More newbie questions - black tank flush system
We just started our TT life in the fall with the purchase of our first one.
I have read up a lot on the care and feeding of this new "animal", but am finding some minor issues in spite of all my attempted preparedness.
Today's adventure: using the black tank flusher for the first time.
I knew we had some solids piled up in the tank that need to get out of there, so I got situated to dump at home and connected the water hose to the outside and turned it on. I ran the flusher and watched the tank level come up past 2/3's before I went outside and pulled the handle to open the vale and drain. It seemed like very little of the solids came through. So I turned on the water and let it fill till it read full this time. Draining seemed like all liquid again.
Round 3: Filled to full and looked down through the toilet to see that it really was nowhere near full even though the indicator said it was. Turned the water back on while monitoring through the toilet and filled until the liquid level was just bellow the bottom of opening into the tank. I could see a lot more moving around inside the tank this time, but it still left a lot of solids laying in there when I drained it.
The first thing I realized during this process is that the flusher system sounds great in theory, but there is no outside way to monitor the level in the tank to know when you need to shut off the water / or open the drain. Maybe this doesn't matter if you are dealing with routine dumping, but for my situation of trying the loosen up stuck solids, it's a pain running in and out around teh TT to turn on and off the water. This leads to a change I'd like to make. I'm thinking of putting a valve for the flusher on / off inside under the bathroom sink so you don't need to run outside to shut it off.
Then I stepped back inside the TT again and realized I now had a sizable puddle of water growing across the bathroom floor. I quickly traced it back to the flusher system water line. There is some sort of check valve / vacuum breaker valve under the sink. It appears that water pressure is supposed to seal it shut and then let air in when you stop flushing to let the line drain. I leaks about on drop per second while the water pressure is on. It does not look like an item you can repair so, something to get replaced to fix the leak.
At the moment, I have filled the black tank completely, and am letting it sit to soak / loosen up solids overnight. I will see how much better it drains out tomorrow morning. If it does not clear out much better, then I am thinking I may need to go get one of the through the toilet wand type washers at this point.
Any advice is appreciated!
I have read up a lot on the care and feeding of this new "animal", but am finding some minor issues in spite of all my attempted preparedness.
Today's adventure: using the black tank flusher for the first time.
I knew we had some solids piled up in the tank that need to get out of there, so I got situated to dump at home and connected the water hose to the outside and turned it on. I ran the flusher and watched the tank level come up past 2/3's before I went outside and pulled the handle to open the vale and drain. It seemed like very little of the solids came through. So I turned on the water and let it fill till it read full this time. Draining seemed like all liquid again.
Round 3: Filled to full and looked down through the toilet to see that it really was nowhere near full even though the indicator said it was. Turned the water back on while monitoring through the toilet and filled until the liquid level was just bellow the bottom of opening into the tank. I could see a lot more moving around inside the tank this time, but it still left a lot of solids laying in there when I drained it.
The first thing I realized during this process is that the flusher system sounds great in theory, but there is no outside way to monitor the level in the tank to know when you need to shut off the water / or open the drain. Maybe this doesn't matter if you are dealing with routine dumping, but for my situation of trying the loosen up stuck solids, it's a pain running in and out around teh TT to turn on and off the water. This leads to a change I'd like to make. I'm thinking of putting a valve for the flusher on / off inside under the bathroom sink so you don't need to run outside to shut it off.
Then I stepped back inside the TT again and realized I now had a sizable puddle of water growing across the bathroom floor. I quickly traced it back to the flusher system water line. There is some sort of check valve / vacuum breaker valve under the sink. It appears that water pressure is supposed to seal it shut and then let air in when you stop flushing to let the line drain. I leaks about on drop per second while the water pressure is on. It does not look like an item you can repair so, something to get replaced to fix the leak.
At the moment, I have filled the black tank completely, and am letting it sit to soak / loosen up solids overnight. I will see how much better it drains out tomorrow morning. If it does not clear out much better, then I am thinking I may need to go get one of the through the toilet wand type washers at this point.
Any advice is appreciated!
