Getting Rid of our Black Tank Smell in our Airstream RV using the GEO Method

Okay so we've been living in the Airstream for about a month now so far so good everything's going pretty well for one little exception we had a we had a poop problem a couple weeks ago that we finally figured out how to solve and we use a method called the geome method and in this video I'm going to show you exactly what we do to keep both our black tank clean and also our sewer hose clean so first things first how do we know when blackw needs to be flushed well we come over here to our handy dandy little system monitor we have a red blinking light next to Black uh next to the black tank so that means the the tank is pretty full and it needs to be emptied these things are notoriously not accurate but they do give you a general frame um frame of reference regarding how full the uh the tank is so that sucker is blinking red we need to do something right now okay so we're out here by the tank flush and we have our sewer hose here so we're going to do a few things we're going to drain the black tank we're going to drain the gray tank and we're also going to wash out the black tank with some fresh water so uh let me show you how all that's done the trick to keeping your sewer hose clean is to always release the black water first then release the gray water the gray water will essentially flush out all the all the poopy Gunk uh from your from your black water that gets in um into the hose so in our trailer the this is a 2005 Airstream classic the black is on the left and the gray is on the right so the first thing we're going to do is we are going to release all that poopy black water so let's go so with a hose this big this sewer hose the the black tank will drain pretty quickly it's only going to take maybe a minute and a half 2 minutes max even with a full black tank in there which which it is and we won't show you the black water coming out cuz that's probably not why you've tuned into this video okay so our black water is completely drained you're still going to have some black water here in this sewer hose so I'm going to close up the black tank and then release the gray water and the gray water will flush out this entire sewer hose so it's nice and clean on the inside so the trick here is some people keep their gray tank completely open when they're hooked up to uh to sewer obviously if you do that you will not be able to flush out your uh your sewer hose quite as easily you'll you'll have to spray some water back into the tank then release it once more so I've gotten into the Habit over the LA over the last month of just keeping the black tank closed and when we flush black we flush uh gray as well so once gray tank is completely drained we close it back up and now both our black is closed our gray is closed our sewer line is nice and clean now we can go back inside and I can show you what we do to make the Geo method work for us all right so we're back inside let's take a look at our meter one more time all greens and as we say here in the RV Community green means go so follow me back to the bathroom and we'll show you how we get this process started okay so we're back here in the bathroom in our in our Airstream and we've switched to a wide-angle lens here as you can probably tell cuz we want to show you everything in here but this is a bit of a small space so if you haven't seen an RV toilet this is a very typical RV toilet there isn't a a traditional handle here on on a commode it's it's a lot more streamlined I mean it works just like your regular toilet would the flusher is down here you just put this down water will will come into the bowl and the very bottom of the toilet will open up to release whatever you just did in that toilet down into our black tank so at this point we have an empty black tank and we are going to take you through what we do to make the geome method work so the very first thing we do is flush the toilet a couple times to to put put a base level of water in in the tank cuz we don't want it to be dry with the chemicals that we are just about ready to add okay so let's lift up the lid and I'm going just do this with my hand I would traditionally do this with my foot of course but for the purposes of this video there's one flush and I'm to let the water come up about 3/4 of the way within the toilet itself then I'm going to flush again let a good am amount of water down then I'm going to close it back up a little bit so the B of the toilet is now sealed so now I'm filling the toilet back up with with water okay so now we have about two toilet fulls of water in our black tank down below so now the first step is to add some water softener to our Bowl now especially here in in Arizona we have a a very typical problem hard water which actually makes it easier for solids to stick to the side of your black tank and that's really what causes the the stink problem which we were having a couple weeks ago so very first step pick up some uh some water softener from almost any um grocery store ours looks like this it's just a liquid water softener um from Calgon so what what we're going to do is we're going to add um a couple uh top FS of water softener directly into our toilet bowl then then I'm going to take our little handy dandy toilet brush here wash wash around a little bit clean clean the bowl then flush it then flush it again with with another full toilet full toilet bowl full of water to really let it uh work down there in the black tank with a good base of water there's one and they say you only you only need one um based on the size of your black tank um but we add a little bit extra just to make sure added benefit of all this is the water softener will also clean your toilet bowl a little bit as well all right you have a toilet bowl full of soft water I'm going to flush all that down then I'm going to fill the toilet bowl up about 3/4 of the way again and then I'm going to flush that down as well so now at this point we just have regular fresh water straight from uh straight from the city water source there we go now we have about 3/4 flush one more [Laughter] time okay now we have a full toilet bowl of water again so the water softener that we just put down is is going to help prevent the solids from sticking to the side of the tank but now what we're going to do is we're going to add some really easy traditional dish soap Dawn dish soap directly into the bowl itself that will help to clean the the black the black tank sanitize it a bit as well as give it a a more pleasant smell regular Dawn dish soap add a little bit in there take your same toilet brush swish it around and we're going to do a little bit more toilet bowl cleaning all right now we have a toilet bowl full of dawn uh dish soap and we're going to flush this down sure you're starting to see a pattern here fil it back up about 3/4 of the way and then flush it down one more time there we go pull it back up half to 3/4 and then you're done for the first application after you flush black now when the toilet gets or the the black water rather gets about halfway full in the tank down below um we usually add a little bit of bleach to the toilet bowl we go through the same process fill it up about 3/4 if it's not already full and flush that down flush it down again with with just regular fresh water to get some bleach down in there to help um to help with with the odors and make sure that everything stays relatively clean down there and um a lot less smelly all right so now that we've brought you through the process that we take a couple of additional points first you may not have to do this every single time you empty your your black tank we did because we bought this trailer used we're not exactly sure how dirty that black tank was and we were clearly seeing or smelling I guess in our in in our case signs that there was a lot of Gunk down there so we're going to be doing this um pretty much every time we uh empty our black tank for a while until we're confident that the smell will never return and here in Arizona it's just getting up to uh the uh the summer so the hotter the temperatures are the more that material will ferment if you will within the black tank so the more important this process will be but depending on your your area and how hard or soft your water is uh again you may not have to do this every single time and in general the more water that you flush with the better it's going to be in terms of smell and cleanliness um if you have a particularly heavy movement within the toilet maybe an extra flush after if you're hooked up to city water is uh might might be appropriate so in general if if you have water available the more water the better um we do plan on doing a lot of boondocking in in the future so we're not going to have that luxury and if you do a lot of boondocking you probably don't have that luxury either so you're just going to have to do the best you can uh when you are hooked up to city water use a little bit more water add some some chemicals in make sure you start from a good fresh clean base before you head out into the middle of nowhere and truly have some fun out in nature so that's it I hope you you learned something that's how we implement the oo method here in our Airstream thanks for watching and if you want to see more be sure to subscribe to this channel a stream and life or visit the blog at a stream and life.com thanks [Music] again

Channel: A Dreamin' Life

Views: 194,104

Keywords: airstream, airstream living, black tank, black tank smell, empty black tank, RV, RV living, full time RV, sewer hose, bleach, water softener, dawn dish soap, rv newbie, rv new, rv must do, learning, rv school, lessons, full time rv, rv

Id: 1qfEM83kT7M

Length: 11min 14sec (674 seconds)

Published: Thu May 05 2016