After many years of owning and using RV's, I thought I was pretty experienced with things at the dump station. Well, I got bit this last trip. We usually camp for 2 weeks at a time in NYS campgrounds that do not have electric or water or sewer hookups but water is plentiful in the park and it's easy to keep the FW tank topped off. We usually shower in the trailer and I drain off the gray tank into a 32 gallon tote and haul it to the dump station. This year, things were a bit complicated. My wife broke her hip in April, and was minimally mobile when we went camping in August. Short story, the black tank filled up quicker. No problem, I thought, I'll just drain down some of the liquid in the black tank and then clean up by draining the shower tank. That worked fine, or so I thought.
At the end of the trip, I pull into the dump station, get all the essentials out, pull on my gloves, insert the drain end of the hose into the fitting on the ground, than with the trailer end in one hand, I removed the 3' cap at the dump port. To my surprise, there was a steady stream of dirty water (not sure it was the black stuff, but....). Since the drain pipes on the Cougar are kind of long (6' or more), there was quite a bit of liquid in the 3" and 1.5" pipes. I caught 99% of it with drain hose, connected it up, and dumped as usual. Luckily, I didn't have an audience.
Anyway, the long drain pipes have bothered me since I got the trailer. My previous unit was a Sunline, and both the black and gray dump valves were right next to the dump fitting. At most, there could be a pint or two of liquid behind the cap. And it stuck out more than I would like. This is it:
Here is the dump port on the Cougar. As you can see, the 3" pipe going forward to the black and gray shower tanks and the 1.5" pipe going towards the rear for the galley tank are quite long and could contain quite a bit of liquid.
Now on to the fix. As you can see, there's plenty of pipe between the pipe hanger and the cap fitting. I ordered up an inline 3" gate valve that has a hub fitting on one side and a bayonet fitting on the other. (Hub fittings fit over the 3' ABS pipe. Slip fittings are the same size as 3" ABS, MPT fittings are threaded, and bayonet fittings connect directly to your drain hose or adapters. You can purchase gate valves with pretty much any combination of fittings.) I cut off the old bayonet end and installed the new gate valve on the end. Now, I have an extra gate valve right next to the dump fitting and won't be surprised again. And it doesn't hang out quite so far.
For those that might ask, the cap on the drain fitting has a garden hose connection it. I use it to drain off the gray water into the tote. Yes, I have a 3" hose also for that purpose, but there's much less potential for an accident with the garden hose. Also, I have a utility pump that uses garden hose fittings and will pump the entire contents of the tanks up to 150' or further. At the end of the season, I use that to flush and clean all of the holding tanks prior to winterizing. I park the trailer behind the house, and it's a bit uphill to the nearest connection into the septic system. The pump neatly fixes that problem.
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