Tissue Issues

Don't let this article scare you away from becoming an RV'r. It's just one of the lessons we've learned and should be passed on. Sooner or later all RV'rs face tissue issues.

You will recall that in the previous post on this subject I mentioned that using lots of water would prevent clogged toilet problems. Well what if you are in a situation where you don't have lots of water to spare? In those situations, putting paper in the black tank leads to toilet clogs if you aren't careful about it. The paper and other solids pile up at the bottom of your tank and can actually accumulate back up the pipe. When this happens you have a serious problem. So how do you prevent this?

We had this problem on our first long term trip to the desert. When we went over to a friends rig for a visit they said not to put the paper down the toilet. Instead they told us to roll it up and put it in the little trash bin for that purpose. Surprisingly, there was no odor in their bathroom and they had been using this system for months. Also, they only had to empty their tanks about once every two and half to three weeks. I had been servicing my tanks twice a week. This can be a real task if you use a blue boy to empty your tanks and some other source to haul water to your rig. Motor homes usually have larger tanks than trailers and can go longer between services.

Of course it took us a while to accept and get used to the idea of not dropping the paper down the toilet. We found a container suitable enough to put in the bathroom for this purpose. It had to be small enough to be out of the way in a small space yet large enough for that job at hand. We then used one of those plastic food covers with an elastic band to cover the top. We cut a small slit in the cover and would drop our paper through the slit. You actually become quite talented at rolling the used papers into little rolls to drop in the container. We put the bag of papers from the little trash bin out in the regular trash every day. Now the paper doesn't clog up the sewer line and you can conserve water and possibly time since you don't need to empty your tank as often.