Easily stop holding tank smells in your RV in three easy steps!

hey everybody its TR I'm back with another RV how-to video and this time I'm updating my most popular video on how to maintain your RVs holding tanks [Music] yeah that's right I'm back with more straight poop on how to maintain your Arby's holding tanks you could have a lot of fun with the subject I'll try to keep it as you know straightforward as possible so there were quite a few comments on the first video and I want to talk about some of those and make some clarifications where they needed to be made so imagine you're sitting there just wondering to yourself I'm not gonna sit here and watch this whole video and find out this guy's full of well you don't have to take my word for it this comment from Sonique endeavor I think pretty much says it all thanks for sharing this we bought a pre-owned Class A in great shape except for the mild but annoying pink odor one application of your bio geo method to both tanks eliminated the odor and as an added bonus the great tank sensor the previous owner couldn't get to work is now working saving me time and money since I published that video I figured out that it's three easy steps and if you do those steps correctly you're home free and so I'm going to share those with you today so in the time since I posted the first video I've done a lot of experimenting and I was trying to address one of the main comments that came back on the first video where I had mentioned that I don't use paper in my tank and a lot of folks came back and totally understand this is my wife would never go for that well you know I recognize that everybody has different sensibilities and that the method was essentially hamstrung a little bit because of that requirement but I've eliminated that requirement through the experimentation I've been doing in the last 18 months or so so black tanks can be a pain in the ass and one let's face it they stink we spend a lot of money trying to make them not steamed most of what we do doesn't work or if it does work it works for a day or two or three and then you're back to the steam why is it so hard because well frankly we're not doing it the right way so before I forget I want to send you out to my website at www.att.com/biz story starts with a constantly stinking black tank I know the people who owned the coach before me didn't have any idea about how to maintain their black tank or their holding tanks I inherited a huge problem when I got this RV my level indicators weren't working correctly in fact one of them the black tank showed a hundred percent full all the time so I bet you're here because you have many of the same problems and you're doing exactly what I did was as I started watching the Tony YouTube videos I tried some of their suggestions the ones that made the most sense I should say and you know some of them worked so so and no amount of chemicals would get rid of it I mean I tried everything so I got online and of course I did a search how do you maintain your rv's black tank and then I did some research there and discovered that a method called the Geo method was the most popular it's been around for a long time and it was probably most expounded upon by gaining Charles Bruni from Arkansas he may be just the one that got it on the most forums so what the Geo method is is that you add detergent bleach and water softener to every tank and you flush from full tanks so I'm like at this point I'll try anything and so I did the method and it started to work for me but it really took a six day drive from Idaho to Virginia something like 2,200 miles or I was probably running three 350 miles a day I would do the method on every lake so in the morning I would add roughly a half a tank of water a cup of detergent a cup of bleach and some water softener at the time I was using Calgon and I would drive to my destination and as you know your sloshing around that water sloshing back and forth in the tanks and I would get to the destination pull the handle and of course it would come out just filthy brown dirty nasty stuff however by the fourth day my tank monitor started working correctly again and by the sixth day I was pretty satisfied with the results by the time I got to Virginia my tanks weren't stinking but as I'd mentioned before I kind of exchanged one bad smell for another in my opinion in that I didn't like the smell of the chlorine bleach it had to go and don't we all know you don't mix bleach with ammonia that creates chlorine gas it's poisonous its toxic it killed hundreds of thousands in World War one okay so I'm probably exaggerating because it's probably not going to be dangerous probably not going to generate enough chlorine gas when you add bleach to your holding tank the cons a problem plus bytecode your rv's holding tanks have to be vented that's where a lot of this smell and gas is gonna go in the first place when I stopped and thought about this for a minute I realized that what we're dealing with here is just a small septic system I had lived in a house on a septic system for many years and I knew that you didn't want to add a lot of chlorine bleach to that system because it kills the good bacteria that are in the tank eating up the solids the poo and the paper material that are in there and helping them wash away so I did add riddex to the tank regularly because I thought it was good preventative maintenance because what riddex does is it introduces a bacteria to the tank that's adapted to eat those poof solids in the paper and help them wash away I actually had a viewer comment on the past video asking the question about adding riddex to your rv's holding tank you know now that I've thought about that for a minute the difference between what we were trying to achieve with our RVs holding tank and a septic system is that a septic systems going to be mostly an aerobic meaning lacking oxygen I don't think riddex would work because it's going to be putting the wrong kind of bacteria in the tank so you're probably wasting your money so really what it boiled down to is I just wanted to stop adding bleach to my holding tank because I didn't care for the smell also I thought treating every tank was costing too much you know it was like 2 or 2 dollars and 50 cents a tank to treat him and I felt like it was probably overkill and to excessive just a waste of money so I switched back to commercial tank treatments using TST as a matter of fact and within a couple months I was back to being dissatisfied with the results it felt like the RV was stinking again after two or three days the perfume would wear off so I recalled some of the YouTube videos I'd watched using axial versus chlorine bleach valley 1892 commercial borate whitening the desert flower a fortune for anyone hardy enough to brave death by dehydration man's answer the borax industry made possible by a 20 Mule Team hauling 60,000 pounds of borate through an inferno for 16 days so I've decided to change over to the most common one which was peroxo and Dawn and I got really good results with Buraq so I remember having taken a lab in college chemistry that used barracks though is one of the chemicals we were you know experimenting with and so I knew that it was environmentally safe it wasn't going to be harmful [Music] the original claims that Brack so were were at speeds and it sweetens that has to do with the chemistry that is changing in the water and we're gonna talk a lot about that in the science coming up in just a second so as I said I switched over to burr axle and Don I was using a half a cup of borax oh and a half a cup of Dawn dish soap I was adding that to every tank and I was pretty happy with the results but again I felt like probably it was overkill I still didn't believe you needed to treat every tank so the bio geomat that really boils down to three easy steps and one of those is optional the first and most important is to flush your tanks properly and then after you finish flushing your tanks properly you start with two to three gallons of water and a half a cup of borax so in the holding tank and then you go about your business through experimentation I've learned that the Dawn dish soap is not mandatory on every tank nor is the per axle once you get your tanks working correctly so let's talk about each step of the bio giametta and the first and most important step is flush your tanks correctly you want to flush those tanks till the water runs you know cloudy clear it doesn't have to be crystal clear it can be a murky brown but you need to flush those tanks and you need to flush and properly I have found in my personal experience that filling the tank about 1/3 full and running that cycle two to three times is sufficient to flush the tank out secondly when we add the water and the Buraq so to the holding tank weird seating it with oxygen so we're already setting up the environment to be oxygen rich and we're going to talk about that and how it works in the science section in just a second so what I found that works best is that I add water to the toilet bowl you know two-thirds three-quarters full get about a gallon gallon and a half in there then I and a half a cup of Brac so to the toilet bowl I used my toilet brush just you know clean out the toilet bowl and dissolved Abraxas in the water and then I dumped that into the tank so now I'm calling this step optional because as I said you don't have to use the dawn in every tank at least that's what I have found when you do want to use it is if your tank monitors are not working correctly and occasionally is preventative maintenance I put it in maybe every fourth or fifth tank you know if I think about it you use plenty of water when you can use water wisely when you can't if you're in the RV park and you're hooked up to your full hookups use plenty of water it will pay in the long run but if you're out boondock and you're dry camping and you don't have a lot of water to use in your tanks capture some of that grey water that goes into your grey tank and put that in your black tank I just have a basin that I keep in the sink and I do the dishes in that Basin and then I take the water and dump it in my black tank migrating always fills before my black tank anyway I'm actually extending my stay by moving some of that water that would go into my grey tank over to my black tank so let me give you some flushing rules of thumb you must have a clear segment in that hose that you attach that goes to the dump station that's the only way you're going to be able to monitor the quality of that flush you don't have to flush till it's crystal-clear a light brown like what you're seeing here is just fine but if there's still large particulate matter coming out or paper then you need to probably flush at least one more cycle and I found that two to three of these flush cycles is more than enough to get all the paper and poo out of the tank and get it ready for my next cycle again my rule of thumb is about one third of capacity to build up enough current to get the material out of there and I have a really good illustration on that coming up in just a second so most important is experiment you need to experiment with your system because your tanks going to be a different shape than mine and they're gonna be a little different in the way they drain some might require more water to get into good clean flush out some may be able to get by with a little less water so the key is just experiment if you have that clear segment in the hose like I'm showing you here then you're gonna be able to understand what the quality of that flush is and you'll get it figured out pretty quick if this is particularly important if your tank monitors aren't working because what's causing that is they're getting cruddud up with paper and poo and various you know and grease and stuff like that fill them to about fifty percent of capacity add the Buraq so and the dawn and then use the tank like normal till it's 70 75 80 percent of capacity something like that and then go flush it refill it to fifty percent of capacity and do that cycle again again what we're doing with that is we want to soak in those sensors that I'm going to show you those in a minute and you'll understand why it's important to soak those sensors to get the crud off of them now here's my favorite tip and I do this all the time I call it the road flush this is great for non-working tank monitors the poo pyramid and just general preventive maintenance what I do is I fill the tank to one-third of capacity I add Buraq so and dawn and then I drive to my next destination I use the tank like normal till it fills to say seventy or eighty percent of capacity or I flush it when I leave but again what we're doing is we're soaking that tank in it's so important to let that water sit in that tank and soak into those probes and in the cracks and crevices and corners and it helps flush the heavy sludge and material that's been accumulating in the tank away so I have a slight modification to the road flush for your gratings and that's because your grave tanks can have a lot more fat and grease and oils and things in it and so we need a little different solvent if you will to kind of help dissolve that so what I have found that works best is I add a third of a tank of water 1/2 a cup of borax oh and then I add 2 cups of Zep citrus Orange cleaner to the tank and I drive to my location and then I use the tank like normal and then when I'm ready to leave or when it's at 80 85 percent capacity something like that then I go out and pull the valves and flush the tanks again it's that soak in and you would be amazed at what comes out of that grey tank I'm going to show you two examples here real quick of the road flush the first example here is my black tank and this is after me being parked all winter doing this method and flushing my tanks like I normally would on the morning I left Arizona and headed for New Mexico I drove 300 miles with the burr axle and the dawn in my black tank and here's the quality to the flush that came out I did the great ting treat with the Buraq so and the citrus cleaner and this is the quality of flesh I got out you're gonna note a really big difference here in that my black tanks I'm probably more diligent on keeping them clean but look at the junk and crud and things that are coming out of the gray tank this is mold and crud that's been accumulating on the gray tank walls and it helps to flush it out every once in a while it definitely keeps your tank monitors working properly shop carefully for your citrus cleaner you can pay up to triple what you can buy it for at a large big-box home improvement retailer so you say you don't have this fancy built-in tank washer that's just fine you gotta get something you can buy these ones like these that attach to your hose and you stick them down in the toilet be careful where you shot I guess the mirror image is worth 75% more you don't want to get one of those fine use a five-gallon bucket I had a lady mentioned in one of the seminars that I've been giving about this material kind of helping to improve it say that she used her garbage cans she just used her bathroom garbage cans she put a couple gallons of water in it and dump it down the stool that would have the effect of helping break up that poo pyramid and get it into solution but also I think she was adding additional water to the tank which is one of the key things we're talking about with respect to the bio geomet there's gonna be a lot more on that in just a bit let's talk about the poo pyramid because if you have an RV you have one and it's just because of the way they design holding tanks they have to be directly below the stool the toilet okay because you need to drop that way straight into the tank in an RVs tank system like this we never use the same amount of water as we would use in like a home system there's plenty of water in a home system that helps wash that material down the pipes that's not the case in your RV and so the contents of the stool drop straight into the tank the net effect of that is you end up with a pile of poo building up in the bottom of your tank it's thick heavy sludgy nasty stuff think adobe bricks as mr. poopy continues to make deposits in the tank here the pyramid continues to grow the tank is filling with water and urine and during that time material in the poo pyramid is leeching out and dissolving out into the contents of the tank this causes layering in the tank and so what you're going to end up with is this lower layer it's gonna be thick heavy sludgy material and there's gonna be a middle layer and that's going to be mostly watery and then there's gonna be a top layer and that's gonna have a lot of scum probably a lot of paper floating on it there's gonna be paper dissolved in all of this material as well as poo so I don't care what method you're using to take care of your holding tanks the flush is the most important part of any method for taking care of your rv's holding tanks and I'm gonna show you why back to our diagram here of a holding tank with the poo pyramid you have to have enough level of water in that tank to build up a current that's why in the Geo method they said you had to flush roomful tanks you have to get that current in that tank going to be able to move this pile of poo and this heavy sludgy material out of the tank and down the drain now if you have a fancy built-in tank washer like most of us do I want to tell you that if you're opening the tank and draining the contents and then just letting the tank washer flush the tank you're doing it wrong you have to build up enough level of water in that tank to create a current to help continue to move all this heavy sludgy material out of the tank spraying the remnants of this poo pyramid with just the sprayer in the tank is never gonna remove it all well I'll say it's gonna take a very long time of flushing that tank to get it clean versus filling it to the proper level pulling the valve getting the current set up so that the contents and the heavy sludge is laying on the bottom of that tank and go out I'm gonna read iterate you have to fill that tank so that you can flush it properly if you do not and that poo pyramid stays in place and you go home and you park the RV or you perk you're a fifth wheel or trailer or whatever for a month before you use it again the remnants of that poop pyramid are gonna turn into concrete adobe bricks and then you got a problem because that's really hard to get rid of so here's my favorite part of the video why does this work so well well let's start by talking about what brac so does Buraq so softens the water it makes water wetter what I mean by that is it makes it so more stuff can dissolve into the water more on that in just a sec brac so adds oxygen to the water remember I mentioned earlier that the bio part of the bio geomet that is that we're trying to encourage healthy good bacteria in that holding tank that produce these nice humorous smells you know composters can relate to this if you've ever composted and you go out and you can smell that pile and it's really stinky you know it needs to be turned and when you turn it you're adding oxygen funny enough this is how composting toilets work as well a composting toilet you're you know putting your poo into some kind of material usually peat moss but you need to stir that occasionally to help introduce oxygen into it otherwise it's gonna get stinky it's gonna get an aerobic the other thing with water is it dilutes the contents and so that makes it so more of the poo pyramid and the paper can dissolve into the water also additional water added to the tank increases how much oxygens in the water because there is a lot of oxygen dissolved in water I mean that's why fish can breathe right is because there's oxygen that's been dissolved in that water well we're taking advantage of that concept when we add additional water to the tank so why we add the Doong is it helps break down the poo matter and the paper and get that into the water it also makes that material more soluble in water through an action called surf action and we're gonna talk a little bit about that at the end of this segment the first thing we're gonna talk about is water softening and what the water softening component of Brac so is about first I want to talk about hard water in the West here it's calcium typically calcium carbonate and that causes you know limescale in coffee pots and he causes soaps do not work well and that's part of what soaps are doing is tying up the hardness in the water in the east it could be magnesium or iron we're all probably familiar with it so I want to start with the example of your basic home soft water system okay they're usually salt based and they have a resin that these little plastic beads in them that have active sites on them as you see here in this diagram the sect of sites have a sodium out here they're just waiting for hard water to go by and so what they do is they steal that calcium and they release the sodium that softens the water when we tie up that calcium or the hardness in the water that's what attacks the properties of what the soap needs to do and so a lot of soaps have water softening capacity built into them this is a per axle molecule I'm showing you here you see all these sodium's in here they're gonna have the same effect when the hard water mixes with them they're gonna steal the calcium and let the sodium go that's gonna soften the water and make it work better the other thing that happens is that Barrasso generates oxygen well technically it generates hydrogen peroxide and I think we're all probably familiar with hydrogen peroxide you know you get the brown bottle in the medicine chest you know you get a little bit hydrogen peroxide you put it on a cut and it boils and it bubbles well that's oxygen that's being generated absolutely will not harm your rv's gray tank or black tank period it's been used for years and years very safe so what makes your tank stink a lack of oxygen that lack of oxygen sets up something called an anaerobic environment you've heard me say that a couple times also when there's not enough water in the tank you can get to an anaerobic condition really fast there's a number of reasons for that I'm not gonna go into today the science is pretty interesting but has to do with how much oxygen is dissolved in the water and the availability of the oxygen for for biological organisms to be able to metabolize the poo material that's in there the actual stink that we're smelling is ammonia and hydrogen sulfide hydrogen sulfide is also known as sewer gas and it's explosive and it's poisonous again it's not gonna build up to a concentration in your holding tank that it's going to explode or poison you but it's sure gonna build it up to a concentration enough that you don't want to be in your RV when your RVs holding tank is stinking it is gone and a row week and the bacteria in that tank are producing those stinky smells by adding additional oxygen to the tank like we are we're selecting for the bacteria that produced the nice palatable smells so remember that water has lots of oxygen in it and when we add the Buraq so we're adding even more oxygen and that's what we want to do that helps encourage those good bacteria in the tank that produce them more pleasant smells so why do we add the dawn well first off it's one of the cheapest and one of the best soaps in the industry to take care of things like what we need to take care of in our holding tanks in reality soaps and detergents are just a bunch of surfactants so what are some fact ins they're polar molecules and really all that means is that when they go into water into solution they're going to align themselves like you're seeing here micelles are probably the most common in the soaps that we use today but what they do is they work to tie up those oils and grease and fats and poo molecules that are in the water so their polarity causes them to align they'll surround molecules suspend them in the water that's how they can make oils and fat soluble in water surrounds dirt particles and other things makes them soluble in water then they all get flushed away when you wash the tank temperature matters this is important first off we can't control temperature right I mean it is the temperature it is when it's cooler or colder things happen slower then when it's warmer here's a great example of that I've been sitting here part static since basically the first part of October this year and now it's the middle of February since the middle of November I have not treated my tanks with anything that's almost three and a half months when the daytime temperature starts to get above about 75 degrees regularly then I know I'm gonna probably have to start treating my tanks again this problem is made worse because we're dealing with such small tanks so everything happens a whole lot faster in an RV holding tank then it might NSA a home septic system you don't have to treat every tank you're gonna find that real soon when you get your tanks flushing clean and you're doing it regularly you're doing it correctly you're not gonna have to treat every tank and so what my recommendation is is once you've kind of gone through the cycle and your flushes are doing pretty good and you're feeling comfortable that you know the tank isn't stinking anymore back off from adding the Buraq so at the beginning of the cycle go ahead and put the two to three gallons of water in the tank and then just go like normal say in the middle of the week it starts to stink a little bit then add a gallon of water to your toilet mixed up the Brack so and the water drop it in the tank I'll guarantee you within 10 minutes you're not gonna smell anything and then you'll be good to go until it's time to dump whatever your normal cycle is you may have to treat more often in hotter temperatures during the mid of the summer when I'm boondocking dry camping and so I'm kind of living on you know a little bit limited water sometimes I have to treat the tanks a couple times during my stay to help keep the odor down and that's just because with the lack of water in that tank the tank wants to go anaerobic really fast but by adding additional Brak so I have found that seems to help quite a bit when you're out dry camping for long periods of time so that's pretty much it three easy steps flush your tanks correctly get em as clean as practical two to three flush cycles is usually plenty once you get your tanks in good operating order start every tank with two to three gallons of water in it add burr axle as needed add on as needed use plenty of water when you can and use water wisely when you can't if you found value in the series of videos I'd appreciate your thumbs up that always gives me some encouragement to keep making these videos and of course questions or comments or things I might have missed if you have a specific problem that you want some help with go ahead and ask a question I'll try to help you if I can if you're not a subscriber I'd like you to do that because I already have a pretty good catalog of RV how-to videos everything from putting in the floor to put on a brand new Rufe to a generator maintenance battery maintenance those kinds of things I live in a 14 year old RV there's always something to be repaired fixed I also have a pretty long list of upgrades I want to be doing in the next year or so and I'll be recording all of that and sharing it with you just with the idea that if I show you how easy it is to do a lot of these projects you can do them yourself and save it coming up one last reminder you can pick up the two-page pamphlet up at wwt lol calm that has the information around the method in it so it's an easy reference you can go back to it look at it if you need to but for now I think it's time to go thanks for watching I really appreciate it until we get together the next time [Music] [Music]

Channel: TR Bowlin

Views: 915,475

Keywords: RV Holding tanks, RV Black Tank, RV Black Tank stinking, rv holding tank maintenance, how to maintain rv holding tanks, RV Grey tank maintenance, RV How To, Full-time RV living, Black Tank smelling, rv black tank smell, black tank, rv newbie, geo method rv tank cleaning, geo method rv tanks, geo method recipe, black tank odor control, rv black tank odor control, black tank flush, black tank cleaning, black tank masterclass, Black Tank smelling, rv

Id: wUWGlm2gQfE

Length: 27min 45sec (1665 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 22 2019