bleach is dangerous if you get it in your eyes, and I highly recommend wearing gloves (latex, nitrile, etc.) to keep from getting bleach on your hands.  If you do get any on your skin, wash it off with water.  That slimy feeling when you get it on you i...

Black tank cleaning.  Attempt # 1.   The last few trips we’ve been on my black tank sensor has consistently read ½, even though I know the tank is ‘empty’.  This is pretty common in black tanks, solid waste will stick to the walls and give false readings.  I was hoping to resolve the issue this season, so I decided to try combining the sanitation of the fresh water tank with a good cleaning of the black tank. I don’t have a sprayer wand, but I thought if I put a fairly decent amount of hot water in the tank and then took the RV for a drive, it might help loosen up the solid waste and clean things a bit.  I also threw in some dishwasher detergent at the wife's suggestion to help things along.  The reason you would want to use dishwasher detergent for this sort of thing is that it’s designed to foam less.  You know this if you have ever thought that you could just put some dish soap in the dishwasher and run it.  When the foam started to se...