RV Park Utilities – How far apart do you put your utilities?

November 12, 2017 by Marlan at Rv52 2 Comments

RV Park Utilities - How far apart should the utilities be? — RV Park Utilities – How far apart should the utilities be?

Sheri and encountered this while traveling with the Tiny Texas Tumbleweed recently.

We had to make a choice. Water & Electric *OR* holding tanks.

We chose water and electric since we were only camping for the weekend.

But if you are building a new park or remodeling an older park, you might consider NOT getting the sewer/septic connection too far from the rest of the connections.

I know some “well meaning” government code enforcement person has some ideas, but have a 12 foot stinky slinky and a water hose on hand – a reasonable length one – and show him that if they are too far apart you can’t get an RV hooked up without long runs of one or the other.

It is also helpful to have an engineer ready for the meeting with the code people as I’ve found that the engineers can make a quantum difference.

As for Sheri and I, we’ll get an emergency length stinky slinky just for parks which have made the runs way too long for smaller RVs.

RV Control Panel

Last updated on February 23rd, 2019 at 03:16 pm

April 16, 2013 by Marlan at Rv52 9 Comments

(excerpted from the book – Your 5th Wheel RV – The Interior)

Almost every RV has an RV Control Panel. You might hear it called rv command center, rv control center or any one of 20 other names, but it is in ADDITION to the fusebox or RV electrical panel.

The RV Control Panel is a central location where all the RV-centric switches and buttons go that are unique to RVing and the RV.

Your RV control panel might be as simple as an on/off switch for the hot water heater OR it might be incredibly complex and sophisticated like the control panel on a Newell, Prevost, or high end Monaco.

If you have small children in/around your RV, I might HIGHLY RECOMMEND that you put a lock or other safety mechanism on the door. Otherwise, things could get pretty exciting.

Typical items you’ll find in the RV Control Panel are:

Hot Water Heater Controls (on/off for electric – on/off for gas)
Different lighting controls (porch, hall, other- such as accent lights)
Fresh Water Pump – provides pressure for water system when operating with self contained fresh water only
RV Slide out controls
Tank Fluid Level monitoring system – black tank, gray tank, and fresh water tank
Battery Monitoring and control system – can be simple monitoring or much more
Awning Controls
Super Fan or Fantastic Fan Controls
Air Conditioning Control – for example on/off for the circuits for the 2nd air conditioner so you don’t blow 30 amp circuits

There are so much more that can go in these control panels, I only listed what was in our 5th wheel’s control panel, but I think this gives you an idea of what to expect.

Inspecting this control panel actually gives you an idea of what kinds of systems you would have in your RV. One thing right off the top of my mind you might find extra is a generator controls in this panel. But I think you get the point.

RV Command Center showing controls for slideouts, lights, hot water heater, water pressure pump, super fans, and monitoring system.

CURRENT items related to rv control panels

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RV Basics : Fruit Flies, Gnats, and Flies

Last updated on June 21st, 2019 at 06:34 pm

August 30, 2010 by Marlan at Rv52 8 Comments

Recently we have been having a few fruit flies in our RV.

There is only one problem though. We don’t have any fruit lying around. We freeze all of ours. Sheri uses it to make me 100% fruit smoothies – more on that later – I’ll post her recipe. I actually feel better when I drink them.

So they aren’t fruit flies.

How to identify RV drain flies

They are about the size of fruit flies.
They seem to be congregating in the bathroom.
They even seem to emanate from the bathroom.
That ain’t fruit in the bathroom Dorothy!

Oh oh.

So before I go further, I have to digress.

People have to live.

They eat, drink, and breath at a minimum.

As a direct result of those eating, drinking and breathing, we pee, we poo, we sweat, and we exhale. Yet, we are so hung up on stuff we fail to really talk openly about a couple of the things that are about 1/3 of the major operations of our bodies. The rest of this article has to discuss things on the poo/pee side.

You’ve been warned!

Back to those flies.

I did a little research on the web and I’ve found that there exists such a thing as ‘drain flies’. They don’t seem that uncommon. Here is what I’ve learned in the following bullets.
People don’t think you should leave your gray water valves open (black should always be closed) even when connected to a septic or sewer. It seems some people think you can.
I saw mention that if you put a trap (a loop in your drain hose) such that there is no direct AIR path that will keep drain flies out. However, I saw one place that said that the drain fly larvae think traps are ridiculous and can swim.
I saw mention of insecticides, but nothing very conclusive.
Someone said drain flies are dirty and carry germs although they probably don’t know. However, knowing where they have been, I really don’t want them flying around my face.
People in many places spoke about RV toilets with overflow returns having them live in those areas.
Drain flies can get in your RV if your black tank is vented. Ours is not. Honestly I wished it was. Send me an email if you wonder why it matters.

Here are some links to articles on the subject:

Seemingly well linked reference on several types of flies.

Here is what I did…

How to eliminate RV drain flies

I drained the black tank immediately.
I then filled it up and had a modest amount of bleach in it ( I do not use this often as I think it is bad to put in the septic/sewers ).
We allowed this to sit for two or three days and filled up the tank even more.
I now keep the gray water valves closed as well as much as possible.

Here is what I’ve noticed.

Flies are gone.
Flies have never came back.

Here are my conclusions.

How to prevent RV drain flies from your RV

Bleach is bad for flies (although I can’t say this was the primary thing that took care of them)
Draining the black tank often is good
- I can’t rule out that bleach killed the flies
- you SHOULD drain the tank often
Keeping the gray valves closed is a good idea. (Again, it might be better black tank management that is keeping the flies gone)

Here is one belief I have which I cannot prove : You can get drain flies from the RV park septic. This makes sense to me and I can’t help think it is true.

RV drain flies insecticides and preventative chemicals and sprays

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RV Basics : Black Water or Sewer System Information

Last updated on June 26th, 2019 at 04:33 pm

April 13, 2010 by Marlan at Rv52 Leave a Comment

The RV sewer system and holding tank wiring and plumbing are one of the most discussed and lamented systems on the RV.

Typical RV Sewer System with holding tank wiring Diagram

A simplified typical RV sewer system showing holding tank wiring

In the typical modern RV sewer system you really only have the toilet pipe going straight into a black tank. The black tank is piped to a drain valve that has the large blade. You can open and close the valve easily with the large pull tab. That valve then flows out the exit portal into a stinky slinky. In turn, the slinky is connected to an external receptacle. The receptacles is usually a plumbing fitting going into a septic tank or city sewer.

The holding tank monitor has probes at 1/3, 2/3, and full. These probes will then sense a water level at each probe. These probes are wired back to a monitor. This monitor will have a set of wires for each tank. The simple theory of operation is that water touching the probe will demonstrate a higher signal level that can be detected. This works somewhat in most tanks but the black. (See below for more)

Why do the blank tank monitors get stuck at certain levels?

We have yet another little mystery with Puma. The black water indicator is STUCK at 2/3 full and there is very little we can seem to do to get it unstuck. If you understand (read below) that the monitors are like little probes with a plus (+) and a minus (-) then that is step 1 to understanding. Step 2 is realizing that the black tank is the one tank where the water has debris of all yukky types in the tank.

So what happens is that the debris, whatever it is, clings to the probe ACROSS the plus-minus ( + – ) connection making the probe think the overall level of stuff is at that probe when in all actuality the true level is much lower.

Do black tank rinse systems improve the reliability of the black tank monitors

Our Open Range (we had after Puma) had a black tank rinse which should have helped the sticky probes, but I don’t think it did. With the black tanks we relied on the nose and the sound of the toilets.

What do the typical black tanks look like?

My first question is what do the black water holding tanks look like? I found a page that has many pictures of the black water holding tanks and I think this is probably very representative of what most black water or sewer holding tanks look like.

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I found a very good selection of Black Water Holding Tanks from Camping World.

Walmart only had the portable RV holding tanks which is different from the rv sewer system we’re describing here.

Holding tank wiring and monitoring systems

On our PUMA, I can’t say for sure, but I’m pretty sure that the tank monitoring unit is from KIB and what I’m showing is an almost perfect copy of our unit :

I found the following wiring diagram on the kib web site. You can get a PDF, but I show just the section that shows the wiring of the black water (sewer) tank sensor system :

black tank wiring for monitoring level — black tank wiring or holding tank wiring for monitoring level

(I’m hoping you can blow it up by clicking on it) .

How a SIMPLE black tank monitoring system works

How the sensor system seems to work : It looks like this is as simple as a wiring system that has a ground and then three wires at different levels in the tank. When the “lovely goo” level raises in the tank, it contacts a wire and then reads a lower resistance than when the substance isn’t in contact with the wire. This seems notoriously unreliable. But now I have something I can work with to see if the sensor is just covered up or broken.

My observation is that as near as I can tell, the sensors not working well for the black water are a pretty common problem.

Alternative ways of sensing tank levels.

I also think there are other methods like capacitive sensing, RF sensing, ultrasonic sensing as well as the resistive. A quick search on the web yields several systems quite easily.

A possible method of making your tank easier for the gunk to slide out

One other thing we’re going to do is to start using a little water softener in our black tank. It doesn’t look harmful and it is supposed to make your tank ‘slickery’ which helps the debris sluice on out. This is called the geo method, or at least part of it for sure.

We don’t want to use many chemicals, but we thought water softener seems like a simple/good idea. This article isn’t about black water tank care, but just about simple facts about black water tanks. I have found that there just isn’t info ABOUT the tanks, but there is lots about caring for the tanks.

You can find lots more information about rv black water on my RV52 how to page. There is a ton of crap (ha ha – I mean information) on that page.

Since I’ve been a bit more on the monitoring/electronics side of the holding tanks, I thought I would put some Amazon listings that are relevant to monitoring systems next.

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