What is this...

Hi Everyone - I've been rebuilding the 24er for awhile, but I'm finally just now getting around to prepping it seriously for use. I'm about to clean and flush all the lines including the black water tank - but I'm not sure why there's a garden hose type fitting on the holding tank outlets:

Lineswest, on Flickr

I was expecting just a standard cap that a large sewage hose would hook to - what am I looking at here?

It's humbling to think that I can talk all about roof structure and putting walls together... and not understand how the holding tanks work

r67, Just what it is. A garden hose hook up. For obvious reason you can't drain your black tank, but you CAN back-flush each tank. You hook up the hose and turn on the water, then open the gate valve for one tank at a time. KEEP an eye on it, it fills up pretty quick! Tanks are emptied prior to flushing. Some folks use water straight from their hot water tanks (at the house). I just heard (Not verified by me) that people have filled their tanks and put in three or four denture cleaning tablets to clean everything in the tank with no harm!
Tree

Interesting - thanks tree. I assume using the wand that goes down the toilet is a good idea too? That would seem to give a different type of clean than the back flush.

Thanks as always from Louisiana

Or use it to drain the gray water tank when camping. Some campgrounds will allow gray water to be drained onto the ground, but obviously they don'w want it drained right at the campsite. Hook up a dedicated gray-water garden hose to the fitting and run the gray water out 50' away, down in the woods, etc.

I take a small bucket and put under the cap then take the cap off before the 3" cap so I don't get a grey or black water bath in case the valves leak or someone pulls the tank handles.

I like the "wand" cleaning method for the black tank, northern. I doubt you get much actual wall cleaning using the hose inlet - but as Tree says, it would fill the black tank quickly to dilute what is in there.

- Jack

Thanks all. Much appreciated

Okay, I stand corrected about that hose fitting. My bad. That's a MALE fitting, which means for draining! To back flush, you would need a double female hose like on a wash machine. These senior moments are coming more often.

some camp grounds will not allow you to dump the kitchen sink water(grey-water) on the ground and you must have a tank on wheels that you drain this into then dump it when full at an allowed place. I was at one of these once alongside of a stream and all campers had these that were there. There was no types of sewer hook-ups there. Like one lady said it's the wrong type of hook-up for a back flush but I purchased an attachment years ago the is clear plastic and hooks up to the 3" drain with a back flush built in to it then the sewer pipe hooks into that and when you squirt the water into the waste tank it will run back out into the campground sewer. I prefere to put a hose into the toilet and with the shut off closed put clean water into the holding tank then go out and open the drain and a lot was left in the tank after the initial flush that come out then

Treeclimber said:

Okay, I stand corrected about that hose fitting. My bad. That's a MALE fitting, which means for draining! To back flush, you would need a double female hose like on a wash machine. These senior moments are coming more often.

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If you are going to back flush this with your house water system. Make sure that your faucet has a back flow preventer, and that you don't loose pressure in your well.