Shower hookup to grey tank

[Tony S]

Decided to buy and install grey tank. Everything opened up. Read and read either not addressed or I have missed it. Great post like

http://www.airforums.com/forums/f36/...-73643-10.html

And others got me most of the way to knowing what to do.

Sinks I get but how do you hook into tank from shower. Top, Side ? Feel kind of dumb on this one. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Tony

Rogue River

[Minno]

Ideally, all of your drain lines from the sinks and shower should go into the top of the gray water tank. This will give you the best flow into the tank, plus allow you to fill up the tank without holding water in the drain lines. If you go into the side, keep the fitting as close to the top of the tank as possible. You will want the vent coming out the top of the tank to ensue there is never any water in the vent line.

We ran the drain lines from the tub and sinks above the floor, and dropped down through the floor into the top of the gray water tanks. The vents also are on the top of the tanks, come up through the floor, and make there way up and out the top of the trailer. Doing it this way requires building a platform for the shower to raise it high enough to get above the drain lines. You can see pictures in our thread: http://www.airforums.com/forums/f185/little-girl-refurb-50967-19.html#post1041810 starting at post 266.

Chris

[Tony S]

Thanks Chris

I have your thread bookmarked and have gone to it many times. Great job. I try not to get overwhelmed when I see the extent you folks have gone to.

I don't have the option due to height to build a platform being in the corner rear bath.

Can I get into the top of tank without platform?

Tony

[ventport]

I just had the bathroom floor out of my 77 Argosy. The shower pan is flat on top of the floor. The drain line goes down, through the trap and around the tank to the street side and into the top of the grey water tank. So the line after the trap is tight to the underside of the floor with very little slope to the top of the grey water tank. The tank is about 4 inches lower then the bottom of the floor so the pipe can enter from the top.

[Tony S]

Thanks

Does that mean the tank is below the belly pan. The frame is 5" deep I suspect, so I am trying to understand what you describe.

Tony

[seldencove]

I put my gray tank above the belly pan, behind the rear axle, I plumbed my shower drain from the existing trap straight back into the side of the tank, as high as the fitting could be spun in. Shower drain pipe does fill with gray water as the tank is filling up, consider the pipe just part of the tank. The shower drains fine, as my tank is also vented from the top. Hope this helps.

[Tony S]

It does help thanks. So I take the p trap keeps it from sloshing up into the pan if you had to drive to dump? Or did you use some kind of check valve.

Tony

[seldencove]

Yes, if you were travelling it may slosh, but the drain itself is still at least a couple of inches above the top of the tank. I did buy a nice tub drain stopper from vintage trailer I use, just in case. I always dump leaving the campground so I'm never travelling with much in the tank, I also did put a tank monitor system on it, the kind that sticks to the outsdie of the tank, so I would know when its time to empty, otherwise up the shower drain it would come.

[Tony S]

Chris

The more I look at and think about the built up platform the more I feel it just might work for me. It seems the only option is to go high into the side of the tank as suggested if not using the platform.

Would you do anything differently with the shower platform and set up?

Thanks

Tony

[Minno]

Hi Tony,

The platform is just high enough for the 1 1/2" drain line to pass under it and provide just a little bit of slope toward the gray tank. It raises the bottom of our tub/shower up a total of 2 1/2" to 3” if memory serves. We experimented with the placement of the tub on the platform to make sure I had enough headroom in the shower before settling on its final location.

If I had one thing to do over, I would not have glued the plywood box that covers the underside of the trap onto the bottom of the subfloor (in post 266). When it came time to install the tub, having access to the trap underneath to push it up into the fitting on the tub would have been really nice. I can always cut the box off if I need access to the trap, but I think the vulkum was a tad overkill in hindsight.

In our two outings, all the drains work perfectly, as well as the dump drain & valve.

Oh: if we had known we were going to put the bathroom sink in a different location than originally planned, I would have routed the drain to the bathroom sink differently. But, we made that change after the tub was installed, so we weren’t about to rip the tub out just to save 3 feet of drain line.


Chris

[Tony S]

Chris,

I have really been given your idea some thought since you replied. It just might be a sweet solution for me. My strategy for patching the floors is to have the seams glued and screwed from below 6" scab and where possible reinforce from above. In the galley area I am going to rework and reinstall the cabinet with a shoe on lower front face that will bridge the seam and stagger screws through it one side to other along seam. Like wise I think I can kill two birds with one stone with your platform method. Plus I can pass the plumbing though it to pick up sink and toilet.

Thanks

Tony