Shower drains into black tank

[nhlakes]

Not sure this helps, but here's what the vent location from the roof on a 2016 21RBS manufactured in late 2015 looks like...

[charliem]

I'd say it's actually even worse for people who have hookups. Normally in those circumstances you leave the grey valve open so that you can have unlimited showers/sink use without having to worry about anything filling up. The black valve stays closed even with hookups since there's a tendency for turds to sit on the bottom of the tank while the liquids run away. But in your case you'd need to open the black valve much more often or risk filling it up during a shower.

Umm. Black tank backup while standing in the shower. Bad news...

[charliem]

Gary, 
FWIW my 2014 21RBS vents are like @nhlakes . The black vent is at the right rear. BTW, that's the reason they don't put reversible fans in the bathrooms  . I don't understand the change from when @Paul 's unit was built, especially since they were soon going to discontinue the whole line. To what advantage?

[Gary M]

Gary, 
FWIW my 2014 21RBS vents are like @nhlakes . The black vent is at the right rear. BTW, that's the reason they don't put reversible fans in the bathrooms  . I don't understand the change from when @Paul 's unit was built, especially since they were soon going to discontinue the whole line. To what advantage?

Interesting.. mine DOES have a reversible fan in the bathroom. Maybe that's why they had to move the vent! haha

In all seriousness though, It would be nice to know if mine was the result of a design change, or just a quick fix to a mistake. So far I haven't heard of any others like mine. I bought mine in Feb, and it had only been at the dealer for a couple weeks from the factory. I'm still waiting on the dealer to call me back.

Here's a pic of my sink drain, it runs a couple feet passed the wall that has the gray tank vent pipe before it goes down into the floor.

[charliem]

If the vent ties in near or just under the sink they could have eliminated the AAV. Saved them $1.37 maybe. Looks like the bean counters got ahead of good sense again. That's a candidate for Charlie's fourth law: Campers are designed by those who have never camped.

[Paul]

I also have a reversible fan in the bathroom. My 2018 21BHS was built in October 2017.

[Steve Sanders]

All this makes me happy that my QS doesn't have plumbing.

Good luck with it!

Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk

[Gary M]

Waited all day for the dealer to call me back, which they didn't.. so I just pulled the kick panel under the shower, and the drain goes into a hepvo valve, then the pipes swing around in a circle to another valve with an arrow pointing towards the drain(wtf?) and then T's into the vent pipe in the shower wall. It must go straight into the black tank under the floor.

I'll pull some of the underbelly down tomorrow to get a look since I don't expect any call backs over the weekend.

I'm curious how hard it would be to just cap off that T and re-route the drain to the other vent pipe under the floor.

[nhlakes]

I admire your willingness to tackle the challenge yourself, but with a can of worms this big, I'd try to have Thor take care of it.  I suspect they would given that it is a 2018 with a 2yr warranty.  Unless they come up with some bs statement like 'sometimes we do that'.    I like the compost idea you made elsewhere, but someday you may wish to sell it and that could impact how easy it is to sell.

[Merlin]

I'd provide cheerleading and moral support if you tackled the drain re-route yourself  I've pulled the entire shower pan out of mine to fix a drain misalignment issue that didn't let the shower drain completely. It's an all day job, but took way less time than returning to the dealer, which had an incompetent service department anyway. If you have access and some basic experience and tools, i'll bet you can safely move the shower drain from one vent pipe to another. My only concern is that from the topside photos it looked like a long run from the shower area to the grey tank vent area?

That said, 25 gallons is a small grey tank for a family. You likely lose 10% capacity to things like the vent pipe and such, so even with Navy showers you'll fill up quick. Consider putting a bucket in the shower to catch water run just to get the hot to the faucet and then dump that in your black tank. Similarly, do dishes in separate plastic pans in the kitchen and dump those in the black tank. And, maybe get a transportable grey tank like the Barker I have so that when the grey tank does fill up you can empty it and take the transportable tank to the dump station.

[Gary M]

I'm still waiting on the dealer/factory official response before I do anything. I'm just looking at all my options depending on what they say. My end goal is purely about extending my stay while boondocking. It's a lot easier (for me), to get rid of gray water(legally using eco friendly soap), than black water out in the woods where I camp. I can simply connect a garden hose and run it out to some bushes while I'm out camping/hunting for weeks at a time. Like I mentioned earlier, with the current setup.. my black tank filled in 2 days and my gray tank was still empty because we only wash cooking utensils(we use all disposable plates and silverware) in the sink.

My guess is that the bean counters increased the size of the black tank to accommodate incoming shower water, in an attempt to resolve gray tanks from filling too fast for people who camp at "established" campsites without sewer hookups. This has the opposite effect for my style of camping.

Since the black tank is bigger/wider now, it extends outward to the point where the gray tank vent use to be in the shower wall. Looking at 2017 specs compared to 2018, it does look like they went with a bigger black tank and decreased the gray tank size. It's either this scenario, or they simply re-located the tanks to positions further towards the trailer tongue and away from the rear.

If this is the case, they would have to do one of the following to fix it..
1. Swap out tanks to old sizes/positions (doubt that this would happen).
2. Route the shower drain in the small space between the outer wall and back side of the furnace(heat issue?) then straight down into the gray tank in the open compartment under the fridge. This would be the shortest route.
3. Route the drain along the back wall behind the toilet, around the water heater to tap into the sink drain.(very long route and would probably result in standing water due to having sags or not enough slope).

None of these options look easy or likely to happen. That's why I'm now researching composting toilets, and what's all involved with them. This idea would also allow me to combine my black and gray tanks by using a simple twist on gate valve (for public areas where I cant dump my gray water). I could also install the toilet it in a way where I could always revert back to the original toilet fairly easily.

So far, the idea of the composting toilet seems like it would result in the longest stay time without dumping. My weakest link would be the small 25 gallon fresh water tank. I was also thinking that since im going to be having new braces fabricated for the fresh water tank to stop the saggy diaper effect, that maybe i could just buy a bigger fresh water tank. Has anyone done that?

[MitchB]

If you go the composting toilet route you could remove either the black or the gray tank and replace it with a fresh water tank. You'd then have 2x as much fresh water, no black water and a gray water you could let trickle out into the bushes wherever you are. Whatever you do the cost should be covered by Livinlite but I doubt that will happen.  It's a bad deal for you and they should be ashamed.

[Gary M]

Does anyone know what this is? And why it's installed backwards? Looks like some sort of filter, but why would one be needed for a shower drain? There's already a hepvo valve under the drain. It also raises the slope angle of the piping before going into the vent T, instead of lowering the slope.

[Merlin]

I don't know what that fitting is, but the fact it's obviously installed backwards maybe your "in" to getting action on the part of LL for a pluming fix. Sort of "if you're in there anyway" kind of thing? They really do have to fix that, if anything.

Once you get the underbelly cover off, you can see what you're dealing with for tanks and locations. Of the options you've considered, I like #2 the best, but would be tricky to get a good seal for the new drain hole into the grey tank. Time for some creativity!

By all means research the latest in composting toilets.......but.......I recently sold one I had at my cabin because the intermittent use pattern really didn't work very well. With heavy (family) use over a short (camping trip) period of time, it never has a chance to compost and can become just a stinky holding tank. If you do get one, consider (strongly) a toilet with a 12V fan in the vent. You'll want that! Further, all the composting toilets I'm familiar with that don't require electricity to evaporate the liquid, do require an external drain line for liquids. But, I could be behind the times and maybe if you look into what's available for boats you'll find something that will work.

I know some LL owners have installed cassette toilets. They still require trips to the local campground toilet to empty.

[Gary M]

I don't know what that fitting is, but the fact it's obviously installed backwards maybe your "in" to getting action on the part of LL for a pluming fix. Sort of "if you're in there anyway" kind of thing? They really do have to fix that, if anything.

I was thinking that too, that's kind of why I wanted to figure out what it was before I mention it to them.

Once you get the underbelly cover off, you can see what you're dealing with for tanks and locations. Of the options you've considered, I like #2 the best, but would be tricky to get a good seal for the new drain hole into the grey tank. Time for some creativity!

I'm about to go remove some of the underbelly here soon. Just the rear corner of it to get a look at some things. I had the same concern about #2 and sealing it. I don't think this would be a good idea without an inlet port on top of the tank that would have to be aligned with that compartment.

With heavy (family) use over a short (camping trip) period of time, it never has a chance to compost and can become just a stinky holding tank.

That was also a concern of mine. I appreciate the input on that!