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Friday, April 28, 2017

Another Black Tank Story...

Yikes!  I was just telling a friend a few days ago, "Everyone has a black tank story or something that went haywire...".

We have another one although thankfully it turned out a lot better than it might of.  Last post I mentioned a unique thing about our current campground at Ocean Pines - it was formerly a Mobile Home park that was converted to an RV campground.

And -- the sewer connections for each site are positioned directly between where the two rear wheels are on the RV.  That puts them in the middle of the camping spot instead of off to one side near the water and electrical.

That normally would not be an issue.  It was a little inconvenient laying flat and crawling under the motorhome to hook up the sewer.  But that's what I did.  Made the connection fine.  In fact I did that before Pam put down the jack's so I had a little more room to get under there.

I even propped up the hose along the way to make sure it was draining downhill.  It was working well.  I was feeling good about this.  Thinking of everything and such...

Two days later I decided to empty the tanks and I started with the black tank.  It seemed to be draining and then stopped.  Hmmm.   You can see where this is heading...

I looked under the wet bay followed the sewer hose back.  Hmm.  I found the problem.  It seems that I made sure the hose avoided the tires and went around them.  But it was directly under the DS rear jack.
Talk about a bullseye!

Oh boy!  This could get exciting.  The black hose was now completely fuel up to the point where it was squished.  If I removed the hose in the wet bay connection I could drain that part of the hose but really had no where to drain it.

For this effort I needed my boots, plastic tarp to lay on the puddles, and wet ground and the pads for the jacks so I could easily tell where not to reposition the hose.   Then we had to pull in the slides and raise the jacks.

Next I crawled under Roadrunner again and get the hose in a position where I could try and bend it back enough to drain.  Fortunately, the sewer hose was long enough I had a little slack in it.  This allowed me to pull it over and bend out the flattened area making the once round hose square at that point.  So far so good.  No leaks or spillage.

I tried draining the tanks again and it all worked.  The hose will likely leak at some point because when the wire shell gets bent, it eventually pokes through.  But for now it is good and this 'Black Tank Story' turned out OK.  We dodged a bullet so to speak.

But I am wondering?  Anyone out there reading this ever have a case where you set jacks down on top of the sewer hose??  

That's all for now on this edition of the Roadrunner Chronicles, thanks for joining us!

4 comments:

  1. All's well that ends well!! Thank goodness!!
    We've never had that happen but that doesn't mean it can't or won't.
    Glad it all ended well for you all.

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  2. That is a first for me to see. Glad the hose stayed intact. You might get a new one asap, before you move on. Thanks for sharing, it might help someone.

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  3. I will have to say Randy, that has never happened to us, nor have I ever seen a situation like that. Then again, you are somewhat unique. LOL
    Glad to didn't have a real mess on your hands (or feet). As someone else suggested, I would invest in a new hose.

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  4. That's a new one on me, but thankfully you didn't have a mess like I did on similar old mobile home sites at the Navy campground at NWS Earle, NJ. My story didn't end well...

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