RV Black Tank Cleaning, Maintenance, Tips & 7 Mistakes To Stop Doing NOW!

don't watch it you're doing it wrong do I dare ask you what's the weirdest thing you saw come out uh probably the worst thing was uh a customer who couldn't get anything out they had a clog in there the clog ended up being so that's a myth that you need a tank additive 100 let me give you the recipe to make your own oh okay it works like a charm yeah this is like a black tank Master Class I'm Tom and I'm Sharif and we're enjoy the journey.live foreign [Music] great great to meet you here we go sir here's my business card for you okay great you know we've been looking forward to something like this for a long time so Jim with clean tank and you are going to deal with one of the worst parts of RV living is that right that's that's my job people are happy to see you right when you show up they sure are okay okay cool so what are we doing today so today we're gonna clean out your black and gray holding tanks okay and uh do you have an on-demand water heater no okay and we'll clean out your regular water heater okay we'll do some education along the way okay answer whatever questions you got give a little bit of advice and kind of go from there great yeah no it sounds good uh yeah looking forward to it uh because I think uh ourselves like most RV years it's like well it's the black tank is something you deal with and you probably don't take care of it like you should that is 100 correct there's a lot of information out there a lot of people giving you opinions and advice and uh you know I've got nine years of experience clean tens of thousands of tanks and great because what we like to do is kind of bust through the RV uh myths that are out there um and I've got the products that you know we've used or one that we planned on using over here I'll get your opinions on that and you probably have some recommendations I absolutely do so you know of the what dozens and dozens of additives which ones work and which ones I can give you my opinion on them and you can take it with whatever advice okay let's go take a look on the over on the other side the business side of the RV kind of uh a strange deal what we thought with with this particular rig The Grand Design momentum 381m it's got two you know tanks the black and the gray in the front like normal but the we have this third combo tank in the back which the washer and uh is set up on and so it's like a a funny combination of you know you got to leave it open when you're doing laundry but then you really need to close it up so yep it may have more of an issue because it gets left open longer so the combo tanks you know the ones that are associated with the washer and dryer those are okay to leave open when you're doing laundry or you know if it was connected to a shower and you have a big family in there that's okay to leave that tank open at that time but in general you want to make sure you're keeping all of your tanks closed so that they fill up as full as they can be when you pull that pole then you get that kind of nice big whoosh and that kind of cleaning swirl that goes through the tanks so in general keep your tanks closed until you absolutely need to empty them even the gray even the gray really absolutely yeah the gray is if you leave that open you've got a toothpaste and hair and whiskers and sand and skin and everything and it starts to coagulate and makes these kind of bacon fat kind of like balls in there and then they come together and next thing you know you've got a clog in your gray tank and those are really hard to get out you really want to have water is your friend in these tanks you really want them to fill up as much as they can okay I've heard different people say that just because of long showers and stuff like that I've I've left the gray open yeah I guess I'm doing one of the mistakes already here well you know your tanks are pretty big and most RVs you know even even like a 20 or 25 gallon tank you know that can get you a couple showers okay but you really want to leave those clothes and I know a lot of our viewers leave their grades open and I really can't uh I really can't recommend uh let me do that it's just the best things that I have service have been the ones where they are closed all the time well I'll have to start doing that yeah I opened everything up for you because I figure that's probably what you need it doesn't matter to me sometimes generally speaking I like to see what comes out but more often than not okay I'm working on empty tanks and that's fine yeah they're empty except for the build up I'm sure oh that's in there so any kind of a tank additive at all uh we I mean I can't say I catch every time but happy campers has been the go-to I have another one from Dometic that you know we've used once in a while and I've got another one that's supposed to clean them that I bought and I haven't used it yet I forget the name of it but I've got it on the picnic table okay so so my big message to our viewers is that all you need to use as well okay you don't need to use any kind of tank additive at all if you are using enough water in here and there are a couple of things we want to think about but enough water will keep these tanks clean now we can talk about additives so that's a myth that you need a tank additive 100 yeah okay there's enough water in there so you're using the toilet you fill it up you do whatever you flush it down fill it up again flush it down fill it up again for the next time two flushes two bowls full of water there's enough to get stuff down out of your toilet into the tank and increase that uh that water to waste ratio okay number two travel with some water in all of your tanks yours are good size so 10 15 Gallons not a problem okay can you put ice in there that's another myth ice does not work oh okay gosh we should start counting these so myth number two is don't use ice I have heard that one I have never done it yeah so the reason it doesn't work is your size tanks you would have to put 13 11 pound bags of ice in there and I guarantee you nobody is doing that oh my gosh yeah that'd be crazy and we think of ice as being very sharp but the sharp part the edges is what melts first right and then in order to get the turbulence that you think you need to scrub those tanks you literally would have to be going over a cliff but what's helping is that ice is melting into water and that's what helps to keep the tanks nice and clean okay so traveling with water when you get to your destination if you're camping again empty that traveling water out and start with three to five gallons of fresh water in every tank so every tank kind of reduce the viscosity of what's going to be including the gray tank absolutely okay so I'm gonna say uh myth uh also a myth is to leave here always leave your gray tank open so since a lot of people do yep yep so all right cool well that's again we love busting through all of the opinion out there and just getting down to you've got nine years of experience dealing with you know again tanks and you use a tank additive that breaks down or dissolves things in your tanks okay you you have turned your holding tank into a septic really and what happens then is now that tank is full of peanut butter oatmeal it's a very thick and viscous and I'm guessing your tank sensors don't work right yeah they don't work because that thick mess that's in your tanks is gathering on Those sensors and preventing them from Reading properly right and you'll tell me that you have a really good flushing regimen and you put fresh water in there and it comes out clean right but what I'm telling you is that the water you are putting in is the water you're bringing out and all that thick mess you are leaving behind because you're using an attitude yep you're turning it into this kind of thick peanut butter and sticking to the walls and there's a layer of it on the bottom of your tanks and I'm going to guarantee you when we clean off your black tank today you'll be oh man I'm shocked it what comes out okay yeah maybe we can't show that on camera I don't know it might be kind of gross the first step that we do in our service is to hydrogen out your tanks and we use uh this uh Professional Pump here it's actually made in Italy very similar to a pressure washer but there are some important differences there um we're working at 1500 PSI 10 to 20 times the amount that you're able to get with your black tank flush and I always say uh the people that is a good thing to have a black tank flush use it when you're emptying out extra water extra turbulence turbulence does it do as good of a job as uh as we do in cleaning obviously not because we're you know 10 times the pressure we use uh kind of a flexible wand helps us get up in there and then specially designed custom made uh cleaning heads and what I'm going to do here is kind of show you what kind of pressure we're actually talking about here so this is just plain water pressure like that okay and then under powered pressure wow talking some pretty intense stuff so that's a jet about six to eight feet long okay your tanks are about nine to 12 inches tall so you can imagine a eight foot jet and a one foot tall pipe it is actually cleaning everything out of there we'll get it as clean as it came from the factory wow yeah so uh so you could literally eat off of it huh well I will I wouldn't eat or drink out of it but uh uh we're gonna clean them until they run clear so okay so being a user of an additive that has a tendency to digest or break down something in your tank uh I'm gonna guarantee that you've got some build up in there uh that's been sitting in there for a long time so we're gonna jet all that stuff out of here today well I imagine we've had this uh RV for three years now so who knows what's gonna come out of there always an adventure I'm gonna get going here do I dare ask you you what's the weirdest thing you saw come out uh well a number of things I really quickly I always see toys coming out of the you know the kids throw down there a can of energy drink once uh cleaning one certainly um I saw three cigars coming for three or four cigars come out once uh probably the worst thing was uh a customer who couldn't get anything out they had a clog in there the clog ended up being 20 years of using paper towels instead of toilet paper oh my gosh entire tank was compacted and dried out took me over five hours to clean it out and we do uh we do toilet and tank logs too but that was probably the worst thing that I've ever done so do you uh deal with the infamous poop pyramid yeah it's not uh yeah exactly it's not as prevalent as everybody thinks it is okay but uh you know a lot of toilet paper clogs things like that uh you know everybody thinks uh that you have to use RV toilet paper and a little tip here is that you can use anything you want oh so we need to call this I think myth number four myth number four that uh any kind of toilet paper is okay yep there are two caveats number one don't ball it up into a big giant eight ball okay and number two the same thing I've been preaching the whole time is just use plenty of water but uh you can use you don't have to use the expensive RV stuff you want to use that three-ply you know double quilted vanilla lavender stuff go right ahead okay so you don't need to bother with the whole dissolve test kind of a thing no because remember remember you don't want things dissolving in your tank it's not a septic tank it's a holding tank so by adding things in there that are going to break down that are going to create a peanut butter or an oatmeal you're only making things worse in there you the best situation would be a tank full of water with stuff floating around in it you know you know what I'm talking about that just comes out freely and easily when you open up the gate valve so okay when it dissolves and breaks down that's when we have problems in our tanks so interesting doesn't Jim have so much great information about RV black and gray tanks yeah just blowing me away but there's actually a part two to this video because he's going to tell us everything we're doing wrong with RV water heaters so you can subscribe over here with this QR code just scan it with your smartphone or hit the Subscribe button down below that way you catch part two coming up real soon we're gonna get going here we're gonna turn the pump on it's a little noisy but I think we can still talk over it all right so we're gonna get it up in there and do some cleaning it should go right in your black tank so what this does is it cleans backwards the Jets jet out behind so as it pulls itself in it's cleaning everything it's in your tank and driving it back down the pipe here as soon as it builds up a little bit of water it will start pushing it down and uh customers that use that uh those type of tank additives that break down or digest stuff well oh geez that is unfortunately what we see here's right there is just this kind of slow River of lava coming out oh my God and uh that's what's been sitting in the bottom of your tanks up against the sensors now for three years oh that is gross it is really gross but uh don't watch it it's not hide from the camera thankfully the smell-o-vision has been uh turned off yeah I I have to say the smell is not great right now not uh the worst I've seen but it's uh certainly not the best no grade of a on this one oh not an F not an A so somewhere in the what uh C or D uh well you're definitely looking at a c right now absolutely that's just moving that sensor all around right yeah they're cleaning that I'm moving it back forth up and down it's uh I'm gonna twirl it so it's gonna scrub everything in there and remember it's like about a 6 foot jet inside your tank which is about nine inches tall so it's literally scrubbing everything up okay and then uh you know this this is what you would hope to be doing with your onboard uh tank flush but you just don't have the pressure that we do but using a lot of using a lot of water uh and uh being diligent with your rinsing can uh can't help your thing swimwear when we're done here with the washing we'll get into the rinsing part and I'll show you a little contraption that I recommend every arm here have yeah you can hear it up in there doing its job well I'm just looking for a reduction here in three things color you know we like it to be not quite so dark and brown that tells me I'm getting it clean uh the consistency we don't want to see that coming up the river a lava that we saw earlier and uh and then just less what we call content so you know more of a watery discharge than uh than other stuff but it's still coming out so now it definitely went into the black tank right oh well if that's your great idea of the worst great tank I've ever seen okay definitely it's like how do you tell it to go between which tank yeah so in the beginning we just leave all the gate valves open and kind of whatever it finds its way into we're able to tell by obviously the smell and the the look of it um after we're done cleaning the display black tank will close it off and then the only place we can go is your gray tank okay uh then we'll clean that out uh this gray tank is paired up with this one as your shower those tend to be a lot uh cleaner the of the two great things the shower always tends to be a little bit cleaner actually doesn't even smell that bad because it has a lot of soap in it right and uh it'll clean up pretty quickly and then when we're done we'll move through your Galley or your combo tank behind us and uh that's the one that tends to be the worst uh people always say that it smells a lot next week mainly because it gets a lot of mold and mildew growing inside of it okay that's pretty typical of all things whether it's your black or your gray or even your fresh water they do get mold and mildew that likes to grow and hot wet environments and that's all of your tanks right and then you're black you don't really see it well there's other stuff in your tank so this one looks pretty good I'm gonna pull it back here okay time so now we got the black clothes the gray is open the only place the cleaning head can go is into the gray we may have a little difficulty finding it but yeah we'll see what we can do okay just like that gets up into the gray sometimes it takes a little bit of work but sometimes it just zooms right up in there like I said the shower gray tends to be the cleanest so if you have the smell-o-vision I turned on your camera there you would smell uh like I do some soap and it's actually not bad at all you sometimes the water will come out of this tank kind of gray or even uh even a white color sometimes kind of foamy but this tank tends to be terribly clean again all that silt buildup and stuff in there yeah you know you'll hear a lot of other people saying well I put Dawn in my tanks or a dishwasher detergent or something you don't need to do that at all oh okay your your gray tanks have enough soup in them from just normal use you don't need to add any more in there the key to all this obviously is just water using a lot of water if you're in a camping in a place an area of the country where water is not an issue and just uh you know make good use of it sometimes when you're down in the those areas that are challenged for water things are a little different there you have to do a little conservation but after you've moved out of those areas if you're moving around the country of them once you get into a place where water is not so much an issue you know kind of overuse the water a little bit now rinse out the tank a little more than you would add a couple more flushes of water start out with a couple more gallons of water okay so I guess that's uh another myth I hope that's Miss number six I think it's six yeah uh to say that that Dawn or any kind of additives to the gray tank is not necessary no you've um in your shower one you're putting enough in there with the shampoo and everything you do in your Deli washing dishes plenty of soap you don't need to put any more okay so what I am looking for here in great thanks is mold coming out I don't see any here so this is a really healthy gray thing okay uh the pump scrubbing pump is not getting anything out of here that's uh other than just a little soap scum it was all really that I'm seeing so does that mean our grid went up a little bit uh on this thing on this tank you're going to get an A on this tank Oh yay on this one uh not so much a knee on the black I'm looking at a solid C on the black okay all right so we're gonna take everything out of here we're gonna switch over and uh rinse out these two tanks before we move to that last one so does that mean we're on the B honor roll right now yeah well I gotta tell you I I don't have high expectations on the galley tank because that always tends to be a pretty nasty one too so but you know what as I always say room for improvement here's the one thing we use this uh this next little uh Gadget here to rinse out all of our customers tanks after we've scrubbed them clean okay I have seen those yeah and this is the one thing I recommend every rver get okay this is called a valterra flush King it's a back flush valve and it forces water back up into each of the tanks depending on which valve you have closed we pair it up with a water meter so we're able to measure how many gallons we're putting into your holding tank okay the way this works is we just kind of hook it up right here and why would that be important to know how much water went in well let's say you have 50 gallon tanks and if you meter in 52 gallons you've got a little mess in there all of a sudden so we always meter in somewhere between 80 and 90 percent of our tank of your Tank's capacity that way we're uh sure that we're going to be safe and not create a mess in there but yet we're putting enough in there to do any kind of rinsing that we need after the scrubbing and cleaning process okay for our viewers who would want to get this device and again we recommend it for everybody we uh this would be a great way to rinse out your holding tanks your black and your gray you can do them individually and we can do them together compared to your onboard tank rinse well you don't have one typically for your gray tank so you can't rinse that out but this can do that and then for your black yeah you have your rinser in there but it's only putting a small stream of water in where this is putting a full three inches of water granted at a slightly lower pressure but it's coming in kind of a wall of water into your tanks and it's dredging out the bottom in the front where waste tends to accumulate so once your tanks have been professionally cleaned getting a device like this is a really smart idea because it'll help to keep those tanks clean and uh them performing better the sensor is working uh continually odors will be reduced you'll have uh no problems with clogs with capacity so really this uh meltera flush King is a really a product that we really recommend every rver get and pairing it up with a meter just makes sense so that you don't over flood your tanks okay so great we're going to uh flush out the gray tank here first because it's the one that's open and we will put that on the Amazon list and a link Down Below in the pinned comment and description for people that want to pick up one of those you keep one tank valve open at a time water is forced to go back up the tank up the pipe into the tank right now it's only going to go in the gray because that's the only one open can't come back down this way because this is closed we're sending a wall of water into your tanks and we're about to rinse them out so in our case anything that the pump uh loosened up and that might still be sitting in there that the pump did not drive out this process will pull it back out and you'll end up with uh tanks as clean as they came from the factory wow nice and Those sensors and uh the vent uh things should be fairly clean as well yeah so let me use a little visual aid for you here let's kind of pretend that this is your tank you know it's they're kind of like this they're kind of a little wide this way longer in the back and not very thick so if this is your tank and your RV and this is pretty much the same in any RV they kind of tilt down towards the front where the hole's at sure and that that's how stuff gets out but stuff tends to accumulate down in these corners and on the bottom and unfortunately the sensors are actually placed here in the corners oh so that waste that's kind of getting down there and thickening it up and accumulating is actually coating the sensors and your sprayer coming in from the top just really can't reach there can't drive that stuff out this just gets thicker and thicker so having your tanks professionally cleaned like we're doing today is really the way to kind of get you back to zero and get you back to how you were in the factory when it came from the factory and then being really smart with water usage not using a tank additive that's going to break stuff down and get us back to where we were that really is is the smart way to be using your RV RV is that get the flush King I would recommend that they use it on both their tanks uh say you're camping for a week or 10 days two weeks probably only use it once maybe towards the end of your camping experience about once a week once every other week you don't need to use it every time one or two flushes with this into each tank is more than adequate the more you use it over time the healthier tanks will be that's great information clean tank as far as a company you've got what 12 offices yeah we have 13 dealers right now okay my wife and I started out uh about uh nine years ago just the two of us and we opened up our dealer Network last year added one last year and 12 this year and we're the largest Nationwide tank cleaning company right now and expected to add about another 20 dealers next year our goal is 20 20 dealers every year for the next five years so okay all over the country we've got some dealers that are situated in certain areas and then we've got some full-time rvers that are dealers as well and they move around a lot we'll put your contact information website in the pinned comment and description as well so people can I guess reach out see who's close by to get a quote and and uh wow I mean I am looking forward to being able to read my tank valves again and this should help with that with that smell too right absolutely it smell sensor usage capacity uh clogs that you may have in your tank it does it all it's kind of an amazing process now that looked pretty good I didn't see anything coming out of there so I'm going to move over to the black tank I'm going to close the gray and open up the black and we'll oh see how we did there okay good deal so what you were saying Jim is uh if people disagree with some of these uh RV black tank and gray tank Mist yeah uh that go ahead use the additive uh whatever you want just uh you might be calling you a little bit sooner than you want to absolutely um you know I I don't say that any of my advice is hard and fast if you don't want to listen to it that's fine keep doing what you've been doing uh we are always happy to service your RV uh just uh if you follow our guidelines you'll see us a little less often and I think you'll have a lot less headaches with your uh with your tanks and your plumbing system and speaking of that how often if you are doing most things right how often would somebody need your service so uh we always uh say you know have it done first whether you're a first-time owner a second time third time fourth time you know it's always good to kind of bring you back to zero even somebody that just bought their rig but their their sensors just aren't working they've already reached that state where uh they need some assistance with that so we can go ahead and do our service kind of bring you back to how you came from the factory and then after that depending on the severity of what we find we generally recommend that you do it a year later and if we see a dramatic Improvement which we know you will if you follow our process then you can go every two or even three years after that between cleanings so once we teach you the right way to care for your tanks then you've got the smarts to to maintain them and you don't have to see us as often okay is there information like that on your website absolutely we have an entire library of Articles uh both at both of our two main websites cleantank.com and ask cleantank.com there are helpful uh tips on there there's tutorials on how to do things like tank rinsing sanitation of your fresh water tank caring for your hot water tank so there's a hole uh just a websites full of resources uh because you know for us a smart customer is our best customer so a big part of what we do is education as well that's that's awesome and and thank you for your service in the nasty uh area of RV Living Well it's nothing that I ever thought I would be doing for a living but I got to tell you I love meeting people and I love helping them and that's uh that's true of our all of our dealers are like family to us so you'll get the same treatment from all of them okay awesome yeah this has been super educational I mean me coming in here with 10 years of RV living experience and finding many things that I was doing wrong well uh or it could be doing better we'll have to see if we can bust some more myths for us here in the next yeah definitely uh yeah let us know let's do uh our first flush on the black and see how it looks here oh look how clean it is uh oh not so much huh not so clean we got some more work to do here some more flushing on this guy so you said you'll do this at what at least two times uh generally speaking a black tank will flush anywhere from two to five times my records oh wow 13 flushes oh my God that was uh that was with an over that was with an owner who uh kept it up in the woods and it was sort of the community bathroom oh man but uh in general anywhere from two to five it'll take care of take care of the flushing after we've done the cleaning on it and like I said after you've had them clean and if you get this uh this flush King here then you're only going to be probably doing a rinse or two every time and that'll be sufficient to keep it nice and clean going for number two yes how many will it take you guys can start making guesses in the comments right now how many flushes two to definitely not the 13 record no definitely not the 13th I have a number in my mind so we'll see you oh really yeah okay I've been doing it a while so I can kind of tell uh how many how many it's gonna take I'm gonna guess four is my guess right now okay so that's probably a pretty good guess okay how many of these do you do a day typically typically uh at a rally I will do four a day two in the morning two in the afternoon uh my record is uh personally I've did 49 in eight days oh wow so that was uh six and seven a day that was at a Newmar rally uh okay we just did the uh Grand Design National rally in I in another uh dealer did 75. wow in that time period but typically I do four day I can do six but that's a pretty long day so this is flush number two it is looking better uh a little bit right oh yeah oh most definitely better okay so we are at the Lippert uh getaway uh Rally or actually they call it a non-rally uh different than a lot of the RV rallies but this is where you do a lot of your business around the country right that is correct yeah we go to uh a number of rallies all of our dealers do rallies and we see them as an opportunity to do education for our rving friends uh that is a big part of who clean tank is so all of our rallies we do seminars that educate people on how to care for their tanks we have a booth usually at a vendor fair where we're there to answer questions uh that come up and we always get plenty of them if you ever see one of our clean tank dealers just feel free to come up and ask them any question that you may have so no question is too dirty huh well I'll tell you I've pretty much heard every uh tank or poop joke there is in the world but if you think that you have one that I haven't heard why don't you go ahead and uh and ask me or tell me yet oh okay why don't you share the best ones you got well we are number one in the number two business and we do have the dirtiest job and uh sometimes we are full of uh poop or crap there's all kinds of things we hear and so you service anything with a tank yeah yeah uh obviously we've uh we've worked on anything from a small kind of weekend RV up to a multi-million dollar motor coach uh they're all the same you know they got tanks they got pipes they got gate valves we all kind of use them the same way so uh to us they're all the same thing a little bit different you know here and there some little nuances I guess between different types of RVs but essentially they're all the same have you ever had a job that beats you that you could not fix uh me personally no there has never been a tank that I couldn't clean or a clog that I couldn't clear doesn't mean that I didn't spend better part of a day doing it but uh we're pretty persistent and our dealers go through a week-long training that covers all kinds of different scenarios they're always able to uh to call me we have all kinds of online references and offline references for them to uh to look at as well so our dealers are prepared for pretty much any any contingency so rvers out there that are like thinking oh my Tank's the worst I'd be too embarrassed to have you come out and deal with it I mean they shouldn't feel that way right oh not at all no not at all um you know what I've cleaned tanks that people have thought I've been terrible that weren't and I have cleaned tanks that people thought weren't so bad that uh went home after a long day and boy was I sorry for it but no I haven't uh I haven't been really surprised by anything in a number of years pretty much everything that uh you can imagine coming out of a tank I have seen well I think one of the issues our viewers have is they might know how to do everything right but then they have guests that come in and throw stuff in there that should not go in there yeah yeah you know we've uh our viewers that have kids or grandkids don't always uh understand as well as we do how the plumbing system works so it's always good to go over that with uh younger or more inexperienced uh RV users uh just kind of let them know again I keep coming back to water water but that is exactly the key you really can't use too much water in your tanks and using an abundance of it will keep them nice and uh and healthy so uh that's definitely the key to RV usage well that was number three that was number three I would say it's still looking pretty dirty yeah it's getting cleaner but it's not too bad okay we'll see we'll see if I I was right there's number four your guess was four is that correct right and I guess you're probably gonna be right four or five would be my guess again the record's 13 we're hoping not to hit anybody guess more than five does anybody win a prize if it's more than 13. so there's a question so if it is something that takes longer than usual do you have to charge extra for that um the only time we charge more than our set price is if we have a situation like in a an extreme clog or something like that so uh most clogs we can get uh resolved within uh anywhere from a half an hour to an hour we always do a cleaning when we do a clog call as well so clogs are a slight up charge but uh they're the only time then that we really charge more uh typically just a cleaning is one set charge no matter how much time it takes us to do it uh typical cleaning is either two or three uh tanks included at a set price if there's a fourth or even a fifth one we might charge a little up charge for those usually twenty five dollars a tank and then if the rver has a a conventional water heater so not a not an on-demand type but a conventional electric or gas electric then we also do a complementary cleaning of that as well as part of our service and then we obviously teach you how to clean the water heater as well I will get to that when we're when we're done here after that tank behind us and again make sure you subscribe to our Channel with this QR code right here scan it with your smartphone or smash the Subscribe button because Jim is coming back for part two to talk about all the things you're doing wrong with your RV water heater that's coming up real soon well that's great that you don't charge by the hour well you know what I've been doing this like I said almost 10 years now and I know how long it's going to take it just seems that uh having our service done for one set charge uh that'll take anywhere from about an hour and a half to two hours just makes sense that's the way we teach our dealers and uh they were all able to handle it within that time frame well and that's cool that a lot of your dealers are also full-timers so they could just be in the park that you're already camped at absolutely they're always moving around if they're full-timers and even if they're not if they're in a set area uh their service area tends to be within an hour to two hours of where their home base is so uh but we're always you know if somebody calls up and says I have a clog in my toilet can't use my RV you know we're going to get to you um okay One Way Or Another We're going to get somebody to you to help you out do you guys do stuff like the RV shows like Hershey or Tampa yeah uh we don't uh so far we don't exhibit there but we will be doing that uh very soon we'll be at the Tampa show uh coming up here this year we'll be at the big FMCA show in March so though we do a lot of rallies we're starting to move into the shows as well so that we have another opportunity to do some education so this is the magic number you said hey I said I said four I'm thinking it's going to be a little more after seeing what came out last time well I always look to see what what comes out last that's what kind of right so it can be kind of bad in the beginning but I want to see it nice and clear at the end here we go all right [Applause] wow still some pretty dark stuff in there yeah well again we're uh we're working on years of uh tank additive that was breaking things down in there and causing it to thicken up and Clump around in different areas so we're rinsing that out and I think you're right I think we're gonna have to go one more shoot I was wrong so number five coming up I think that's going to be the key though it's pretty clear in here toward the end so that's encouraging so I think okay one more flush is gonna take it for us so so why do you think that additives are being pushed if they don't work uh I think that uh there are not a lot of people in my industry who do the cleaning like we do um Nationwide we have our 13 dealers there's probably another uh yeah 10 or 12 I would say so if you think only of about 20 companies that are talking to rvers and that's been a more recent uh um there's just not a lot of Education out there people don't know any better there are a lot of sources whether it's a forum or a Facebook group a company you know kind of pushing a product without a lot of research behind it or maybe that that camper that that camps next to you that guy that's been doing it for 200 years that swears by uh a certain product or a certain process so there's a lot of information out there and again you can use whatever you you want to use you can do whatever you want to do I've cleaned over 10 000 RVs and if you figure the average RV has two to three uh tanks in it I've probably done 20 to 25 000 tank cleanings wow in the last nine years so I've got I got a little bit of knowledge so I like to give that to people and I've also heard that some additives actually eat away at your tank you see if you found that to be true at all well um some of the so people use things in there that are more intended for a a harsher environment like a tank that uh that might be a Home Septic System uh where they're really trying to clean it out or people might be using harsh chemicals uh thinking that a harshness or an intensity is a good thing in their tanks and I hate to say I hate to be the broken record but I keep coming back to water water you don't really need to put a tank additive in there and you really don't need to be using any kind of harsh chemical especially I've heard of people who put a whole gallon full of bleach down there uh tanks thinking that that's a good way to disinfect it you don't there's really no need to disinfect your waste tanks they're always going to have waste in them so disinfecting them once only means they're going to become disinfected the next time you use them all right and things like bleach which are incredibly caustic can actually damage some of the seals and some of the gate valves in your tank so you want to be okay you want to be really careful about using a very caustic or very intense chemical kind of cleaning so we probably call that myth number seven right I think myth number seven there yeah no don't use bleach don't use nothing harsh yeah now we use bleach of course when we do a sanitation of our fresh water tank but it's at a low concentration and it's not in there very long uh it does a really good job of eliminating molds and mildews in there but right you're only talking about a number of hours at the most where that's there and then we're getting rid of it immediately and doing a rinsing process afterwards to really clean it out but uh you know putting bleach or any other kind of caustic chemical down your tanks as a regular part of the Care is just not a smart idea we're not looking for perfectly clear right well as clear as we can get I guess that's probably the way uh it's never going to be perfectly clear um we could probably do it a hundred times and it would still come out a little cloudy but uh like I said I'm looking for Fairly clear water at the end of the rinsing process well cloudiness is okay okay oh still some really dark in there now that was six right that was number six okay I'm seeing it run pretty clear here at the end okay so I'm pretty satisfied with how clean this is that's what I'm looking for is that nice clean runoff here at the end all right here we go so this is our third tank it's kind of a cool black and gray and so you're saying it shouldn't be too bad a little bit too bad what I'm seeing here is some mold coming out of here that's that black stuff okay uh it's very common in Gray tanks especially those that aren't involved with the bath the bath comes to or the shower tends to really clean out a tank but these kind of combo ones like this or a plain Galley tank by itself really does have a tendency to have some mold build up in there and that's some of those black chunky things that we're seeing coming out there so that's a although not fantastic it's to be expected um okay Gray tanks are hot they're wet uh they don't have a lot of what we come and you think of wasting them so they're great places for the mold to easily grow and uh this jetting process that we're doing now we'll scrub all that stuff off of all the surfaces uh we'll do a quick uh rinse on it won't have to be nearly as long as that black tank was and we'll get this one all cleaned up yeah we're not really getting the the sludge coming out are we no it is uh it is pretty smelly though and bad great things can smell kind of sour or even moldy or mildewy smelling it's just a mold that's in there that kind of did in that bad smell okay like I said this is a pretty low level of uh of mold that's in here I've seen it uh come out kind of big slimy chunks uh they really kind of turn your stomach and you kind of get up and walk away this one doesn't look too bad at all actually okay well let's say it's a bathroom it's not used that much basically for the washing machine yep and uh that's the one time when I say that it's probably okay to leave your gray think open is when you're doing laundry uh you're tending to process a lot of water through that tank so if you keep it closed you're going to be out here all the time opening and closing so if you're going to have a laundry day in your RV go ahead and leave that seat belt open the one up here and uh just let that water kind of flow through and then after you're done close it up let it build up again until it's almost full and then open it up and empty it out after that okay again I'm looking for kind of a reduction in color here I don't want it to be as dark or brown or dark as gray in color and we don't want to see any chunky stuff coming out anymore it looks like we're getting to that point and then we also want the liquid coming out to be fairly thin almost water like we are just about there let's move on to that rinsing process okay again we're going to use that uh flush King we talked about so you can see it a little better here you can see how the water meter is working right counting the amount of gallons that are going in the top number is how much we're putting in now that bottom number is just an aggregate number it doesn't really mean anything okay not relevant I guess to what we're doing right now are these less flushes as well uh the combo tanks do tend to be less fresh flushes obviously the black tank is the worst right um I'd say one to three flushes on this guy I want to take a guess [Applause] um ooh let's see it's pretty close last time okay I'll say three three on this one you think yeah I got a number I don't think it's gonna be that high okay I think we're gonna get uh through this one pretty quickly all right again this flush King is a good idea you may not always have a flush out capability or a rinser attached to a combo tank so in those cases where you don't having one of these uh flush Kings is a good idea again I recommend them for every rver and you said that was you could roughly get maybe what uh three times the pressure from a regular uh well we're looking at uh this is going to be the park pressure here so okay here at this park it's not that high so we're probably looking at maybe 40 50 psi going in but you'll see this is a three inch pipe so you've got kind of a wall of water that's going in there so it's doing a really good job of agitating and kind of cleaning from the bottom okay whereas a tank flusher just kind of sprays on the top at a certain little pattern it's got a minimal spray uh the stream that comes out is a little higher pressure but uh this is just more of a mass of water that's being pushed up in there I feel it just does a better job so we can maybe call that uh myth number is that seven or eight that might be eight a myth number eight is that the regular uh sanitization of an RV does not clean the tank yeah the the tank sprayer does not do uh what I would say an adequate job in cleaning out the tanks better than nothing but doesn't do absolutely all of us absolutely okay so if you use that and you use one of these then you're going to be doing the best that you could probably possibly do without getting help absolutely okay especially if you've had the chance to have them clean professionally by a company like ours we've gotten them as clean as they come from the factory now you're just maintaining them that way okay yep in a minute here when we're done with this we're going to talk about a a tank additive that I would recommend and there is a specific one that uh we personally have been using for about 11 years we are our company recommends it every time you get a service done by us we give you a bottle of it we give you the recipe to make your own oh okay it works like a charm wow cool yeah rinse number one right okay well it's not looking too bad is it no wow yeah maybe three is too many all three is much to me so here we are with rinse number two on the combo tank and you think this is probably it all I'm going to say this is going to be it not a problem at all we may see some bubbles coming out of there a little bit of flaky stuff but not too bad there and we're going to look toward the end see what happens okay and this is what I'm looking for right here this is the this is my point of judgment here okay if uh if this comes out nice and clean then I am good to go with this tank okay great I don't see any problems here at all good deal so we have all your tanks cleaned up before we move to the water heater which will be really quick uh let's talk about tank additive real quick every rver including me uh wants to put something in their tanks and I understand that and so we've came up with this concoction uh it's something you've doubtlessly heard about it's a mixture of Calgon and pine salt Calgon and pine salt does two things the Calgon in here uh breaks the surface tension of water sort of like the old Calgon take me away if you have any viewers that are a little on the older side they'll remember that commercial makes everything slippery in your tanks so the addition of Calgon or use of Calgon will keep everything slick and will prevent a buildup inside your tanks the pine saw is a great disinfectant kills molds mildews viruses and bacteria this solution that we give away in this size bottle premixed to everybody that we do a service for um is ready to go for the most part every rver will put a cup or a fourth of a bottle into every tank including your gray so when you're graze that Pine-Sol will help to fight that mold build up in the blacks the combination of the two will keep them nice and clean uh the recipe if you get one of these bottles for this size bottle is on here more importantly on the back of all of our business cards and every piece of literature we have on our website Facebook groups everything we give you the recipe to make a gallon of it you can make a gallon of it on your own for about 10 bucks it is the cheapest tank solution you will ever use and I guarantee once you start using it you'll love it wow cool we always give that away that's kind of one of the things that we do with our company is freely give away our preferred tank solution for people to use but again water water is what okay awesome we'll look forward to using that so we've cleaned you up hope you don't mind if I share a little bit with the world how you did my failing well not failing but my C right you got a C on the black tank okay you got some really heavy debris that's three years of stuff building up okay from using a tank additive that breaks down or dissolves stuff that's kind of a No-No okay uh your number one gray tank that's your shower your shower uh Galley combo I'll be in there a little bit of mold but not something too bad uh that back one that combo tank you got today on that one okay so two A's and a c uh an a a b and a c oh a b c yeah and then your your water heater you got a B on there just because uh there was some build up in there make sure you're doing that quarterly maintenance on and we're not done with just black and gray tanks Jim has so much great information there is a part two to this video it's all the things you're doing wrong with your RV water heater and that's going to be in part two so hit this little code over here that will get you subscribed or smash that subscribe button and we will see you in part two and I had a cheap anode and you had a cheap anode so we put a new one in there for you okay we always give a little thank you bag when we're done with service a little uh sticker there that tells you uh who did it and when they did it okay and then we always give you a bottle of that paint solution we talked about okay I like to take off how much to put in there so down your gal uh down your toilet down your galley shower and then down that combo so you're talking about a cup per tank that's black and gray follow it with a little bit of water so it gets down in the tank there and then you'll add this every time you have emptied so okay empty them out and then you use this and then okay little goodie bag has some information in there and wow that's it great well thank you so much Jim I appreciate it you're welcome yeah this is like a black tank Master Class here uh for us and the viewers because yeah again it's just such a necessary area that's not exactly fun to deal with absolutely and if anybody has questions they can give us a call we have an 800 number it's 844 clean me that's k-l-e-e-n-m-e or you can find us online at cleantank.com or ask cleantank.com and we will put all that contact information Down Below 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Channel: EnjoyTheJourney.Life

Views: 817,030

Keywords: RV, RV living, RV life, RV living full time, Travel full time, RV newbie, how to RV, RV upgrade, RVing, rv living for beginners, rv life full time, rv lifestyle, rv travel, full time rv living, rv travel vlog, rv tank cleaning, rv tank flush, rv black tank flush, rv black tank cleaning, rv black tank clog, rv black tank smell, rv black tank treatment, rv black tank sensor cleaning, rv grey water tank cleaning, Tom & Cheri, enjoy the journey.life, Ford, F450, e bike, RV tip

Id: fs7YE9hmD7k

Length: 57min 20sec (3440 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 08 2023