cleaning out black tank and toilet bowl

All we use is water. Plenty of water is a black tanks friend and yours as well to prevent odors and ensure solid materials, you know what I mean, are flushed when you dump.

If you don't have black tank flush for your tank or don't have acess to a water tap as at most dump stations, but do have a nonpotable source as at most dump stations and are not holding up others, I will fill a couple 5 gal buckets to dump through the toilet to flush any remaining solid deposits. I then close the valve, fill another 5 gal bucket and dump that down the comode to prime the black tank.
No sanitizers or chemicals are needed.

Lets face it you don't pour chemicals down your home toliet unless you have a septic system and then maybe a emzyme digester, though even those are not needed.

As for cleaning the toilet bowl, which is not an area of my expertise, DW uses the same as in the home toilet.

I drop the Walex blue tabs in mine after every dump, along with a couple toilet flushes of water. No smell, and no build up in the tank (I can see the bottom of it through the toilet).

I was a bit alarmed this past weekend when I went to dump and I got a rush of junk out the hose, a brief pause, and then (thankfully) another rush and a complete dump. Not sure what was hung up, but I'm glad I didn't have to manually remove it. I did let some presumably liquid waste sit in there for a couple of months between dumps but someone may have sneaked in a dookie without me knowing. The kids use it as a clubhouse when it's docked at the house but I tell them to come inside for #2.

We had a toilet brush right next to the toilet. Our toilet was plastic so the brush got used a lot. We had a bowl cleaner that was used once in a while. Not really needed often.
The black tank is never going to be fresh. All we ever used for 11 years was water and whatever toilet paper my wife liked. Not septic safe, not RV,
just whatever.

Deodorizing your black tank (and expecting it to stay deodorized and fresh) is a path to madness. Keeping the odors out of your RV is rather more practical, and basically means making sure your plumbing system (and its seals) is working properly.

I use an ordinary toilet brush to clean the bowl of the toilet, and if needed wipe it down with a rag, just as in cleaning any other toilet. I have a spray wand that I use to rinse out the riser part of the toilet and the black tank from time to time. I do not skimp on water when flushing, and limit what goes down the toilet to the usual "P" things (paper, poo, and pee). Beyond that, I don't really worry about the black tank much at all, and it seems to do just fine.

Vinegar sure cleans the water ports in the home toilets. I'd inject vinegar with the water pump in the RV if I thought it needed it.

We keep a toilet brush right next to the toilet and every time it gets used, the toilet gets brushed out. It's always clean! This is the emphatic rule in our camper. Do it or die! No exceptions!

With that said, the bowl is always clean, no smells. And any "liquids" spilled get wiped up immediately. If YOU made the mess.... YOU clean it up! Even my 4 year old grand daughter is required to brush it out when with us!

Second. If you dump your black tank regularly, you won't have smells coming from the black tank. The worse offender is pushing the peddle and the odor from the toilet hole comes permeating upward!

We keep a bottle of Dawn Dishwashing liquid in the camper all the time. After dumping the black tank, I pour about 2 inches from the bottle into the black tank. Yea! This REALLY does keep odors down.

If traveling, put a few gallons of water in the black tank and a couple inches of Dawn. It will clean the tank real nice. No need for any kind of deodorizers or anything.

If you are not traveling, fill the tank completely with water, till it comes up in the neck of the toilet. Then dump. This will clean everything out, but does take a lot of water.

Never use anything in the black tank. My procedure is this, every time tank is empty I fill toilet bowel almost rim, then dump it into tank. I do this 4 times. That way I feel tank sloshing as you travel will help to clean and brake up and left over items in tank. If solids are going in to toilet, I fill bowel so about 1/2 of the area is covered with water. Every few days I take dish water in a dish pan and dump it down toilet, then use a "bottle brush" to clean up bowel as necessary. Never have had any odor or clog problem.

Like others, I use only water to keep the black tank clean.

After I dump, I fill the toilet 3 times (3 gallons) and that goes into the tank. When flushing #2 I use a little more water, but not much more.

I have a Tornado tank flusher and use it every couple of weeks.

I stopped using chemicals years ago when I realized why the salesmen recommend them.

I have done this for years with a minor problem only once when I didn't use the Tornado long enough.

Two words: GEO method.

Murphsmom wrote:
Two words: GEO method.

Go to the top of this page and paste this into the Search box. Discussed several times a year, most recently within the last 2 months.