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Black / gray water tank cleaning
In researching maintenance of black and gray water tanks there are numerous chemicals available. A number of RV resources are recommending Dawn and Calgon water softener.
Additionally there are the Camco and Valtare cleaning wands. The Camco site says used by and preferred by RV ers. Wondering how much is sales pitch? If you have used one please comment.
Are you a Dawn user? It worked great for cleaning oil off water fowl according to the commercial.
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22 Replies
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There are multiple schools of thought on this. Up front I will tell you that other than draining my holding tank(s) I have never cleaned, flushed, treated with chemicals or otherwise did any maintenance on my tank(s)
I do let my holding tank get reasonably full before draining. As mentioned previously on another thread I fill my water tank, turn off the city water valve, use my pump exclusively to provide needed water in the coach, and when the water tank is down to about 20% meaning my holding tank is nearly full, I refill the water tank and drain the holding tank.
Some RV parks or campgrounds have prohibitions against some chemical holding tank treatments. Most if not all holding tanks are baffled so most spraying is limited at best as to effectiveness, and if the tank drains are not left open when in an RV park, the large volume of tank contents tends to carry the bad stuff out and down the drain.
Some folks have mentioned tank treatments to deal with odors. Almost 100% of the time odors are a problem, it is associated with a coach plumbing vent system, usually air admittance valves. If the vent system is working as intended you should never have odors, and it would take a truckload of chemicals to get rid of the odors in a well baffled holding tank.
I’ve been doing this as described for 30 years next year, so far, so good.
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“Cleaning” your tanks is impossible with any commercial product. It’s also generally not necessary. Water is your best friend. Lots of water, don’t dump early and all will be good.
However, after years of full timing I had a professional tank cleaner flush my tanks. Wow! Calcium build up on the bottom of my grey and black tanks really surprised me. Big ‘ole chucks of “crap” came out the drain and the sensors work just a little bit better.
If you just want to reduce odor while dry camping and dumping then Happy Camper is the #1 choice. If you want to “clean” your tanks to the original surface then you need a professional cleaning like these folks do.
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I don’t use any chemicals and think frequent use certainly helps. All the chemicals do is make your stinky stink smell like fragrant poop.
The exception to all of this is the Liberty owners like Jon, the rose pedal dispenser covers up the stink.
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Curious , what kind of “flush” would break loose calcium deposit?
That stuff is tougher than Powdercoat;)
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That’s why I used All Pro Water Flow. They got it all out. I highly doubt anything else would.
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My coach has 3″ screw plugs in side at top of both black and grey tanks. I always unscrew and blast inside tanks to make sure all is clean. Thought all would have that feature for clean out. I Use a healthy squirt of dawn soap and a small bottle liquid Aqua Kem after clean out every trip.
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Let’s clear up all misconceptions about rose petals. We Liberty owners do not add them. They occur naturally and are present in all of our holding tanks because our s**t does not stink.
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Well said Jon, very well said.
I coveted a Liberty Coach for decades and bought one without even knowing about the rose petal feature. What a wonderful surprise that was.
I’m convinced there are two kinds of Prevost owners … who have a Liberty Coach and those who (often secretly) passionately wish they had a Liberty.
Some say “Join us, the water is fine” … Liberty Coach owners say “come smell the roses”.
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I was “fishing” for some description of the process/equipment – they used, the website does not.
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I do not believe anyone knows why the contents of Liberty coach holding tanks turn to rose petals, including the engineers at Liberty.
I’m pretty sure it has more to do with the owners rather than the equipment.
Buy a Liberty and see if I am right.
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Jon
i guess liberty figures it would be cheaper to give you rose pedals instead of a.tank that didn’t leak. This way your basement smells ok when it started to leak. Sorry couldn’t resist
Bill
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Yeah…I was going to say that too. They need the good smell to help overcome the bad when the tank starts to leak…which it will.
Another thing to get looked at on my Liberty.
2000 Featherlite H3-45
2024 Jeep Grand Cherokee
Leesburg, FL -
Good one Bill, and what I was hoping was somehow rose petals would seal the leaks but so far that does not appear to be happening.
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I was “fishing” for some description of the process/equipment – they used, the website does not.
If you are referring to my post about All Pro Water Flow, they use a high pressure jet on a flexible hose to run into the tanks via the dump piping. The chunks of stuff that coats of bottom of the tanks is amazing. I guess they are mostly slabs of calcium build up, not sure, but it’s not pretty. They push a camera inside when they are done to ensure they have gotten everything out. They do!
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Good lord………the rose petals are getting deep in here……gotta go find my waders.
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