Black Tank

8104 Views 1 Reply 2 Participants Last post by ctfortner, Apr 23, 2008

rongt101

Discussion Starter · Apr 22, 2008

Hi folks, Just upgraded out of a pop up to a used travel trailer. Black tank question for you, sensor shows the black tank as full and when I tried to dump only a very little water came out and then a slow trickle of sludge. We are going for our first trip this weekend and no sewer hook up. What do I do to be sure I am really empty?

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ctfortner

· #2 · Apr 23, 2008

Hello.

Your black tank is probably empty, your sensors just may have something on covering it up and showing thats its full when its really not. If something attaches to the side where the sensor is, such as a piece of toilet paper, it will show a bad reading.

One way to check to see if its empty is to run a water hose in your trailer and put it in the toilet. Open up your black tank valve as if you were dumping, then turn on the water hose. If all that water is coming out, its empty and probably just needs the sensors cleaned off.

A method to clean your sensors out good is to dump a couple of bags of ice and also add a few gallons of water and go for a drive and take some turns as well, before it melts.

After you do this, just dump your tank as you normally would and check the sensor again.

You can also pick up a toilet wand that sprays water under high pressure in your holding tank through your toilet. They are not expensive, but I have not personally tried one of these.

Also, from another thread related to this, something you can install that will help to.

bill0830 said:
This is the first issue we ran into after purchasing our first camper. We tried everything and nothing worked. A friend of mine recommended the "Tornado". Now some campers, especially a lot of the upper line models may have this already installed. On our Jayco Designer they call it a black water flush. It kind of works like the "Tornado". You have to do a little manual labor to install them, but it's not bad. What it does is fits into the top 1/2 of your black water tank and sprays a high pressure stream inside the tank, losening up paper and buildup, which then filds it's way then to the sewage and out the drain. If you aren't comfortable installing it, most trailer sales or places like Camping World will install it.
When you are ready to dump, you hook up the water hose directly to the remote hose attached to the "Tornado". You let water run through it a few minutes. The first time you use it, it may take a while before you see clear water coming out of the dump drain.
I also make sure that I keep black water chemicals in the tank with a gallon or two of water if the camper is going to sit for awhile between camping trips. I also recommend installing at least one vent cover so you can leave the vent open.
Another way to clean out the black water tank is to back flush from time to time. What happens sometimes is if you dump and don't fill up your tank, there may not be enough water pressure to force all the chemicals and "waste" out. What happens is this buildup starts to hardened into a sludge and produces that bad smell. You can find this type attachment from Camping World here: Flush King - Camping World
This is the one we have. It's called a Flush King and works like a champ. These are some of the ways we have solved the problem, but I know there are many others. :thumbup2:

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