Saturday, September 12, 2009

The Macerator Pump and Emptying The Black Water Tank

Since RVing is new to us I don't have any experience draining the blackwater tank which would also require moving the trailer. I also haven't had much experience towing it or, especially, backing it up. To go to a dump station would require stowing all the stuff we've been haphazardly piling in, retracting the slide-outs, disconnecting electrical power, and hitching up the truck and since the tank was starting to get full I was really interested when I read about using a macerator pump which reduces everything to a slurry and can be pumped through a 5/8" garden hose into a sewer clean-out or even through a window in the house and into a toilet. I did some research on-line a bought a portable macerator pump that just twists onto the sewer outlet just like the hose normally would. After a few mis-tries I got the wiring run and everything looked like it was ready to go. Since we didn't have the sewer clean-out option we went for the toilet. Betsy is outside with the hand-held switch for the macerator and I'm inside holding the hose in the toilet. After a few false starts while testing with fresh water, in which we discovered the knife gate valve leaked, we finally started pumping the crud. I expected some odor, but WOW!!!, that was bad. Stunk up the whole house! In retrospect I believe I could have pushed the hose all the way down the toilet a few feet and not have had to deal with all the aroma. Even thought the instructions say you can pump into a toilet they don't go into much detail. If I try this again and pushing the hose further down works I'll let you know.

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