Boondocking is easier now.

On July 25, 2019July 30, 2019 By AdventureForthIn Mechanical, Trailer, TravelLeave a comment

We have been staying, boondocking, in Spokane Washington at my moms house. She doesn’t have hookups for us and the spot was tight for us to back into. We knew we couldn’t haul our rig to Camping World every week to empty the sewer so we started researching other ideas. The Blue Boy Tote ( aka Baker Portable Tote) doesn’t work for us; one, because the stinky slinky hose is lost somewhere on some highway in some state somewhere, and, the sewer connection dump spot is in my moms flower bed in the front yard, right next to her house, under the window. Then Scott found the solution…The Flojet 18555000A 18555-000A Portable RV Waste Pump

We were able to run a hose from our sewer, through the bathroom window and right down the toilet. Scott just pushed the end of the hose into the toilet hole so it would drain down the pipes and not fill the toilet bowl. DO NOT PUT IT IN THE TANK PART = bad idea!!!

Users beware anything besides toilet paper and pee/poop can not go into your tank. Not even cherry seeds!! We know this from experience.

So the macerator is simply just a motorized grinder that turns your tank stuff into a mushy liquid that is pumped through a garden hose. Easy!!! No smell!! Can dump into any toilet, even had one guy say they dumped into an outhouse. Now I don’t know how you would go about asking a boon-docker host if you can run a black tank garden house through a window to their toilet to dump in; but hey, if you are comfortable with that conversation then go ahead. So far I have only asked my mom. LOL.

* Oh man my video isn’t working.

Things that are hard.

On June 20, 2017June 28, 2017 By AdventureForthIn Family, Trailer, TravelLeave a comment

So we have been settled in our friends driveway for about 2 months and have noticed a few things that are normal life situations, but, that are hard when living in a 5th wheel. One is laundry. We don’t have a way to do it in here or where we are staying, so we fill out basket then go to Scott’s parents and spend a few hours washing it all, throw it into the basket again and get home with wrinkled clothes. That’s not all; when all our laundry is clean we don’t have enough drawer space or hangers for it all to be put away.

Sickness. 2 of the boys were sick and spent over 5 days in bed on what we had as the sick-bed. It took up most of the living room, Aveyah would not stay off it. The puke bowl was next to it but in front of the back door. I only have one set of sheets for that bed. We couldn’t go anywhere because we didn’t want us to speed the germs so we all spent a lot of time confined in the trailer and we all wanted out. It did t help that it was memorial day weekend, a long weekend we should have camped or somewhere cool.

How fast our gray water tank fills up. When the dish water doesn’t drain down the sink, it’s time to put on the gloves and haul the blue tank out for at least 4 runs of dumping the water. Oh joy. Never at convenient times and I have to use my precious time while Aveyah is napping to empty it. To give us a little longer between fill ups we decided to use paper plates which creates another hard issue-trash. We are using our friends trash and if their roadside bin is full we have to store it and haul it to Scott’s parents house.

Crawling =falling out the door twice, getting to everything and putting it in her mouth, cleaning up all food that falls on the ground, climbing the stairs and falling down. Getting into the bath room and shredding toilet paper or playing in the toilet, following me everywhere.

Not enough room to shop at Costco.we have to store some extra food items on the floor which is double hard with the previous mention of crawling and eating everything.

And just like in any house mice are no fun but for some reason they disgust me more knowing they are in our trailer and we catch them nightly and clean up poop trails constantly. I guess that’s what we get for living on a ranch. Can’t beat the view we have every day though.

Heyyyyyy… What’s that smell!!!??!?

On March 31, 2017March 30, 2018 By AdventureForthIn Mechanical, Repairs, Trailer, TravelLeave a comment

We, like you at times, have been innocently hanging out in our 5th Wheel (Boyhauler) and various incredibly vile smells have occurred. I mean make you want to head for the hills smells. Ahh, such is life in RVs, right? Well. Lately we’ve had a new one and it has been very intermittent. Over the last few weeks as the weather has warmed up, I’ve been using the ceiling vent fans to bring in cool air in the mornings. I typically turn on the fan to full blast and open windows that I’d like to pull fresh air in from. Well sometimes (possibly many times), I become distracted and don’t open more than one window or even forget to open any windows. No Problem right? Not so, says the stink that began ensuing after doing so. It turns out that when I don’t allow enough air flow in, the vacuum created causes various oddities to happen, like the vent check on my kitchen sink to start fluttering, allowing gray water sewer gas to flow into our coach. This is not only difficult to pinpoint because of the stench, but was confusing because no one had ever told me why I had these stubby little pipes above the P-traps in our home. After a bit of DuckDuckGo research, I found that we RVers are privy to a Plumbing device deemed illegal for most of the developed world (sticks and bricks), known as the Air Admittance Valve (AAV). I found that these black stubby pipes save the RV manufacturers from taking the proper measure to vent the sewer pipes to the roof, so instead the AAV is a one way air valve that allows air into the grey sewer pipes and does not (when working properly) allow sewer gases to flow back out of that vent.

Therein lies my predicament, when running a heavy vacuum (2 or 3 high volume ceiling fans) against these poorly designed valves and the daily earthquakes they’re subjected to as we travel down the road, causes them to fail in short order and allow gas to slip on by.

My discovery was that I simply had to unscrew the old valve, in my case a Vent Check 2 by J&B Products. I inspected it and all seemed well, but when I screwed it back on and turned the vent on sans window opening, I began to hear a fluttering noise coming directly from the valve. I have 4 of these guys, but one happens to be located in the basement under my shower. My thought is that when the garage is open and I run the fan without windows, it forces air into the garage vent check and sucks it out of the failing kitchen sink vent check.

Based on Amazon ratings I discovered that a better brand may be the Studor Redi-Vent AAV (model B00390EMT4). Both are made in the USA. The Redi-Vent seems a bit more complex, but also higher quality.

I installed this thing today, super easy. If your old one was installed correctly, it should only be hand tight, but if not a simple pipe wrench or maybe even a jar opener will get it off. Add teflon pipe tape to the threads on the new vent and screw it back in. In my case, it seems that more than one may have failed at the same time, so I ordered a few.

One more memory that we can tell our kids when they’re older!

Adventure Forth –>