Tackling grey water pong

Up to a short while ago I hadn’t given a great deal of thought to my grey water tank, beyond making sure it was empty on arrival at site and emptying it again before leaving.

 

However, two recent occurrences started me thinking.

One was a noticeable ‘pong’ in the wet room, which I initially put down to damp and started me looking for a leak somewhere – without finding anything.

At about the same time, on drawing up close to a grey water disposal point I noticed a lot of small pieces of spaghetti scattered around the drain. Somebody had obviously been putting all sorts of things down their drain!

 So, although I’m careful to avoid putting food down the drain I realised that some small items will inevitably slip through, and that might be the cause of the smell in the wet room. The shower drain in the floor is quite close to the tank, so that seemed to make sense to me.

Thus, I set out to find a remedy by asking around and browsing forums on the internet. Opinion varies greatly, from some who believe cleaning their grey water tank is unnecessary through to those who attempt to clean it regularly.

Given the smell issue, I decided to opt for an occasional cleaning approach. All of the methods I could find involve putting some sort of cleaning agent into the tank with water, driving around to ‘slosh it about’ and then emptying it out again.

The type of cleaning agent could be almost anything, it seems, from biological washing liquid/powder to bleach. As I was on site at the time my choices were limited to what I had on board, which came down to washing up liquid or supermarket brand disinfectant; I opted for the latter with a view to ‘dosing’ the tank before leaving site and letting it all slosh about all the way home.

I did that my pouring some neat disinfectant down the drains of the kitchen sink, wash basin and shower so they all got a dose. I then ran water into each of these, which also helped to reduce the amount of potable water I was taking on my homeward journey.

I’m pleased to say the smell has now gone from the wet room, so this is something I will now be doing reasonably regularly from now on. I will probably try a few different cleaning agents BUT being careful not to mix them as I can’t predict how they’ll react with each other.

On a related subject, I did see a forum contribution suggesting that biological washing liquid can be used in the toilet instead of the usual chemicals. I don’t think I’ll be trying that though.

The right hose

One other recent discovery relating to grey water was that the outlet pipe can vary in diameter. I had a flexible hose that fitted on my first motorhome, but hadn’t had to use it with the current motorhome as I’d been at sites where I could park above a large drain and empty the tank directly into it.

However, at the last site I couldn’t get that close – and found that my hose didn’t fit. Attempts to hold it in place as it emptied were not very successful and I made quite a mess around the disposal area. Luckily, nobody was looking.

I now have to find some kind of adaptor to fit the current waste pipe before my next journey. Ho hum.