Bwhahahahahaahaha. Okay the BOLD is what I wrote BEFORE doing. OMG. Why would engineers make this so difficult? The blue is what actually happened and the hilarity. Sorry, we didn't take pics but you can imagine it... I'm sure you can.
Today we tackled the biggest unknown left. How the heck do we deal with sanitizing the water tank and lines? So far so good. This is still what we went out to tackle.
Step one. Fill the water tank with the hose and add 1/2c bleach, unscented, normal ol' bleach. Okay, firstly, you need a way to get said bucket of water into the tank. Now, I've watched fifty videos of people doing this with a standard funnel. You know, the plastic ones that you have kicking around your garage. WELL, let me tell you... NOT for this camper. Oh, no, all that we ended up with was water running down our sleeves, bleach water mind you. COLD bleach water.
Idea number two was to fill a hose and use THAT to put the water in the tank. Oh, wait, the hoses I have- you know the fancy 'drinking water' ones- don't work because they aren't small enough. Why not, you ask? Because they come with these fancy 'handle grip' things. I'm not cutting my expensive hose in pieces to make this easier. Nope.
Idea #2. You'd think we would have gotten it right by then, but we're the Three Stooges minus Curley. I have a 90-degree elbow adapter for the hose for something completely else, but let's add THAT to the hose that's still filled with bleach water and see if that adds enough extra whatever to get the freaking water down into the tank.
Cue more wet arms. We've now gotten a container, two funnels, the bucket o' bleach water and BOTH water hoses in use.
Okay, idea #3 has to work, right? Why don't we use the smaller funnel and the container to pour smaller amounts of water and see if THAT does it. Eureka, by Jove, something sorta works. Fine. Yeah, we're lose about a third of the water down the side of the rv, we're still getting wet, and we're relegated to almost spooning this stupid water... but we're getting some in the tank. Score.
One hundred hours later, or ten minutes, we have most of the bleach water into the tank. Now, we have to FILL the rest of the tank. Remember I said my hoses don't fit into the hole? Yeah, Now I'm dealing with gushing water from the hose and trying to get it INTO the rv and not on me.
To be honest, this part goes really easily. Clay mans the faucet and I hold the hose against the hole and we're in business. It takes forever and an eternity. My arms hurt from holding up the hose, and I'm trying to determine the exact moment the water will come flying back into my face once the tank is filled. 40 gallons, by the way.
Step two. Turn on the water pump and run water through all the taps. Hey! This part actually goes as planned. No kidding!
Wait. Step 1.5 is bypass the water heater, again, so the bleach doesn't get in there. THEN step two. Oops, forgot to do this. According to the internet I've either, A, destroyed the water heater, or B, did nothing to it and all is good. I'm going to assume a little bit of bleach water one time isn't going to wreck anything.
Step three. Wait. Aaaand wait. At least 4 hours but a little longer is better. All the while not really using the water, because you're sanitizing the tank and pipes. This part went fairly well. We had to get propane so took the beast for a drive and sloshed the water around for a while.
Step four. Drain it all out again, but don't over flow your black and grey tank. Best if you're hooked directly to the sewage lines, but do what you have to do. For us we're hooked into the sewer system on our site which allows us to drain it all down the gray water pipe. I don't want the bleach killing my good bacteria in the black tank. When we got back to the site I hooked up the sewer pipe and drained both tanks, leaving them open as we ran all the freaking water from the water tank. It took a few minutes but all in all was easy.
Step five. Refill the water tank, with the hose. Walmart had only a few hoses out, but they did have a 10 foot one that was PERFECT for what we needed. It was sacrificed, split right down the middle, to give us a filling end and a bleach end. Way to go ingenuity.
Step six. Run water through each faucet until you can't smell bleach anymore, OR for about 3 minutes.
Who said RV'ing is easier camping? Geez. Damn skippy. It was a fun, irritating, interesting set of adventures today.
No comments:
Post a Comment