Tanks

Thanks TechWriter, that chart is great.

jlhogs wrote:
I bought some homemade body scrub from a craft fair and it is all natural and contains sugar. Now will this or other ingredients, ie. essential oils, that may be in soaps hurt the tanks?

Remember, molten lava is also "all natural".

jlhogs wrote:

What items that are safe to put in drains in a S&B that are not safe to put in rv tanks?

RV holding tanks are mostly polyethylene or ABS, so mostly anything. Here's a polyethylene chemical resistance chart.

Haha. The sugar acts an exfoliate.
Thanks for all the replies. Start fulltiming in about 6 weeks. :)

The holding tank is made from the same sorts of plastics as are used in house (and RV) drain plumbing. Strong organic solvents (MEK and such like) would be the main thing to avoid, and you wouldn't normally have those in soaps anyhow.

Ideally you also don't want stuff that will coagulate or settle out and stick to the tank to avoid gumming things up too much. Again, that shouldn't be a big problem with body washes.

Sugar definitely wouldn't be a problem because it is completely soluble in water (and any shower is going to have more than enough water use to dissolve whatever amount of sugar would be in the body wash). I can't imagine the sugar having any useful cleansing action, but that's another story. Maybe it makes the soap taste a bit better for kids who use foul language.

beemerphile1 wrote:
You can put anything you want in there short of an acid that will melt plastic. It is just a plastic holding tank.

Actually most plastics are not degraded by common acids. I buy acids for lab use in plastic bottles all the time.

Vinegar is actually 5% acetic acid.

Plastics are more likely to be degraded by things like industrial oils and solvents, and some consumer things like cleaners with pine oil or "oil" soaps.

The amount of oil or sugar in a body scrub will not be enough to harm a gray tank.

You can put anything you want in there short of an acid that will melt plastic. It is just a plastic holding tank.

Sugar in body scrub? That's a new one. Of course if it's "all natural" then it must be good. Rant over.

Think of all the food residue, including sugars and oils, that go down the drain when washing dishes. I don't think your bath soap is going to make any difference.

That's a good question. Considering that this would go into your gray tank, I would suggest you use it sparingly. I think this would be no different than any other body product, lotions, etc, that would wash off and stay in the tank as residue. I don't take items like this camping so it's not an issue, but I'm sure that years of soap, shampoo, lotion, etc., residue can build up. I occasionally use a gray tank cleaner in the kitchen gray tank just for the build up from various food items (the product is called Elemonate Gray Water), so the same could be used for the bathroom sink and shower/tub drains too, just to address the issues. As far as what is safe, it's biodegradable it would be safe, but more importantly if you plan to do a safe gray water dump when boondocking, such as in your fire pit to help put out the fire. But, even biodegradable will leave residue.

Deleted. Responded to wrong post.