Toilet Mystery

Fossil Hunter wrote:
Thanks for the replies so far.
Toilet lid was closed. Black tank only has a couple of gallons in it.
Water pump and fresh tank are never used, I only camp with hook ups.
Vent has no leaks. Pipe cap is intact on roof with no leeks.
My cleaning procedure is as follows:
Dump black completely, let run for a few minutes via black flush sprayer, when finished I close the black valve and do a 60 second count with black flush running to put a couple of gallon back in black tank. Turn off black tank sprayer.
Go into trailer, open toilet and pour in bottle of blue chemical.
Close empty toilet lid. It bugs me that the water was clear, and not blue tinted from the chemical...... The black tank is not full, when I flushed the toilet, the clear water fell into tank as normal.
To me, the water could not have come from the black tank. No water pump either, lid closed, no leaks from above. Sounds crazy but these are the facts.

This one is for sure interesting. A few questions.

1. You stated you always camp with full hookup's. Do you drain the water heater or the camper fresh water piping through the low point drains before you put the camper in storage?

2. If you leave the water in the system, (water heater and piping full of water) when you put it in storage, was the LP gas left on? and possibly the water heater on gas?

3. How much time (days etc) passed from the time you stored the camper until you found the issue?

4. Is your water heater a 6 gallon or 10 gallon heater?

5. What brand, year and model is your camper?


I will pass this along to help the cause. We have the china bowl Sealand toilet. Traveler lite model. We camp most all the time with onboard tanks. At the start of camp I need to put 3 gallons of water into my black tank (it is a big flat tank) to get some starter water in the bottom so stuff floats and does not stick when you flush.

It takes 1.5 gallons of water to fill the bowl up to the bottom of the cast rim. This is still about 1.5" down from overflow. Then I flush it and add a second fill to the bottom of the rim and flush it to get all 3 gallons in.

Point: In order to overflow your toilet bowl, it will take approx. 1.5 to 2 gallons of water most likely regardless of brand. If the the bowl was dry or drained when you flushed it after you put the chemical in when you last put it in storage, then where did 2 plus gallons of clear water come from to get into the bowl? This is more to point out, this is not a little amount of leaking in water, this is a lot of leaking in water.

With a vented black tank, I'm not sure water could even back up the flush valve into the bowl if it wanted too. The bowl seal is normally water tight, since the tank is vented, where is the pressure coming from to back blast water up from the black tank? if the tank even had water in it.

For sure, post what ever this come out to be.

John