[rfdbrown32166]

Hi. My name is Rick. I discovered this forum while searching the Internet in regards to the plumbing system on my recently inherited 2007 Montana 3500RL. My father gave me his Montana as he no longer uses it since my mother passed on a few years ago. So I am now the owner of barely used unit. Good thing too ... I just went through a divorce, and basically came out with nothing but my guitars, music equipment, woodworking tools and my SUV. So I've set my unit up in a park in BC Canada and it is my home now.

I was a little frustrated trying to set it up. I didn't find the user manual of any particular use, it was more or less a generic "care and use of your RV" manual in my opinion. So figuring out the plumbing system was no easy task. My father couldn't remember what the dealer had told him and some of the information he did remember he was told I have since learned was incorrect.

As I mentioned I am full time set up in Mountain Park Resort in BC Canada. It is as beautiful as it's name imply. But they don't have sewer connections to their sites because to dig in the system would have killed the roots of too many of the beautiful towering pine and fir trees. So they come around on a regular basis and flush your holding tanks with a device called a "Machinator" which for lack of a better description is a poop garburator.

So after a few days of being set up I noticed water pooling below my sewer drain pipe but it didn't appear to be black water. I took off the drain cap and whoosh ... I discovered you never position yourself in front of the drain when removing the cap! My dad just laughed and said "Welcome to the world of RV living Son!"

It turns out what my dad had been told by the dealer wasn't completely correct. He was told to leave an absurd valve handle (located in a nearly hidden and barely accessible location between the slide outs behind the tires) open all the time or else his sinks would back up. Of course I'm talking about the "Galley" holding tank which my dad had never heard of and I can find no mention of in the manual. So every time I used the sink it was draining directly into the sewer pipe and them slowly dripping out the cap onto the ground. Of course leaving it open IF you were connected to a full time sewer would be OK if you didn't have freezing weather part of the year. But I'm Canadian and BC is about as warm as we can be in Canada in the winter, which hovers around freezing.

So what how did I finally figure out what was going on with the plumbing system on how it works? Well it was no help searching the Keystone website, I called the dealership where dad bought the unit but was the weekend and only sales people were there and didn't have a clue. So I was very lucky that "Google" directed me to this forum when I typed in "What is a galley tank on a Keystone Montana 5th wheel" and after about 5 minutes reading comments of other frustrated new users I found out:

- there are three holding tanks NOT two
- the valves are NOT all in the same place for dumping the tanks.
- you should NOT leave your tank valves open full time
- the users manual is NOT particularly useful

So I discovered that the users of this forum could teach me some NOTty things and I joined immediately.

I am happy to say that thanks to comments I've read in this forum I now have the plumbing properly set up and working. I am so thankful this forum exists or I might still be pulling my hair out thinking I needed to replace a leaking valve!

Anyway ... that's me ... that's my story ... and I'm sticking to it.

Rick
Renaissance Man