So there I was last week, trying to drain the black and gray water tanks on Umarang, the VRRV, a couple of cold days and nights after returning home from New Mexico.
The dumping of the tanks' contents seem to go fine. I then started pushing water in through the dump gate to flush them out and clean them out as usual.
About four minutes into the filling of the black water tank, I heard a loud clunk and water started spewing from the top of the black water tank! The forward half had come off its mounting bracket, and though the main pipe was held up by the guard I'd installed before, great pressure on the 1.5" ABS pipe from the gray water tank feeding into the dump hub broke the pipe as well.
Yep, water all over the place, luckily "clean-ish" water and not sewage!
The next day, while back at the RV storage yard, I got the tank back up flush against the bottom of the VRRV. What a PITA. I failed to see if there was a seal between the tube from the holding tank and the RV's bottom though.
I believe the forward mounting bracket had lost several of the screws used to hold it and the forward edge of the tank up. The last one failed while I was filling the tank.
Note the gap created by the pipe's break.
A bottom up view of the dump hub where the 1.5" pipe from the gray water tank connects. The tape you see there was an earlier attempt to seal things without actually replacing the pipe. No such luck.
The dump valve you see is for the black water tank.
As you can see below, there's not much to stop the downward fall of the black water tank, when one of its mount brackets fails.
By Sunday, yesterday, I'd installed two steel straps to support the black water tank in the event it ever comes off the mounts again. Fingers crossed.
I also, proactively, added a 2x4 board with a 1/8" steel plate brace across the bottom of the gray water tank, to reinforce things. The factory mount points on the rear edge looked fine and all present.
Gray Water Tank
Dale K., a neighborhood friend and retired Master Plumber came by and made short work of removing the failed pipe, reaming out the stub glued to the dump hub, and installing replacement piping.
He said in his decades of plumbing work, he'd never successfully removed broken off stubs of plastic tubes which were glued together....neither by heat or cutting methods.
Instead, he used this Socket Saver tool. Very nice tool indeed and it made short work of the remnants of the tube end which had been connected to the dump hub.
Here's how things looked after the repairs were done:
Looking from rear of RV to front:
Note the steel strapping. I think it'll be strong enough.
I hope.
You can tell which pipes are the new ones, they're
the clean ones. :)
This morning, Monday, the pipes in question passed a quick leak test. I then put about ten gallons of water into the black water tank through the toilet and drove the VRRV to the storage yard at Buckley Space Force Base.
Draining the water at the FamCamp dump facility went well. No leaks seen from the drive from home. They must have radically increased the pressure of the water available at the dump station as the black water tank filled up in less than 4 minutes and I saw water gushing from the top of the tank, not, thankfully, from inside the toilet.
I'll admit I'm a bit leery/worried that water gushed out of the top of the black water tank where it mates to the underside of the RV. Everything seems to be fine in terms of toilet operation, water storage and such but I won't be fully confident till I go through a few fill/dump cycles while camping. I'm thinking there might have been a seal between the top of holding tank and the RV's underbelly.
I just have to make sure to only fill the black water tank with just a few gallons of water to flush out "remnants" during a dump operation.
I mentioned misc. in the post subject line:
So, what do the "eyes" above say to you? Put yourself in the perspective of an approaching camper trying to find a spot to park at .... would the above sight say: Hi, come on over and set up or would it say: Go away?
2 comments:
Sure looks and sounds like you have it fixed. Just so you know, there's a very serious lack of rust under Uma....I barely recognize all of those components with their lustrous finish.
I hope it's well and truly fixed, Coop.... we'll see. As to the lack of rust....must be the low humidity and periodic applications of rust stopping paint. ;)
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