Black tank problems

[Phil Eyler]

Help! I went to empty black tank and when I pulled the handle the sewage not only emptied out the correct chute it also emptied underneath the fifth wheel.
I'm assuming I have a pipe leaking between tank and chute. This happen to anyone else? If so I would appreciate any advice you can give. I can't get anyone to look at it until neat week. I've been on this same site {Florida} for three months and have had no problems until now. My unit is a 2014 3402RL.

[jeffba]

You had something break loose. You might be able to remove the back wall in your basement and see what happened.

[rohrmann]

It will be much easier to drop the coroplast at the rear of the lower frame area. That is where the drain valves are and the pipe connects to them. You have your gray and black tank side by side, and after the valves, the pipes elbow toward each other and connect at a wye fitting where the line comes out from the belly area and turns toward the drain outlet. These are rigid connections with no flexing built in. You may have a fitting or a pipe broken. We had the black tank valve break, along with both flanges, while still under warranty, and they had to cut the flanges off both sides of the valve, and replaced the valve and with new flanges.

[jeffba]

you might want to take a peek from the top first. fewer surprises

[Phil Eyler]

Thanks to everyone who answered.. Guess I'll get brave tomorrow and try to find out what broke. I've plumbed a house but have no experience with a fifth wheel. I really don't want to wait four days for a solution!

[Dmcgrew]

When we had this problem I found that the bottom of the tank had a split in it. This required the replacement of the tank. Some on the site have made repairs to their tanks and that might be less work and possibly better than replacing the tank with the same poor quality tank. We along with others have had multiple tank failures. Good luck!

[1retired06]

Originally Posted by Dmcgrew

When we had this problem I found that the bottom of the tank had a split in it. This required the replacement of the tank. Some on the site have made repairs to their tanks and that might be less work and possibly better than replacing the tank with the same poor quality tank. We along with others have had multiple tank failures. Good luck!

Correct. We had a black tank on our 2005 split at the bottom seam. After airing out for a week, I repaired with a plasticmend product which I then covered with a fiberglass patch roughly 8 inches wide. Yes, overkill, I then used eterabond tank repair tape as a final patchover. Still in place when we traded in the unit on a 2010 four years later. Was not necessary to remove the tank for the fix.

[footz1941]

Originally Posted by Dmcgrew

When we had this problem I found that the bottom of the tank had a split in it. This required the replacement of the tank. Some on the site have made repairs to their tanks and that might be less work and possibly better than replacing the tank with the same poor quality tank. We along with others have had multiple tank failures. Good luck!

If it was a split in the tank it would leak all the time not just when he pulled the dump valve

[mlh]

The pipe has got to be broke somewhere between the valve and the end of the pipe or at the down side of the valve. How hard was the valve to open? Did the handle pull out too far? Either of these would indicate the valve.
Lynwood