Category Archives: Plumbing and Sewer

RV Connections At a Friends or Relatives Home Continued

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In my last post I mentioned that you can have full RV hookups at a friends or relatives home installed. I only talked about the electrical and water connections in that post. In this post I will talk about sewer connections.

When you think of sewer you are probably thinking of the normal 3 or 4 inch sewer lines that you have to dig into the ground, and connect to the city sewer system or to a septic system. Well if it happens to be a very easy thing to do at the particular friends or relatives home where you are attempting to do this, there is nothing wrong with doing it this way. But in most cases you will be dealing with a paved driveway, or the fact that the sewer lines for the property are at the opposite sides of the house, and in that case you will have a problem.

So what to do in this situation? Well I am going to show you a solution that will make it as easy as running a water line. The solution involves something called a macerator pump.

Macerator pumps can be bought preassembled for RV use. The main problem is that most of the commercial units are one piece, and sometimes a bit to long to fit the sewer connections on a particular rig. In my case I built my own using a pump from a marine supply store, and a few fittings from a hardware store, and an RV store. The price came out to less than half of the commercial versions.

Home Made RV Macerator pump.

Home Made RV Macerator pump.

My home made macerator pump set up. This unit fits in the sewer compartment of my motor home, yet can be disconnected so that I can use a regular sewer hose instead.

The output of the pump can be connected to a regular 3/4 inch garden hose and pumped up to 150 feet. If you do not want to install any permanent connections, the garden hose can be inserted into any toilet. If you do this make sure the hose goes down around the bend in the toilet, and then stays put when you turn on the pump. The other easy way to go is to find the sewer clean out cap on the property, and insert the hose there.

But if you want to make a permanant connection that you can connect your pump to whenever you are parked you can cut into a sewer pipe inside the home and install a T fitting that has a 1 inch line off the side. From here you run 1 inch plastic line to where you want the RV connection to be. You can terminate the plastic line at your RV parking spot with a small adaptor that has a female garden hose fitting on the end. When you go to connect your RV you only need a short 3/4 inch garden hose to connect from the pump to this fitting. You can put together an appropriate length of hose with parts that you can find in any hardware store.

As with dumping at a sani dump, you want to dump your black water first and your grey water second in order to clean out the pump, garden hose, and the 1 inch sewer line.

In my book I give full instructions for building this pump set up, along with building it into your rig. There are pictures of the parts you will need, and some notes on wiring. I also talk a lot about how this pump will help you in boondocking situations.

Find my book at www.fulltimeinanrv.com

RV Hookups at a Friends or Families Home.

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In a previous post I alluded to the fact that one can add hookups at a friends or families home with not to much difficulty. In most cases if all you need is 15 amp power and water, most homes already have these installed outside. You may just have to run an extension cord or extra hose to get to the existing installation. You can also dump gray water by bucketing a few bucket fulls into a toilet or laundry room sink.

A set up like this is great if you are only staying at a friends, or relatives place for a few days or so and then moving on.

But in some cases you will want to do extended RV stays, or make regular returns to particular friends or family with your RV. Especially in such cases where you have to stay to help care for a loved one. In this case it may be a good idea to put in some hook ups. You may have to look into the legal side of this if you want to get really fancy, but there are ways around some of those things also.

If you are going to wire in an outlet for the RV it is prudent to get the proper permit, and have a certified electrician do this. You may not always be able to get a permit to install an outlet for an RV, in that case get a permit to put in an outlet for an Air compressor, a welder, a canning stove, or what have you. Some of these type of outlets will be 220 volt outlets, but if they are at least 30 amps, you can get the electrician to make you an adapter plug that will only supply 110 volts from the jack, but still have 30 amps available. 220 volt outlets are just 2 opposing 11o volt outlets, so the adapter that the electrician will make you will just leave one of the 110 volt circuits disconnected. You will not be able to inadvertently plug your RV plug into these 220 volt outlets since they are a different pin configuration. While the electrician is there, he should also be able to put in a cable vision, and possibly a telephone outlet for you.

Unless the water tap is a long ways away, it is usually not a great problem to run a water hose. But if this is a problem, it should be no real problem to get a permit to put in an extra tap. It is usually also a good idea to get a reputable plumbing company put in the water connection. The reason I mention permits, electricians and plumbers is the fact that you do not want to do anything to compromise your friends or relatives home insurance in case something did happen. You may have the skills to do these jobs yourself, but just for this reason, it is best to contract it out. In most cases it should not be a very expensive proposition.

The sewer connection I will leave for another post. As I mentioned in an earlier post there are ways to do this that do not involve digging in a large 3 or 4 inch sewer pipe. But more on that later.

I personally have put in hookups in two sites. One on a friends farm, and the other at a small restaurant on a beach in Mexico. It is not hard to do or get done. And when you are not there, your friends can use the hookups for their own RV or to have other RV’ing friends visit them.