SEWER LINE AND WIND RESISTENCE

korbe wrote:
We only connect our hose and dump when necessary - about every 3 or 4 days. For me, the sewer hose hanging off my rig and extending into a sewer hole, in direct view of my neighbors' out door living area, is not a pretty sight, IMHO.

Leaving the gray tank open and connected allows the park's sewer gases to use my vent for air. I don't prefer that thought either.

X 3

There are 3 of us and we can go about 4 days on the gray tank (31 gallons) and about 5 or so on the black (29 gallons). We leave them both closed and don't even pull out the hose until we are ready to dump. If we will need to dump before again before leaving, we will leave the hose hooked up.

Water management is the key. We couldn't last half the time on tanks that were twice as big in the TT we had. We got an oxygenics body spa shower head and learned to manage the water better. We generally take Navy showers, except the last day of a trip. We will take showers as long as we can to help fill the gray tank. We recently bought a low flow faucet aerator for our kitchen sink. It does 1/2 gallon per minute. We will see how much better it does for us. Not bothering with the bathroom sink right now as it fills into the black tank and we normally have to run water into it to fill it up. Don't wanna use the aerator as it will slow down the process.

Wishbone51 wrote:
Did he leave the black tank valve open and the flies got in?

I did. That's why I no longer leave them open.

Did he leave the black tank valve open and the flies got in?

Old-Biscuit wrote:

GMandJM wrote:

Bird Freak wrote:
I keep both valves closed until time to dump. I don't worry about them backing up into camper but I had problems with sewer fly's getting in my tanks one time. Every time we flushed toilet fly's came out and into rv.

^^Yes, this. Drain flies suck!

How did they get into black tank in order to come out of toilet :H

Up through the slinky into the tank. Can be a common problem with some sewer systems.

Hi Douglas,

The air flowing over the nose and then over the top of the RV creates a low pressure area over the top front 1/3 to 1/2 of the vehicle. Warts and bumps in that area don't create much, if any, frontal resistance. An modern A/C unit, with its low profile and wedge front and rolled sides has minimal effect in the turbulent air in the back half of the camper's top. The areas of concern would be the frontal area and it's shape (barn door or egg shaped aerodynamic look) AND the bluff shaped rear end. The rear end is really the area of concern as speeds increase. That square back produces a very large negative pressure area behind the RV and that = drag. Faster you go...more drag...more power required...more fuel burn. Some where around 60-65 is the sweet spot where you are balancing drag, frontal resistance, rolling resistance, power, fuel burn, driving time....

The class C was designed to maximize useful space in a smaller package-with regard to the cabover. Back in the day when it was called a mini motorhome, the cabover space provided a bed and maximized the utility of the full length of the vehicle-often a short vehicle.

Space efficiency trumps aerodynamic efficiency in these units. The cabover is an aerodynamic bad dream. Watch raindrops, bugs get caught in the cabover cavity and swirl around-sometimes hitting windshield, sometimes eventually, sometimes not. The air conditioner is a drop in the bucket. Best strategy here is to keep the speed down as much as possible.

Definitely keep black tank valve closed until ready to dump. I usually don't even hookup hose until time to dump.

Maybe it should have been worded "We NOW leave our tanks shut after having gotten drain flies in our tank when they were left open."

GMandJM wrote:

Bird Freak wrote:
I keep both valves closed until time to dump. I don't worry about them backing up into camper but I had problems with sewer fly's getting in my tanks one time. Every time we flushed toilet fly's came out and into rv.

^^Yes, this. Drain flies suck!

How did they get into black tank in order to come out of toilet :H

korbe wrote:
We only connect our hose and dump when necessary - about every 3 or 4 days. For me, the sewer hose hanging off my rig and extending into a sewer hole, in direct view of my neighbors' out door living area, is not a pretty sight, IMHO.

Leaving the gray tank open and connected allows the park's sewer gases to use my vent for air. I don't prefer that thought either.

This is exactly what we do too if we're camping somewhere with hookups.