Dumping RV tanks into home syptic system
For the five or 6 years that I have been RV'ing, for convenience, I would sometimes dump my tanks into my home septic system upon returning home. While I have felt pretty comfortable doing this, I h...
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Absolutely no concerns with pumping RV holding tanks into your home system. Except be careful with what chemicals are in RV black tank treatments and what you put into a grey tank (cleaners, ex.) Some chemicals in high enough concentrations can permanently destroy an on-site disposal system. You WANT the bacteria in your holding tank to go into your tank at home. RV tank chemicals don't help with digestion and breakdown of the solids and are simply not required though. The organic/enzyme types won't be in your RV tank long enough anyway to do anything. In some jurisdictions, adding chemical treatments to a residential septic tank is not permitted. Good info. on chemicals here. Forget about chemicals in your RV tank, esp. if dumping into your tank at home and then you'll never have to worry.
All tanks eventually require pumping out. It's just how they work no matter where you are. The frequency depends on what goes into tanks, the volume of it and the size of tanks. Garburetors greatly increase pump-out frequency. Some of the incoming solids float on the surface and gets digested by bacteria and up to 50% drops to the bottom in the form of sludge and builds up. If you fail to pump out a tank, it will eventually plug up and in come cases cause a drain field to fail and then you are looking at thousands of $$ in repairs. Design requirements are significantly more complex today and you can even be forced to install a very expensive system costing many thousands of $$. I've seen older drain fields that were built from clay tile and Big O pipe that were plugged right up due to failure to do periodic pump-outs. Treatment chemicals in a home septic tank are unnecessary and in some cases can cause harm. Natural microbial action is all that is needed. If you think you need chemicals because the system isn't functioning right, then you may have problems with the system that need looking into.
Better to spend a couple hundred $$ every few years and get a pumper in.
Good info. on pumping septic tanks from U of Minnesota here. Also some from PennState here.
All tanks eventually require pumping out. It's just how they work no matter where you are. The frequency depends on what goes into tanks, the volume of it and the size of tanks. Garburetors greatly increase pump-out frequency. Some of the incoming solids float on the surface and gets digested by bacteria and up to 50% drops to the bottom in the form of sludge and builds up. If you fail to pump out a tank, it will eventually plug up and in come cases cause a drain field to fail and then you are looking at thousands of $$ in repairs. Design requirements are significantly more complex today and you can even be forced to install a very expensive system costing many thousands of $$. I've seen older drain fields that were built from clay tile and Big O pipe that were plugged right up due to failure to do periodic pump-outs. Treatment chemicals in a home septic tank are unnecessary and in some cases can cause harm. Natural microbial action is all that is needed. If you think you need chemicals because the system isn't functioning right, then you may have problems with the system that need looking into.
Better to spend a couple hundred $$ every few years and get a pumper in.
Good info. on pumping septic tanks from U of Minnesota here. Also some from PennState here.
