Friday, November 19, 2010

Stupidity caused sewer blockage

Yesterday when we emptied our black water tank we noticed sewage water exiting around our connection to the RV park. We then noticed waste exiting from the drain pipe in the next site over from us. The first thing entering our minds was “Did we cause a blockage in the RV parks drain system?”.

We informed the park management of the overflow and were told they had called a septic tank cleaning company earlier in the day to pump out a blocked septic tank at another location in the park and would have them pump out the one close to us too.

Blockage problem solved? No. The cause of the overflow for us was not a full septic tank, or was the blockage caused by our waste tank content.

One of the RV park occupants had inserted their sewer hose into the drain pipe without using an adaptor elbow fitting. The hose was pushed so far down into the drain pipe that it had blocked all the sites above it from proper drainage. qqqqq 005 Sewer hose elbows are not expensive and every RV park sells them so there is no excuse not to purchase and use the elbow for proper drainage. This problem was cause by pure stupidity.  qqqqq 004

3 comments:

Unknown said...

While this is not the most fun part of RVing, it is a necessary one. Interesting post, had not heard of this happening before.

DearMissMermaidDotCom said...

Well, not every park sells elbows, many don't even sell a thing, (guess they don't need the money.)

But it IS amazing, how people with limited brains manage to cough up enough money to buy an RV and do ridiculous things... me included.

When I bought my used RV, the prior owner had thoughtfully left me a full holding tank (the black one, not the gray one), that had been sitting for over a year. I had no idea I was supposed to put a mountain of odor-killing chemicals down it, before I drained it at an RV park. I had not even attempted to use the toilet at all, since I discovered the black tank was full.

When I first pulled the plug on the black tank, even though I was properly hooked up into the sewer, the stench was enough to send me reeling back about 50 feet before I fainted.

It was great entertainment for the other RV-ers (who were very sorry they came out to investigate...)

I post daily at my blog, about my misadventures in RVing.

Liquid Rubber said...

Thanks for posting, i am sure through this information we can save ourselves from big blockages in the future, thanks for your work.