How do you long termers handle grey & black water?

We have always left our gray open for months at a time while camp hosting. Never a problem with sewer flies or oders.. The hose is always clean also. We do not put any kind of food or grease down our drains. We take a paper towel and wipe down all dishes and silverware before putting them in the dish water. The only thing going down our grey drain is soapy dishwater, soapy shower water, soapy and clean washing machine drain water and water from brushing our teeth and washing our hands. All that soapy water does a great job of keeping the drain lines and sewer hose clean. You should never get sewer flies or oders in your camper because all drains have a drain trap that is full of water just like your home.

I don't see it as any different from my sticks and bricks home that is on a septic system. I don,t have a dump valve for my grey water on my home. The water goes down the drain pipe into the septic tank just like it does in the camper. If it was going to smell because of residue in the pipe or tank of the camper it would do the same in the house. No need to over think this.

IDoMyOwnStunts wrote:
I do that with a Flush King, but slightly differently. My grey tends to fill much faster when we have FHUs, so I almost always have a black tank at 1/3 when my grey is full. I just transfer some grey into the black and re-close both valves instead of dumping the entire grey. That usually nets me an extra day of grey use. Plus more water sitting in the black is better.

Same here. We fill the gray much faster than the black. I added This Valve for this purpose.

3 tanks, black, grey, galley.
we leave all closed. dump as needed.

Memphisdoug wrote:
I would leave both closed and then dump both when the first one fills. Like tonymull says, if you leave the grey tank open there isn't enough water going through all the time to flush things out and down your sewer hose well

Ditto - *except* when you have an unlimited supply of water, (common sense!) the grey may have to be dumped more often than the black..;)

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Johnny G1 wrote:
Leave both closed and open black only to dump and then back flush black tank with a bit of grey water, do this 2-3 times and the black tank will be a lot cleaner, Trust me we have tried it all and my method works the best for me, you can leave a lot of stuff in the black tank other wise that you won't get out. Just my thought's.

I do that with a Flush King, but slightly differently. My grey tends to fill much faster when we have FHUs, so I almost always have a black tank at 1/3 when my grey is full. I just transfer some grey into the black and re-close both valves instead of dumping the entire grey. That usually nets me an extra day of grey use. Plus more water sitting in the black is better. I've had to deal with the dreaded pyramid. I will not let that happen again.

40G black and 60G grey and they can fill the grey in a day. I swear that tankless water heater encourages DD and DW to take far longer showers than they really need.

Leave both closed and open black only to dump and then back flush black tank with a bit of grey water, do this 2-3 times and the black tank will be a lot cleaner, Trust me we have tried it all and my method works the best for me, you can leave a lot of stuff in the black tank other wise that you won't get out. Just my thought's.

Thanks for all the input. There are only 2 of us and the TT has 40G black & gray, so I guess I'll leave them closed and dump as needed.

We have a toy hauler with large tanks. 126 fresh, 50 grey and 50 black. We leave both closed. On extended stays, I watch the grey and when full, I dump and close it back off. I want a full grey when I dump the black to clean the hose out, good! We can boon dock 11 to 14 days and take a navy shower, everyday, with just us two. A toy hauler is made for boon docking!

We've always left both closed until ready to dump. It just takes a few minutes to walk to the dump side and pull the lever.

We leave everything closed. We dump once a week. Works good for us.