Toilets and Holding Tanks

Rvers spend way too much time thinking about and dealing with their toilets. At home there is no problem. You do your thing, flush and walk away with hardly a rearward glance. No problema! Once in a while the Magic Faerie cleans the thing.

In an RV it is not that simple! You do your thing, turn on the pump and, if you have enough water in the tank, flush. After that you deal with the part that did not flush. I will spare you the details.

Then you watch the level build up in the "Black" tank until you have to hook up Mr. Smelly Hose and dump the contents. This is assuming all goes well, otherwise there can be many problems.

The worse problem happens when, because of ignorance, you leave the hose connected and the dump valve open all the time you are parked and hooked up. This creates what is fondly called "The Cone Of Death". This occurs when the "liquids" are allowed to drain out, leaving the "solids" behind. The solids build up in a cone shaped, hard as rock sculpture in the holding tank. Eventually this mass takes up most of the space in the tank and requires you to get very dirty. People have tried to come up with home made formulas of cleaning products to dissolve the "cone" but anything powerful enough to dissolve the "cone" is also strong enough to dissolve (or at least damage) the holding tank so that solution is of limited value. If you can see down into the tank you can take a stick and pound the mound into submission. Sometimes this works and sometimes not. You hope it does. I do not leave the valve open (any more). I always make a very liquidy slurry that dumps very well. I am proud of my natural ability to do this.

Now to our present problem:

Not long after we arrived in Mexico the level indicator for the black tank stopped functioning. It showed the tank as being full all the time. This is not a huge problem because I have learned (who says you can't teach an old dog..?) that with our bathroom habits, it takes about ten days to fill the tank. So once a week, I dumped it. Still, it had to be fixed. Here is how it works: There are electric sensors on the side of the tank each with a little probe sticking into the tank. As the tank fills and covers a sensor, it changes the resistance of that circuit and a light lights in the RV showing the tank as 1/4, 1/2, 3/4 or 4/4 full. The problem is that something, probably toilet paper, sticks to the electric level sensors that send information to the control panel and gives a false reading.

There are several possible solutions and sometimes you need to try all of them. The most popular solutions are;

1) fill the tank with hot water and a strong soap solution and drive around for a few hours hoping the soap will slosh around and clean the sensors,

2) fill the tank with cold water and a couple bags of ice cubes and drive around hoping the ice cubes will knock the toilet paper off,

3)Buy a "magic wand" that you hook up to a hose (not your drinking water hose), put down the toilet and use the rotating spray head to clean the inside of the tank. Wear glasses and stop talking because some of it will splash back in your face.

#3 only works if you have good water pressure, a rare occurance in Mexico. In this RV Park we have great water pressure. I performed this trick with my "magic wand" today and now my sensors read "empty" once again! Hurray!