Yesterday was fun! By fun, I mean I managed to overflow the black tank in the motorhome and basically recreated the sewage scene from the movie RV (if you haven’t seen RV, just think “poop everywhere!”).
There was much laughing and horror on Facebook as a result, and a few folks asked me if my hoses were color-coded correctly or if I had forgotten my hose was plugged in to the San-T-Flush (i.e. the black tank flush).
I did some thinking on what happened, because having it happen once is bad but more than once would be significantly worse. In short, I never want to have that much fun in my life again! For my programmer friends, this what I call “The Poopy Retrospective” (i.e. looking back on what happened to ensure it doesn’t happen again).
Failure 1 – The Setup
Normally when we hookup, the water pedestal is right next to the RV’s water compartment on the driver’s side. That means the faucet is right next to the RV compartment where we hookup our hoses, making it easy to check and double-check my connections.
This wasn’t the case yesterday. Last night, we decided to back the coach in, so the pedestal was on the passenger side. We did this so we could face the ocean like our neighbors at our new campsite. We saw others had passed their hoses under the RV and thought, “You know, it would be cool to back in and have an ocean view; passing the hoses under the coach shouldn’t be a big deal.” The result of this decision was having to pull the hoses under the coach, hook them up, then walk around the coach to turn the water on. Not a big deal, right?
Failure 2 – Rushing
We arrived at the campground at 7:00 p.m., and I had an 8:00 p.m. doctor’s appointment. Additionally, Jenni needed to run to the grocery store before I left, and I wanted to spend a few minutes doing my traditional, quick drone flight at the new campground to explore the area we’re in while she was gone. On top of all of this, Layla, our 3-yr. old, fell and hurt herself as we were hooking up. I stopped to help her before finishing up and double-checking all the connections.
In short, I was rushing and not concentrating. The deadly mistake I made was connecting our fresh water hose to the black tank San-T-Flush inlet. The two hook-ups are right on top of each other (see image below), and I just hooked up to the wrong spot.
The fresh water and San-T-Flush quick-connects are right on top of each other.
Failure 3 – Compatibility
As you saw in the image above, we have quick-connects on all our hoses. This is a real time-saver; you just click the hose in, and you’re done. The problem, however, is our black and white hoses use compatible quick-connects. It is therefore easy to make a catastrophic mistake in a rush.
The Remedy
Moving forward, I’m replacing the fresh water quick connects to ensure they are not compatible with the black connections. This will make it impossible to make the same mistake again.
So there you have it. That’s my story and list of excuses. My penance is almost complete. The carpets were all cleaned yesterday. We’re going to do one more pass before returning the machine to the grocery store, and all will be well (but not likely soon forgotten).
6 Comments
If you get tired of programming, you can always clean carpets for a living since you have experience! Your mother-in-law
Man talk about the perfect mother in law comment hahahah! I’ll keep that in mind as a potential career choice!
Haha! We will keep this in mind for future reference!
Hey Ali, I would just buy a double male and double female hose end. Then use them to flip the quick connects on your black tank flush.
That will flip your quick connects. So if you go for the wrong one it’ll be mxm or fxf. Easy solution.
Logan V
That’s a good idea. I’ll see if I can find a drinking hose like that.
I meant hose ends. in the Brass fittings at the hardware store. Any one should have them.
[…] dining room. The carpets smelled just lovely that night. My husband explains how that happened here. Did I mention this took place on our oldest son’s birthday? Talk about being a party […]