In our first trip in our new-to-us RV Alison and I discovered that our waste water tanks were full after about three days. It wasn't a showstopper but we would like the freedom to go longer than that, especially when we're boondocking in places with no hookups. As we thought about what would help, we came up with several projects to help us use less water and for the RV to hold more water.
Waiting for the water to warm up in the shower was wasting a lot of water. One option we read about was to capture that water in a bucket and then use that water in the toilet or in the kitchen sink. But then I came across a product called showermiser that would recirculate the water until it got hot. You turn the valve to recirculate and when the indicator above it changes color from blue to white you know the water is hot. I ultimately decided to go with showermiser's sibling product, the sinkmiser, because I thought it looked less DIY. I've done a number of plumbing projects over the years, especially during our renovation of the historic home we turned into a B&B in Bozeman, so I wasn't too worried about that aspect of it, but I was nervous about having to tear up a wall to get to the plumbing behind the shower. It turns out, though, that RVs are designed with easy access in mind which has been a very pleasant surprise.
I found an access panel behind the sliding bedroom door (which took a while since we almost never close our door) and didn't have to tear up any walls!
This was before, when I was checking to make sure this part of the sinkmiser would fit in the space behind the shower wall.
And this was after I finished the plumbing. The pex pipe was easy to work with. I used push-to-fit fittings when I could (like the two elbows near the top of the picture) because I have found over the years that they are more reliable than anything else I've tried. But pex clamps are a close second, which are used in all the other connections in this picture. The white pipes here came with the RV and were just slightly larger than the 1/2 inch pex and I ended up having to special order a clamp size that Lowe's didn't carry.
And this is what our shower looks like now with the recirculation valve and water temperature gauge in place. Not too DIY-looking I think! haha
The conventional toilet that came with the RV accounted for more than a third of our water usage so after a bunch of research and gradually getting comfortable with the idea we decided to switch to a composting toilet. Just in case we change our mind in the future I left everything in place to be able to easily reinstall a conventional toilet, simply plugging the water supply and capping the drain flange. The flange sticks up above the floor a little so I made a base to fit around it that the composting toilet could sit on. Composting toilets need an always-on fan that vents outside in order to keep things smelling fresh in the bathroom and that turned out to be the biggest part of the project. One option was to simply vent it through the exterior bathroom wall, but I really didn't want to make any new holes in the RV if I could help it. So I decided to tap into the existing vent lines that run from the wastewater tanks through the roof. The challenge was that those vent lines were under the floor on the other opposite side of the RV from the bathroom. But after a lot of snooping around in the storage bay and wet bay below the bathroom I found a route that would work.
I also discovered flexible PVC which I used here to tie into the existing vent line. I would not have attempted this route with conventional PVC pipe.
Another access panel in the bathroom! While I had this one open to run the vent line I came across some 12V electrical wires that I tapped to power the fan on the toilet.
This is what it looks like with everything but the new toilet.
And this is the finished product. Nice and tidy!
With the composting toilet in place we didn't need the black water tank anymore and could repurpose it to hold gray water from the sinks and shower. I looked for a way to combine the two tanks together and came up with a simple solution using a cap on the RV sewer connection, which will let us open the two gate valves and use them as a single gray water tank.
The two wastewater tanks combined gave us a capacity of 88 gallons. But our fresh water tank only holds 70 gallons, which meant there was another 18 gallons we could gain if we could add more fresh water capacity. The existing fresh water tank is located between the frame rails in the storage bay. As I looked around I saw that there was empty space between the frame rails in front of the existing tank and decided to add another fresh water tank there. I designed a base for the tank to sit in that would attach to the frame rails.
My son, Brian, helped quite a bit on this project, cutting the metal pieces with an angle grinder, welding an extra bit around the hole for one of the plumbing connections, and drilling holes to bolt everything together.
Brian also helped with the plumbing connections between the two tanks.
As a bonus, we didn't lose any space in the storage bay!
When all was said and done, we greatly reduced our water consumption rate while expanding our gray water capacity from 55 to 88 gallons and our fresh water capacity from 70 to 100 gallons.
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