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Old 09-30-2021, 08:56 AM   #1
brooks340
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Black tank mishap

While on our summer trip across Canada this year I had a frightening thing happen. We were travelling from Alberta across Canada to New Brunswick, about an 8 day trip and on our first night on the road we stopped at a great little campground in Saskatchewan. After we setup for the night, and because I was only planning on dumping the tanks every few days on the road I decided to treat the black tank. So I ran a full bowl of toilet water to add the Happy Camper treatment, waited while it dissolved a bit then flushed it down the toilet. I always also run the toilet for a couple of minuets after I add the treatment just to make sure there is enough water in the tank to start out. So while standing there flushing the toilet I decided to open the medicine cabinet DIRECTLY ABOVE THE TOILET. We have a MHC 294RL and the aft medicine cabinet is directly over the toilet. When I opened the door, much to my horror my shaving cream can fell out of the cabinet and directly down into the black tank. I've never done this before and to this day don't know why I opened the door while having the toilet open like that. Anyway, panicked I went outside and flushed the tank a couple of times, and we got the cap of the can out but not the can itself. I had visions of the can blocking the black tank, us needing to remove the tank to retrieve the can etc. I called a local mobile RV tech the next day who advised me to wait it out, in his opinion the can would eventually make it's own way out. So we carried on with the trip, spent a month on the east coast, using a septic service to clean out our tanks while there, all with no issues but no can. I even bought a scope and fished it up the discharge pipe looking for the can possibly in the pipe but no luck. Then, on our return trip while dumping the tanks one morning I heard a clunk and lo and behold the can was wedged in the clear elbow I have on my sewer hose. You can't imagine the relief when I saw that! We dogged a bullet, but I am glad I listened to the mobile tech's advice and in the end things did work themselves out.
 
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Old 09-30-2021, 09:04 AM   #2
432bartman
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Holy cow, you did dodge a nightmare. The rest of us our glad it made its way through your plumbing and out. I'm glad my cabinet is not over the toilet........lol.
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Old 09-30-2021, 09:11 AM   #3
padredw
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Thank you, Brooks, for sharing. We can share your horror at such a mistake because we have all made similar mistakes -- or even worse. And we can share you relief at the outcome because many times the result of our mistakes has turned out far better than we might have feared.

Yours is the second post I've seen on this forum today that shows a willingness to share our human vulnerability.

That willingness helps us all to accept our human-ness and to relate to each other as one human being to another.
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Old 09-30-2021, 09:21 AM   #4
DutchmenSport
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Somewhere in the bottom of our black tank is a kitchen fork. I won't go into a lengthy description how it got there. ... No toilet paper goes down our toilet as we have a bidet. So, I don't think there is any possibility of anything getting caught on it and getting clogged. And there are too many bends in the drain pipes. If it worked its way out of the tank, then it's stuck in the pipe at one of the bends somewhere. So far, nothing seems to be affected though. If we used TP, I think I'd be much more concerned.
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Old 09-30-2021, 12:19 PM   #5
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Isn't it great to be lucky? Good job waiting on it. My system has three 90 degree turns on the way out. I don't have a cabinet over the toilet but I've worried about dropping a toilet brush in, so I put a wrist lanyard around the handle. Pretty sure if the brush went down, it would not come out.
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Old 09-30-2021, 02:49 PM   #6
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Pretty sure when we traded our 2010 there was a potato pealer in the black tank.
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Old 09-30-2021, 03:28 PM   #7
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You peel potatoes in the toilet??!!
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Old 09-30-2021, 04:53 PM   #8
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Originally Posted by rohrmann View Post
You peel potatoes in the toilet??!!
Probably some things we don't want to know.
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Old 10-03-2021, 02:59 PM   #9
badaxemi
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Fork & Potato Peeler you guys do weird things in the bathroom!!!
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Old 10-03-2021, 03:07 PM   #10
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OK, I'll confess. We wash dishes in the kitchen sink in a tub. After washing and rinsing all the dishes, the dish water gets flushed down the toilet to add a little more water to the black tank, and to put some dish washing soap in there too to help clean it a little.

Now, it's not so bad dumping the kitchen sink water into the toilet .... as long as there is nothing under all those soap subs. (now you know the rest of the story!)
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Old 10-03-2021, 04:51 PM   #11
Leftie Canuk
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Black Tank Mishap

Quote:
Originally Posted by brooks340 View Post
While on our summer trip across Canada this year I had a frightening thing happen. We were travelling from Alberta across Canada to New Brunswick, about an 8 day trip and on our first night on the road we stopped at a great little campground in Saskatchewan. After we setup for the night, and because I was only planning on dumping the tanks every few days on the road I decided to treat the black tank. So I ran a full bowl of toilet water to add the Happy Camper treatment, waited while it dissolved a bit then flushed it down the toilet. I always also run the toilet for a couple of minuets after I add the treatment just to make sure there is enough water in the tank to start out. So while standing there flushing the toilet I decided to open the medicine cabinet DIRECTLY ABOVE THE TOILET. We have a MHC 294RL and the aft medicine cabinet is directly over the toilet. When I opened the door, much to my horror my shaving cream can fell out of the cabinet and directly down into the black tank. I've never done this before and to this day don't know why I opened the door while having the toilet open like that. Anyway, panicked I went outside and flushed the tank a couple of times, and we got the cap of the can out but not the can itself. I had visions of the can blocking the black tank, us needing to remove the tank to retrieve the can etc. I called a local mobile RV tech the next day who advised me to wait it out, in his opinion the can would eventually make it's own way out. So we carried on with the trip, spent a month on the east coast, using a septic service to clean out our tanks while there, all with no issues but no can. I even bought a scope and fished it up the discharge pipe looking for the can possibly in the pipe but no luck. Then, on our return trip while dumping the tanks one morning I heard a clunk and lo and behold the can was wedged in the clear elbow I have on my sewer hose. You can't imagine the relief when I saw that! We dogged a bullet, but I am glad I listened to the mobile tech's advice and in the end things did work themselves out.
We had a similar experience - DW was using a hose with quick connect and a fine spray nozzle (all-brass fittings), and she was flushing through the ball valve on the commode. All of a sudden the quick connect fitting released, and the brass nozzle dropped into the tank. Well, after a lot of soul-searching, we decided to leave it there and hope it did not jam in the blade valve. Four years later, a slightly corroded brass nozzle showed up in the clear elbow ! BTW, due to never knowing if the blade valve would be jammed open, even a bit, by the errant nozzle, we immediately purchased one of the "final" knife blade valves with the male and female bayonet fittings at the outfall end of the waste line. This was to avoid those lurking surprises.
I was really amazed how much corrosion was on that "brass" nozzle - the black tank is obviously a very harsh environment, even for brass !
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Old 10-04-2021, 09:13 AM   #12
ShaneGreen
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I was 18 and working for an RV dealer. After I was done sealing roofs or what-not I'd often hang around the big local campground where I'd made friends with a lot of the families. One week 4 very cute girls about my age were there on vacation and I'd spent quite a bit of time with one of them, flirting in the most awkward way possible (I never got any better at it).


Saturday morning my boss hollers that one of his most loyal customers is having some sort of problem, go fix it. No other information to go on. I pull into the driveway and who's out on the deck but the 4 girls. None of them would make eye contact with me. This was not looking good.


Wanna guess which one of them had dropped their hairbrush down the toilet? Wanna guess who thought if they grabbed it with the big long campfire tongs they could get it out? I spent most of the day shoulder deep in their black tank. . . .and she was too embarrassed to ever speak to me again.
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