Friday, December 11, 2009

The Exploding Toilet

I am very happy to announce the addition of follower #31 on my blog.  They are tagged as FD5 orJohn and Bridget.  Thank you so much for joining my group of merry friends!

Now about that toilet........

This happened about an hour ago.  We had drained the black tank yesterday, so we assumed things would flush as normal.  We still had the fresh water hose connected and were drawing fresh water through our plumbing system as it should be done.  Bruce was doing the dishes (works for me!) and I went in to use the bathroom.  Well....being blunt and all....when finished I flushed with the foot pedal.  Suddenly, the water made a whooshing sound....didn't evacuate the toilet bowl and sort of bubbled up or "blew up" out of the bowl.  Fortunately, it was just liquid waste (if you catch my drift) but it did splash out and all over the floor and on the wall adjacent to the bowl.  I shrieked out of sheer surprise and called for Bruce.  So I now had a cleaning job to take care of.  Then we drained the tank again....just in case. 

We were stumped as to why this happened.  We'd just emptied the tank not 20 hours prior and it had drained out just fine.  Had an air pocket or something developed in the channel from the toilet to the holding tank?  It has flushed perfectly all day long.  Hmmmm.   Still have no answer for this one, maybe one of our readers can give us a clue.

Yesterday in the early afternoon, we were able to retract the jacks, pull in the slides and get ready to drive out for the propane refill.  Bruce had started the engine and given it plenty of warm-up time and then some.  He put it into gear and nothing happened.  It wouldn't move forward.  He gave it a little engine rev and then we waited a couple of minutes with it just idling.  He put it into gear again and it moved forward just like it was supposed to do.  We went down 2 exits from us on I-5 to the Shell Truck Stop, filled up the MH tank and the little 5 gal. tank we brought with us...in case we need it before the 26th when we leave.  

It is still below freezing during the night time hours, but so far no snow.  Rain is predicted beginning in the next day or two and it should warm us up to over freezing according to the National Weather Service.  Hope they are correct, I'm ready for a little warm up.   And no more exploding toilets would be nice, too!

Until next time.....so long for now!

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I guess that could have been a lot worse.If you know what I mean. :) we have a 40' Tour also and we love it, never had that problem happen to us though. About the only thing we fight is that worthless awning. Just got it repaired again. How does your rig do driving in the mountains?
We have the 350 Cat.
Safe Travels,
Chris

Anonymous said...

I saw a tv show and it said every now and then put in the stuff for a septic tank down each drain, run water to be sure it made it to the holding tank, starting from the drain farthest away then put some in the toliet and flush. Then put an whole bag of ice down the toliet then as you are driving and it is melting it will clean the contacts in the holding tank.
Hope this helps Kathleen

Margie M. said...

Thanks for the info, David and Kathleen. We actually planned to put the whole bag of ice cubes down the toilet when we leave this month. I read about that on the RV.net forums and it made sense to us. Your other suggestion is helpful, too.

Margie M. said...

Chris: so far this is the first issue with the toilet (thank goodness) We have the 400hp Cummins engine in our Tour. We have had no problems over inclines or mountains at this point, but we are planning some mountain driving this May in Colorado. Should be ok

squawmama said...

Good Morning Margie... Sounds like a very yucky moment to me and like Chris said thank goodness it wasn't #2... That would have really been horrid... We use the ice to from time to time... It gets rid of the old ice and cleans the tanks too. Hopefully it will never happen again! Have fun and Travel Safe!
Donna

FD5, Retired said...

Sounds like gases are building up in your holding tank, hense the pressure to push the water back out onto the walls and floors. I would check the holding tank vent on the roof and make sure it has not been stopped up or covered by something. Good luck with it.

Stay Safe