[jcurtis934]

One of the fifth wheels in the park is an older sob that seems to have a few issues each winter after they arrive and open it up (it sits onsite all year). So I do the nice thing and help educate the owners on rv maintenance for stuff that needs figuring out and let them do the work or hire a mobile tech when they don't think they want to do it. This year, toilet smell. When I went to educate the owner how one should be draining the black tank and rinsing it...I find that no sound can be heard from the rinse and nothing coming out the outlet after a tank dump. Search for check valve, find check valve totally plugged solid, educate on why it is there, replace with the one I took out of monty when I improved my system, turn on rinse and find water spraying out of two fitting that I could tighten several turns by hand, still find nothing coming out of tank, manually adding water down toilet by hose didn't flush out much at all, adding water by timing the flow (3 min) starts to fill bowl...ummmmmmm.... This is one of those jobs for the mobile tech since it isn't my trailer! My guess is at least half the tank volume is a solid mass of dried sludge, thereby plugging the rinse function and a much reduced tank capacity. Thought others would love a funny rv story... john