My Life in a Van - I'm a Fool To Do Your Dirty Work 💩- Emptying the Black Tank of Doom

Talk Dirty To Me

Living in a space of less than 100 sq ft requires keeping things clean, inside, and deep inside (the mysterious pit of wonder, i.e. our black tank).

Thankfully, it doesn't take very long to clean up our tiny space. With a concerted effort, we can get things in order in a matter of minutes. When we lived in a 2 bedroom apartment in Chicago, it would take us four hours or more to clean it top to bottom. I don't miss those cleaning days, but I do miss the large tub.

When we are boondocking, meaning living off the grid without any connections to power, water, toilet, we can usually last around 10 -14 days before we have to find somewhere that we can empty out our black tank. Our black tank always fills up faster than our grey water tank, which captures the soapy dish water.

When we are moochdocking, meaning, using someones space/hookups like a driveway, it is much easier to maintain our black tank without having to dump for weeks at a time. In fact, we've been fortunate to only have to dump our black tank once since we've been in Florida, for about a month and a half.

Luckily, the Wildlife Management Area we stayed at for the last 3 weeks had a vaulted toilet, perfect for doodies 💩 & we had no neighbors, so we could pee in the bush :)

Last year however, we had our first and so far only serious disaster, regarding the black tank.

The Disaster

We had been boondocking at a Florida WMA for about 12 days, and knew the time to dump the tank was rapidly approaching. It would probably have been only the third time we ever dumped our tanks. Unfortunately, the sensors on these older rigs aren't worth a *shit, and are not to be trusted, so we kept an eye on the levels through the scientific method of peeking into the toilet every so often.

We located an rv park about 30 miles away where we could dump our tanks and fill up on water. We arrived without issue and pulled into our space. Enter our genius hero, me, Glowmo, who had the bright idea of recycling as much of our "old" water as possible, so we can add as much "new" water to our fresh tank as possible.

Where Our Water Goes

We have two ares in the Rialta that are connected to our fresh water tank, our kitchen sink and bathroom sink. However, they both drain to different tanks. Kitchen drains to grey water, bathroom sink drains to the black tank.

Our hero forgot and/or disregarded this important "di-stink-tion", as he put the bathroom faucet on full blast and continued to dump freshwater into the black tank. Once our genius hero was satisfied with the amount of old water removed from the fresh tank, and just about when we were ready to pull the release valve and dump all of our bodily sins into the rv parks septic system, a foul odor permeated the air.

"Dashie, I think I did something very bad"

Besieged by a stench which can only be described as some kind of decaying salami-monster, our dismayed hero watched as black tank juices began streaking from crevices in the bathroom wall.

It was becoming more difficult with every second to remain within the Rialta, to try and combat the onslaught of streaking sewage in the bathroom. To @Dashies credit, instead of getting upset, we both instantly went into emergency mode.

We broke out the paper towels and the bleach and got to work cleaning the bathroom from top to bottom, gagging and coughing the whole way through.

What was supposed to be a leisurely dump and chill, turned into one of the main RV'ing nightmares, requiring no less than 3 hours of clean up and all of our paper towel reserves...all tanks to yours truly.

We speak of that day in hushed tones, so as not to rouse the doodie demons, for fear of their future "reeking" of havoc on we tiny home dwellers. And so that dark day will always remain in the lore of our first journey out into the world of full-time van living. Perhaps one day the story will be rewritten by the folk whom regale one another with the treacherous tale, and it will be @Dashie who let the tank overflow with piss and shit, leaving our hero scot-free & clean as a whistle.

Onward Indians -
Love, Glow