Yikes! What’s That Coming Up The Drain??!!
Mari
Okay, we had our first “holding tank” learning experience last night. Here were are all cozy and getting ready to hit the sack… it’s about 10:00pm when we notice this yukky odor emanating from the drains.
Eeek, the shower tray was leeching gray water (that’s the term for all sink/shower water; toilet stuff is called “black water” - ugh, eh?!)
Okay, I think we discovered our max - just four days for the forty-gallon gray water holding tank. That was a shower for each of us every day, regular hand washing & dishes. Not much.
(We’re on partial hook-ups just now at the Elks Lodge in Oceanside, CA - that is, electricity and fresh water coming in… but gotta move the coach across the lot to “dump” - that’s the term for draining the waste water).
Okay, so back to my story: I go into a panic. Ty and I decide we’d better handle the dumping NOW. We baton down the hatches in prep for moving our housey on wheels… alas two of the four leveling jacks are stuck in the gravel now. So, Ty gets out the hammer and starts whacking away at the poor jacks.
Thwack, thwack, thwack… holy smokes, it’s now after 10:30pm and we’re surrounded by seniors here. Chances are they’re getting disturbed. Sure enough - a disgruntled lady appears clad in dressing gown demanding to know what the heck we’re up to as we’re keeping everyone awake. OOOOPS!!
I told her we are new RV’ers and apologized profusely, explaining our predicament. She promptly suggested we go get the “Blue Boy” from the camp host to tide us over to the morning… “It’ll be a darnsite quieter than the hammer” she scoffs as she goes back to her coach. Oh dear.
I’ve no idea what the heck a Blue Boy is. But, I make my way over to the camp host… and sure enough, I spot this plastic container on wheels with hoses and openings and a big handle like a sled! By this time, Ty’s a tad stressed and ready to hit the sack regardless of the leakage and eau d’pong. 
But I convinced him I’d found the solution – so, we haul this little blue dump “sled” to our coach, drain about 15 gallons, and yank the sloshing thing over to the dumping drain. I kept waiting for the “Candid Camera” peeps to spring out from somewhere!
What a hoot! I said to Ty we could look forward to bonding in a few days (that’s what Gary Smalley says these kinds of camping-type challenges create in the end!)
Tell you what though, this experience sure made me think about how much water we use in regular “bricks ‘n’ sticks” houses without realizing it.
Got any creative water conserving tips?
Posted on: Wednesday, August 15, 2007 at 10:10 pm 
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I have a story along that line, though it isn’t as extreme as yours it still has some merit for the lesson it taught us (my wife and I are new to RV’ing ourselves.)
We’ve noticed a stench coming from our bathroom drain for some time. We’ve put Lysol down there trying to quell the odor, but to no avail until last night when my wife dropped her brand new earring down the drain.
To get it out, I had to remove the u-shaped trap under the sink, and sure enough, I not only found the earring, I found the source of the stench.
We cleaned out the trap and my wife’s earring, and solved two problems simultaneously!
I hope this is helpful.
Craig (TheRVGuy)
December 3rd, 2007 at 11:12 amhttp://saddlebackrv.com
[...] Water usage. On board our RV with partial hookups, showers have to super short! In a regular house, though it’s good to be mindful of the gallons of water used in showering, it isn’t as critical to only use the minimal amount possible. I stepped into the shower and automatically went to turn off the flow as soon as I was soaked down to lather up. Thing is, when Ty and I are on partial hookups, waste water is going into the holding tanks: 40 gallons of gray and 35 of black. Whenever we don’t have the luxury of full hook ups with full drainage, we have to be very mindful of water consumption - especially gray (from shower/sinks)… as I talked about here: Yikes! What’s That Coming Up The Drain??!! [...]
March 23rd, 2008 at 10:38 amLOL! I had never heard of a blue boy before.
The actual dump station was full at our last state park…talk about running away quickly, with a mixture of both disgust and high amusement. I admit that the scene that split my sides in the movie RV was the dump station one, though this is the closest I’ve come to anything remotely like that.
Ewww.
March 29th, 2008 at 5:40 pm