RV ENEMA & Professional (Surprising) Advice for Keeping Healthy RV Holding Tanks

welcome back friends hey a really interesting video for me today i've got jim here from cleantank and he's basically going to give our black tank our both of our grey tanks and our water heater an enema power washing like a just a sincere clean and i'm very interested to see this because we've never done this and i've seen some videos before it's it's quite interesting tell them what we're going to do today jim yeah so today we're going to uh use our hydro jet our uh high pressure water pump to actually go into the tanks and with 1500 psi water literally scrub them as clean as they came from the factory when the when the rig was built originally now that sounds awesome to me i'm looking forward to i think i can show you what comes out of here i'm pretty sure i can um we're going to if youtube flags me whatever that's fine but yeah it should be an interesting video you guys stay tuned [Music] so [Music] all right jim what are we doing here you've got it you've got all your stuff out this is some cool looking stuff um so what's next okay so first i should say first thing is we emptied all the tanks so obviously i like to start with empty tanks but i like to see what comes out as weird as that sounds that helps me to determine the health of the tank and how the owner takes care of their rig after that well how did how did mine look uh yours actually looked pretty good you just got here yesterday so there wasn't a lot in there but uh i do like to start with uh something in the tanks although if customers do end up emptying them no big deal we can kind of work from there as well while i'm doing the cleaning um i will be able to see what comes out obviously and that'll help me to diagnose something now i do have a question for you yes what do you use a tank additive of any kind yes we do what do you use well we used happy campers for a couple years and then recently we've been trying the uh unique rv digest okay so those are both uh tank additives that are intended to break down things in your tank correct correct okay which you think would be a good idea but actually when you think about this this is a holding system or holding tanks not a septic system so you really don't want anything in your tanks breaking down what's in there because what happens when you add something that has an enzyme or a biological or a chemical that actually breaks down breaks down or dissolves what's in your tanks especially your black what you get is a tank full of pancake batter and that pancake batter actually is what uh coats all the surfaces in there and most especially your sensors which i'm guessing are probably not working you know we weakened her so we don't check them that much okay but yeah i can check them now to see if they're working okay but uh but most people uh uh you know have the frustration of their sensors not working and to be honest with you it's the tank additive that you add almost from the beginning of ownership that causes that situation so this is interesting stuff so let me be clear from an owner's standpoint um i flushed this thoroughly the last time i was here and i've only been here for a full day um maybe this is tmi but no number twos to this point that on this trip so i feel like if somebody that doesn't know yet that this tank is pretty darn clean so when i flush it i'll i'll i'll uh close it and let the black tank flush fill again and i'll you let the gravity of the water to pull stuff out and i'll do that a few times and it runs clear so from my standpoint i really think this thing is clear it's clean but i'm afraid we're going to find out a little different here in just a minute so let's go check my black tank sensor all right let's take a look at our sensors here the black it says it's a third full we know it's empty um gray one same thing a third full grade two says it's empty so um so yeah obviously the first sensor it's coated with something all right jim wants to make sure just to be clear he can't guarantee that he's going to get your sensors to work because there may be some wiring stuff but uh but yeah how often do you think you get them working uh i'd say probably about nine out of ten times that's pretty good so here's this little setup you can see it's hooked up to my volterra valve there uh we're gonna do business in we're gonna see some fun stuff there i kind of hope we do because it make a good video and then i guess you're going to put the the spray port right in that hole yup yup so this is a cleaning wand it's attached to our commercial water pump here which actually ramps up to 1500 psi which is some pretty fantastic pressure and a lot of customers always ask me whether this will damage the tank it does not the pressure is is pretty intense and this spray head will actually create a a jet about two feet uh back which will do all the cleaning in there uh but it's not so strong that it's gonna punch a hole or anything in the uh tank i've been doing this eight years and uh never had any tank damage so i'm pretty good at that very cool the uh the cleaning the head here attached to this kind of green wand we call is specially designed it's a miniature version of what a commercial plumber might use to clear a septic line or clean a a really super clogged big sewer pipe anyway if you kind of look at it here it's got little holes drilled in the back of it and when the water pressure is applied it creates a long uh about a two foot jet of high intensity water almost looks like a rocket yeah it actually pulls itself up in there in fact it's so strong that i have to kind of control it otherwise it likes to tie itself into a knot oh wow okay very problematic very cool yeah so let's turn the water on here and let's get the pressure going i may have turned that one oh yeah we got to plug it up well there's a look at the pressure that happens now it's obviously not going back two feet because it's blocked by this three-inch pipe you can see that it's pretty intense as soon why are you almost nervous about this oh you can hear it going through the tank [Applause] yeah this is obviously your black tank [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] and the reason that happens basically is uh your tanks are long flat boxes right and they uh they tilt uh to the opening side there's a three inch or an inch and a half hole depending on which trunk it is [Applause] [Music] [Applause] builds up more and more and more it's something that your black tank flush can't get out obviously you don't have any great refreshes [Music] [Music] and what it's doing is it's continue to do this until i'm satisfied that it's loosened everything up i'm looking for a decrease in waste and a clearing of the color of the water that's coming off and generally when i'm doing the black tank uh depending on how bad it is i'll clean this for anywhere from five minutes to a half an hour right now your tank is not too bad to be honest with you okay so that makes me feel better well i think part of this is you know rvs are still a lot of times designed for that r which is recreation you know a lot of people living in full time but i think it helps that we dump ours i mean we rarely have anything sitting in it for more than two days so well it is important for them to remember it's not a septic system right it's not a flush and forget like you have at home so you have to take care of it and i guess the biggest lesson i would give to my customers is that they use a lot of water right obviously that's the most important thing you can do when using your your rv is just to use a lot of water if you have you're at a campground where you have the ability to get water uh and it's not metered like it might be in the southwest or in the western states and the ability to get rid of it so full hookups lose a lot of water especially so i am noticing no big chunks of toilet paper that's a good thing what kind of toilet paper to use uh great value from walmart okay so uh the big belief in rvers is what kind of toilet paper to use right a lot of people say they should use uh rv toilet paper or one ply toilet paper and i'll give you a little tip here as long as you follow two rules um one being that you don't make a massive wad of toilet paper when you go to use it and number two that you use enough water water you can actually use whatever toilet paper you would like yeah yeah i think that's obvious here right so if you like the three fly double quilted lavender scented go ahead and use it you want to buy the uh the stuff in the rv uh part store for eight bucks for rolls but if you're boondocking be careful yeah a little bit different situation there you're conserving water so things are a little bit different okay guys so we're not sure how much you heard because of the pump but just in short jim's telling us about toilet paper as long as you don't use a huge big wad of it and you use a ton of water you're going to be good to go obviously boondocking is a different situation our tank looks fairly good so i'm glad to hear that but let me tell you there was a lot more that came out of there than i was expecting so um so yeah any any additional tips yeah like crank the pump back up yeah like course i just use a lot of water in there that's the most important thing to do uh in any of your tanks i'm about to do the uh the bath gray tank uh which will be pretty clean they always are there's a lot of water that moves through there and then after that we're going to uh kind of move the wand up to the front of the rig where the galley gray tank is which is always the worst gray tanks always have a lot of mold in them and that's because it's a hot wet environment or mold spores that are floating around so that typically is what i see when i do the gray tanks especially the galley one very cool okay i'm looking forward to it okay so good news brook's gonna love this so our two gray tanks got an a from jim so that's i'm grateful for that and our black tank got a b which i'm actually very happy with that too i think again a lot of that is being recreational just weekenders nothing really gets to sit in there so you can see if you're seasonal or especially if you're full time yeah just this little bit that came out of mine it will multiply by 10 fold so keep that in mind now he's going to go in so he's done the cleaning and now next for jim is going we're going to do the rinsing all right so now we're doing the rinsing part of the cleaning and jim take it away man tell us what we're doing okay so after we do the cleaning with the hydro pump then we come back and we rinse out everything the pump didn't drive out and to do that we use uh this little valve here it's called a flush king by valterra and this one's pretty well used um but this is something that every rver should have in in their tool kit here you can get these on amazon camping world other places like that um the great thing about this so here's what's happening here so this goes in between the pipe that's coming out and your sewer hose so it's this part right here and it has a valve in here that prevents things from going in and out and it's got this water hose attachment with a back check valve which is very important you want to make sure you're isolating or protecting the park's water supply and then we add a water meter here and what this does is it measures the amount of water going through and into the tanks now i looked up the specs on your rv your black tank is 39 gallons and your gray tanks are roughly around 36 37 gallons i meter in about 90 percent of the total tank capacity so i'm right now i've got the black uh tank valve open and we're going to turn on the water uh this valve is open as well this one's closed so water can't come out and now the water is going to shoot up into the black tank now a lot of uh rvers almost everyone has a flush system on their rv and the question i get asked a lot of times is well why should i get something like this when i have the flush system flush system is a good rinser it's not a good cleaner it doesn't put a high enough amount of water in there and yeah you could wait you know 20 minutes half an hour 45 minutes for your tank to fill up this will do it in just a few minutes depending on the park pressure it also floods from the bottom rather than a gentle spray from the top or the side and the other great thing about this is once i'm done with the black tank i can isolate that and i can open each of his gray tanks individually and i could actually do a rinsing of the gray tanks which is something that 90 of our bees can't do that right especially that galley tank that tends to have a lot of mold in it this is a great way to keep your tanks healthy so i always recommend for an rver to get one of these valterra flush king valves and keep that in their kit use it um maybe not every time you're emptying the tanks but once a month you know once a trip that kind of thing if you're a full-timer uh you're going to get really familiar with this right so we'll link that in the description box below um i'll link amazon but go let's see if you can find it on sale as always so i do link to amazon links but yeah sometimes you can find stuff on sale so we're gonna wait till this fills up and then we'll show you what comes out all right guys one last tank here's the galley let's see what rinse is out of here so our tank's got an a from jim um but he's definitely had a few elves in his day so um even if you think you're taking good care of them i guess it probably just goes along with how you use them too like we're talking about full-timers part-timers seasonal guys yep people ask me how often uh they should have this done if you've never had it done get it done at least once and we grade and we assess uh how your tanks are i actually keep pretty detailed records on all of our customers and uh if you if your tanks are you know average or maybe a little below average then i teach you what you can do to improve that but how to take care of them a little bit better and then i recommend that you get them done about a year later as well just so we have a comparison the second time and if you're doing great then every other year maybe even every third year would be fine but definitely if you've never had it done uh even if it's a rig that's six months a year old i recommend that you get it done yeah so this you're what you're seeing here is is about uh we got this rig in late 2017. like i said i'm a pretty big stickler on rinsing it and using and filling up the tank and letting the gravity of the water come out so maybe i'll do a video on that but i am glad that we've had this done we're going to talk a little bit here about the water heater when we get done here with these three tanks the uh jim and clean tank also provide that service we're not going to do that in this video we i'll link that video uh in the at the end of this video i just literally uh rinse my my water heater so we're not gonna do that but he's gonna give us a few tips on that so stick around for that uh but yeah this has been a fun video all right guys we're gonna finish off with a couple of tips for your water heater and then we're gonna go inside and and jim's going to show us exactly how he wants us to use uh the additive that he has so yeah go ahead jim okay so there are basically two types of water heaters uh in uh most rvs i'm not talking about on demand i'm talking about a water heater unit itself there's like this one it is an atwood which uh you can tell because it says that wood on the label um it also has a nylon plug and it also tends to be smaller now atwood got bought by dometic so sometimes it'll say dometic but generally they're all the same type of water heater the other type and those tend to be larger is called a suburban water heater and it's a bigger unit um instead of a nylon plug it's a little metal plug behind that metal plug is an anode rod and an anode rod is a softer metal than the tank and the one reason you want that is water likes to react with metals that's why iron rusts and in the tank here the water is looking for something to react with so in a suburban water heater which has an anode rod it's an aluminum anode rod inside of a steel tank the aluminum is softer that anode rod is a sacrifice and uh we put that in there because we'd rather put in a 20 rod than an 800 tank right so we let the water kind of attack that rod and periodically with cleanings we'll replace it the atwood water heater or dometic is an aluminum tank and comes with a two year warranty it has a nylon plug there is no anode rod in here currently and after the two year warranty you can put an anode rod in here the manufacturer has some issues with that so don't do it before that two year period but i have noticed almost without fail that right around year four or five of your water heater you'll start to get some corrosion in there that's the time when you're doing your your cleanings if you see those kind of little white crystals coming out that's the time you might want to consider putting in a an anode rod and then it's a magnesium anode rod because magnesium is softer than aluminum and that's a four and a half inch one and it replaces this uh nylon nut here now if you're a full-timer how often do you want to service and clean your water heater four times a year if you're on any other kind of timer a weekend or a part time or whatever twice a year is sufficient the way you do that is you take out whatever kind of nut whether it's the nylon or the metal one that has an anode rod out um drain the water out of it and then use an rv water heater wand uh to kind of which attaches to a garden hose you want to clean up in there yeah we've been that video and get all the uh the sediment that's out of there just kind of make sure you're assessing it you know are there any kind of crystals coming out how's the rust is there any rust um with good care uh a water heater will literally outlast the rv that it's in right a good 15 20 years is is not uncommon cool very good thank you for those tips okay so as we mentioned a gym has a here it is clean tanks rv holding tank solution and uh what different flavors do we have actually what different scents do we have yep so we use a pine salt in uh in making this uh we're kind of a believer in the traditional pine salt now comes in three flavors like you say uh pine which smells an intense pine smell and i'll let you know that pine sol hasn't used pine oil since 1982 so pine oil is very corrosive actually used in cancel cancer treatment and you want to be careful if you're not going to use pine soil pine salt and you use some other pine oil cleaner just be very careful about it but it comes in the pine salt smell which we have right here the pine smell and then there's a lemon which is equally intense and then there's the new purple lavender which i don't think smells much like lavender or anything at all really but it's a pretty purple color and we give a bottle of this out with every one of our tank solutions or tank services and we also provide the recipe for it free you can buy it from us but to be honest with you it's just easier for you to make it on your own for us we appreciate that yeah so on the bottle is the recipe for this size bottle so it tells you how to make it and then on our website which cory will uh link to is the recipe for a gallon bottle you can make a gallon for about five dollars so yeah so this tank solution you're going to put in all of your tanks that's your waste tanks not your fresh water right and uh so you're gonna put it down your uh your toilet for your black tank down your shower for that great tank and down the galley sink for that great tank okay now um the amount that you put in here is anywhere from a half cup to a cup and this rigs tanks are a little on the small side so this is a half tank or a half cup treatment and i've ticked off um half cups here for cory on this bottle so each tick is a half a cup so for instance the first one will go down his toilet the second one will go down a shower and the third one down is galley cool and you're gonna wanna uh pour that into each of those devices individually and then follow it with a couple of gallons of water it's always good to have water in there right when you're traveling a good three to five even 10 gallons of water in all of your tanks especially your black is a good idea when you start camping with your rv and the tanks are dry a good three to five gallons in there with some of this tank solution is a good way to start and then every time you empty it out again put the tank solution in there good three to five gallons in all of your tanks just to give them a good kind of fighting chance very good okay i'm gonna let you actually do this so we have the uh the man himself yeah is actually just because sometimes you have to dissolve stuff sometimes you have to dilute yep so we're just dumping it in there right yeah so the only thing i would say is make sure you give it a shake um the kell gun sometimes likes likes to uh precipitate out in the bottom okay so just give it a good shake and again these are pre-marked at half cups so i just dump some down the toilet here until we get to about a half a cup maybe just a little bit more and uh so that's about a half a cup and then just let the toilet water rinse down there for a few minutes um i'm not gonna stand here with it for that long but that's how you do that and then down the shower is a great place to uh get the next gray tank you can also do it down the sink although some rvs have the bathroom sink uh draining into the black tank believe it or not so i wouldn't do that um and then the last one here we're going to go over to the galley and again we're going to put it down the galley sink and you will want to and we'll put some two or three gallons of water in some water in there and make sure that gets it past the trap and make sure that uh it gets down into the tank along with some water very good well jim thank you so much this has been an extraordinarily informative video and again i will link jim's information below now you said you told me uh either now or very soon you guys will be nationwide correct tell us about where we can find you yep so right now um uh our company services mainly the middle of the united states although we have a new dealer up in michigan so she's going to be helping us uh in that area um indiana ohio those states we've got a new dealer coming in florida another one in maryland one in oregon and one down in texas so very good going to be a national company here within six months or so right and uh we are uh offering dealerships if anybody's interested but certainly give us a call for uh service good and you guys do rallies so yeah we'll post your schedules on your website right sounds great jim thanks so much man

Channel: Wandering Weekends

Views: 52,234

Keywords: camping, travel trailer, Grand Design, Ford, towing, boating, Georgia, Georgia State Parks, rv, rv'ing, full time, southeast, jayco, open range, rockwood, flagstaff, salem, wildwood, coleman, aspen trail, crossroads, fuel, reflection, solitude, momentum, transcend, black tank, holding tank, happy campers, tank treatment, clogged tank, rv tank, rv holding tank, grey tank, gray tank, flush tanks, rv toilet paper, bad smells, odor, kleen tank

Id: wr4TGBPyPe0

Length: 26min 16sec (1576 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 26 2021