RV Technicals

Several of our family & friends back in Aus have asked us a few questions about day to day issues regarding the RV. For instance, they are interested in how much fresh water does it hold, how do you know when the waste tank is full, how do you empty the waste water etc. These are the same questions we asked before we learnt the ropes on this motorhome. So…just for something different, I thought I would answer some of those questions in the blog. If you have any more questions, just select the word ‘comments’ at the bottom of this entry and fire away. If that doesn’t work for you, an email is fine too.

This model RV holds 65 gallons (245 litres) of fresh water and has two waste water tanks. The gray water tank includes all the water from the shower, and kitchen & bathroom sinks, and it has a capacity of 45 gallons (170 litres). The black water tank is for waste from the toilet only, and it also holds 45 gallons. How long does it take before you need to fill up with fresh water and empty the holding tanks? It depends on how sparingly you use the water. Personally we have gone for 5 days when we were at a campground with no water, but we could last a few days longer if we didn’t choose to have a shower each day, and settled for a sink wash instead. If we weren’t moving on the road frequently and needing to keep our load light to conserve fuel, we would only need to empty the black water once a week, but it would probably last us longer.

Most RV’s have an indicator panel like ours that lights up to show the various systems operating levels. We press the ‘test’ switch on the bottom left, and the lights indicate the status. As you can see from the picture above, ours shows the LPG (32 gallon gas cylinder runs the fridge and heating when we are not connected to power), fresh, holding (black) and gray water tank levels. The far right side indicates the house battery levels – Low, Fair, Good & Charging. The batteries run the interior lights and exhaust fans even when not connected to power. When we are connected to power, they are in charge mode.

The middle ‘pump’ switch you can see is used to engage the water pump. You only need this if you are not connected to a water tap at a campground, and obviously while you are on the road. When we stop for lunch somewhere en route, we are not connected to power or water, so the pump allows us to have running water, even a shower. The last switch on the right is what we use if we are not connected to power, and need our LPG to heat up our water. It only takes about 5 - 10 mins to heat up enough water for a shower.

Besides electric or gas, we have a third alternative to power our devices, an Onan 5000 Generator. When we stop to have lunch on the road, there is a Generator switch on the dash, and that allows us to operate anything electrical such as the microwave, TV, kettle, toaster, airconditioning etc. It runs on fuel from the petrol tank, so if you plan on using the generator, you need to make sure you aren’t running on empty!