Raven’s RV
The ongoing education and adventures of two rank newbie RVers

Oct 24, 2007

Our first RVer encounter

Filed in People

I got ready to leave, putting on jacket and helmet and sitting on the bike, at which point Don decided to run up to the shop to ask questions. Yeah, I muttered under my breath–and took my helmet and heavy jacket off. It was a bright, sunny day in the 80s and I might as well do some sunbathing. ;)

Then the owner of next door’s RV, a big class A that towered over ours, stuck his head out the door and said howdy. Thus began our first ever RVer encounter.

Jim and Dana had been full-timers for nine years now, and were on their way to a couple of months’ volunteering at the Salvation Army for the holiday season. We hit it off quite well, and when Jim mentioned that he was on the way to the dump station to dump his tanks, Don asked if he could possibly come along to watch and learn. Jim seemed moderately amused, but said sure.

:: giggle ::

We traipsed over there and watched as he pulled out hoses and stuff and explained what he was doing. The gist is this (a more detailed post will follow when I grok the system for myself). You hook a big water pump/faucet into your rig, and you pull out retractable big hoses and start with the black water tank. He had set it up with a special angled fitting and a “doughnut” which helped the end of the hose to better fit into the innocuous-looking drain hole. To make it even more fun, the angled fitting was transparent, so we got a view of all sorts of “interesting” things exiting the tank at high velocity, which is still making me giggle. It did serve a purpose though: it makes it really obvious when the tank is finally clean.

Then he pumped water in, and repeated the process until it did run clean; and after that he did the same with the gray water tank, and finally filled the fresh water tank.

He was very careful with hygiene, being sure to wash his hands with hand sanitizer. Also, you need to use a different hose with the fresh water tank than you do with gray/black water. Hoses are actually rated safe to use with drinking water or not, but some RVers tend to use bottled water for drinking and the like. We don’t trust our tank at the moment because, if the rest of the rig is anything to go by, it isn’t clean.

While there were certainly some fairly unpleasant smells coming from the tank, it wasn’t nearly as bad as I had expected. Don asked a lot of questions and while I couldn’t really hear what was going on–my hearing is starting to fail and I don’t do well when people are turned away from me–I was thoroughly entertained.

Dana popped out to say hello but was mostly inside, reading dials and flipping pump switches.

So when it was all done we had the beginnings of an education and were regaled with stories of things that one should not do, such as driving away with hoses still attached. ;)

Then we waved them off and they tootled their rig melodiously as they headed off onto the freeway.

Oh, and here’s something lovely: our own rig has a slight black water leak. There will be a trip to Camping World in our future. ;)

Jim and Dana