I am redoing my plumbing and wonder what everyone is doing for holding tanks.
I currently have a 178 gallon for fresh (from trioniccorp) that fits with only a couple inches clearance in my bay. It is rectangular and seems to me to be the max Size unless there are "L" shaped tanks.
Anyone have any advice
1 ea. 60 gallon grey
1 ea. 60 gallon black
2 ea. 60 gallon fresh
I can divert grey to black
It really depends what you will be doing with your bus - boondocking or in campgrounds, fulltiming or weekends-only? Because I'm setting up my bus for extended boondocking, self-sufficiency is the priority, hence I have two 110-gal freshwater tanks, a 115-gal gray and a 65-gal poo, all rotomolded by Ronco from 3/8" polyethylene and with lots of fittings spin-welded in. Why those sizes? They're the very largest that fit! I have less than 1/4" gap between the poo tank and bodyside, so even custom-made tanks wouldn't have been any bigger. For my bus's intended use I simply have the biggest or most of whatever it is, whether tanks or PV panels, so I can't regret later not putting in more or larger!
John
Excellent answers already given and thank you. Just an addition here in that a big fresh water capacity does not necessarily mean that the tanks be kept completely full...or even used. With full hookups or non boondocking, you can load up on less water and thus save all that weight, center of balance and handling and all that. HB of CJ (old coot)
Two tanks. One for fresh water and one for waste. Each at 125 gallons. We go 10-12 days when dry camping. That leaves sufficient room for plumbing manifolds, Webasto, water heater, aux fuel tank at 50 gallons and storage for all the misc stuff for hoses and lube supplies.
Bill
I have 100 fresh and 100 grey/black. I've never had either over 2/3 full. There is room for larger tanks, but that's what the bus came with and I ain't changing them...
Brian
120 and 120. We mostly travel, not camp, but this will last us about a week if needed.
The bus has 130 fresh under the bed. Underneath is 85gal gray, 45gal black. The truck will have 200 fresh, 115 gray, 69 black.
With the bus, the two of us can squeeze a week if we're really careful-that's why I'm going to bigger in the truck so we can easily stay put for a week (we like our daily showers). Good Luck, TomC
Hi Disnow,
We have 150 fresh and 165 waste.
We do a lot of dry camping at the shore and Q-site type places.
This works for us for between 7 and 10 days.
We go for water and dump when we get down to about 30 gal water.
Frank
We have 165 gal fresh tank and 165 gal black/gray tank. Usually keep the fresh tank at 50% or less for weight. We can't divert the gray water - very few occasions where that is possible anyway. I have yet to fill the black/gray, but plan to do some boondocking and will probably get there sometime. I also installed a 42 gal. aux fuel tank for the generator and Aqua Hot. I didn't like pulling fuel out of the main tank for those.
150 Fresh in 3 tanks
150 Waste in 1 tank
http://www.gumpydog.com/Bus/MC9_WIP/Plumbing/Holding_Tank_Fabrication/holding_tank_fabrication.htm (http://www.gumpydog.com/Bus/MC9_WIP/Plumbing/Holding_Tank_Fabrication/holding_tank_fabrication.htm)
we've got 100 for each, fresh, grey and black. we can squeeze a little over a week with the fresh, and the separate waste tanks allow us some room to drip a little if we are somewhere without a dump. if you've got a combined waste, you can't ever drip. we can go about a month on the black. we don't spend a lot of time boondocking completely, although we do camp where it's water and electric only. We also use the pump/tank rather than straight out of the water source many times just because it's too cold, or it takes a while to get the rust out, so we fill the tank with rust free water. The on/off regular use from the spigot caused us to get rusty water in the ice tray, drinking water, etc.
Disnow,
We have 120 gallons fresh, 100 Gray and 80 Black. When I bought my bus, the previous owner had acquired the tanks, not exactly what I wanted, but as others have implied, not worth the difference to change them. The Gray and/or Black are tied together by valving if desired and overflow to allow for additional capacity, only needed on the gray side so far.
As others have stated, how you use it is paramount in the tanks size decision, but planning for a change in use is always easier to do in the planning stages.
I would probably go with a larger fresh tank say 200 gallons, just for capacity to allow for a longer boon-dock if required. Probably will be easier to manage the water usage when it's just me and the wife....
You will produce a lot more gray water than you think. I would plan for at least 75% of your fresh. If your filling the black first, it might be time for a diet adjustment... ;)
Best of luck,
Cliff
I designed for RV parks with 60 grey 45 black 25 fresh and it worked well for me. I also have 100 veg oil tank and can carry another 100 if necessary. Jerry
We boondock 100% and travel with 8 children. So for us capacity and economy of use are critical.
We have found 100 ways we overuse water and can stretch our 178 gallon fresh, 8 gal grey/black. We can stretch it to about 10 days as is.
My question is if anyone knows of L shaped tank manufacturers.
Thanks all
we bought our bus in July 2011 and have been on 19 trips since then..
over half have been boondocking and the one thing I have learned is get as big of a gray tank as possible if you plan to boondock.
I have 100 gallon fresh water
45 gallon gray
45 gallon black
I have just recently started to see how to modify my gray tank mounts to get a much larger tank..
even when we take military showers we can usually only go 3 to 4 days with that small gray tank..
That is 2 adults and 2 kids.
we have never had an issue with the black tank..
With tanks, IMO bigger is always better. We have 100 gal fresh and 100 gal black/grey combo. I have diverter valves on the shower and washing machine so they can dump grey directly to ground in emergency or acceptable situations when I don't have a sewer connection which is rare. Someday in coach number two we are planning tanks twice that size. Fwiw, I'll never separate my grey and black tanks. Grey water stinks worse than black so might as well put them all together. Keeps the black tank cleaner and better flowing and if I'm short on tank space I'll just divert the grey water to the ground.
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There are tanks available in whatever shape you require.
We have 100 gal fresh and 100 gal waste.
We also have a gray water bypass that lets us bypass any combination of the two sinks and shower.
I've found that it's best to let the bath sink drain into the tank when bypassing the other two.
In 18 years, we have only needed the bypass twice. Both times were at friends homes with no dump.
Bypassed to a corner of the yard to water flowers.
We do not do long (more than 5 days) dry camping often. Only a couple of times at Quartzite.
Even then, we just went and dumped and refilled. Not a big deal. Certainly not worth hauling around bigger tanks
that would require another bay.
If your gray tank gives off the rotten egg odor, just dump some bleach into the tank (about 2 cups) and magic-the smell is gone. I've always had separate gray and black tanks. There have been plenty of times I've had to dump my gray before the black. I have a curb side dump to dump into a drain if need be. Good luck, TomC
Quote from: Dlsnow on November 21, 2013, 06:15:13 AM
My question is if anyone knows of L shaped tank manufacturers.
http://www.plastic-mart.com/category/2000/plastic-tank-manufacturers (http://www.plastic-mart.com/category/2000/plastic-tank-manufacturers)
How about using two interconnected tanks instead? If you have heavy-duty (or extra-heavy-duty if available) threaded fittings spin-welded into the tanks, you'll be able to make a 100% reliable connection between them. Ronco in Tustin CA made all four of my tanks, and they used these fittings: http://www.bunnweb.org/spinwelding.com/index2.htm (http://www.bunnweb.org/spinwelding.com/index2.htm)
John
110 fresh, 110 black/gray and 50 diesel for Proheat and 9kw generator.
Im not sure what size my tanks are? I have a cylinder fresh tank and a rectangle waste black/grey. Is there a way to measure the tanks dimensions to determine how many gallons they hold? If so can you tell me how to figure it?
Scott just put the numbers in and it will tell you. ;D
http://www.watertanks.com/calc.asp (http://www.watertanks.com/calc.asp)
Dave5Cs
My fresh water tank on my truck is two 98gal tanks tied together. Then have 110gal gray, 69gal black, 150gal fuel for the truck and 75gal for genset (both fuel tanks are tied together with bottom cross over with valves), and 20gal propane. Why so much-because I can! Good Luck, TomC
Quote from: Dave5Cs on November 24, 2013, 09:25:33 PM
Scott just put the numbers in and it will tell you. ;D
http://www.watertanks.com/calc.asp (http://www.watertanks.com/calc.asp)
Dave5Cs
Thanks Dave
Dave (dlsnow),
We bought our tanks from Ronco. They have a great selection of tanks. Its funny that they have so many tanks but it still took a while to choose the right ones. They will make them to order for you but it will cost you a penny or two for that. The tanks are high quality tanks and I don't think I'll ever have to worry about leaks from them. 3/8" walls and the fittings are spun welded and all fixtures are exactly square off the tank. They did a great job at putting the right fixtures exactly where I asked for them. Linda who I spoke with from Ronco (I think it was Linda) got me the tanks for half the listed price.
If you want to do an "L" shaped tank - it might be easier to find (2) rectangular tanks and just do as John mentioned and interconnect them. This also might give you opportunities to change it up down the road as well as make it easier to pull the tanks if you ever had to. I built a "cage" for my Fresh/Gray tanks as neither is strapped down but tightly squeezed into the cages to fit. There is a chance they could have some vertical movement, especially on a bouncy road but so far we have had no issues with setting up the tanks this way. The black tank is strapped in tightly and will not move.
We are fulltiming with 4 kids and have (1) 115 gallon Fresh tank, (1) 115 gallon gray tank and (1) 40 gallon black tank. We can go normal about 4 days with that setup, longer if we stretch it. It can quickly run low in 2 days if we are all showering and do a load of laundry. With the gray tank being the same size as the fresh tank you really only have to monitor your fresh water supply as when your fresh water is out your gray tank is full. Unless you fill up at some point without dumping the gray. I looked at combining the gray/black, having more fresh water than gray and having a larger black tank but after talking to a few other well seasoned fulltiming and RV pros they convinced me that the best system is matched sized fresh/gray and a separate black tank.
One other thing we did was to attach a dual house type water filtering system inline with the fresh water connection. This filters the city water coming into the bus whether it is going to the tanks or straight into the coach. If it goes into the tanks it gets filtered a second time (once when we fill and again when we use it) before it gets used. I also installed a fresh water drinking filter at the sink (If you read our blog you will see that has caused some problems as well...nothing to do with the plumbing though) So we can filter the water a third time with a drinking water filter. Ultimately I'd like to put a ceramic filter at the fresh water drinking tap but we needed it in a hurry so everything was bought from the big box home repair store.
Im amazed that you have 178 gallons of fresh water! Thats a ton of weight!
Let us know what your project is and what you decide and how it works out.
thanks.
-Sean
www.herdofturtles.org (http://www.herdofturtles.org)
1984 Model 10S
I have a 105 gallon fresh water tank and about a 125 gallon waste tank. It is basically about the largest I could get in a single bay with a standard tank size. Waste tank should be bigger than the fresh tank if you really want to use all the fresh water. Bodily fluids and TP will take up extra space in the waste tank.
165 fresh
170 black/grey
option to put shower/ sinks to the ground ;)
^ nice. That's what I want. Actually 200 gallons would make me sing.
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Here in AZ and other states the dumping of grey water is against the law,but the dumping of wash water (shower) is not a system with the kitchen sink tied into the tank where food particles are in the water is classified as sewage in most states just passing it on
If I figured it right I have a cylinder 90 gallon fresh water tank ( it measures 20" diameter and 65" in height., and a rectangle 120 gallon black tank that measures 15' high 28 wide and 64 inches long. Both tanks can be filled or drained from either side.
By the way, in case anyone is interested and didn't know, there is a tank size/capacity calculator in the tools section of the BCM website.
http://www.busconversions.com/tools/rectangletank.html (http://www.busconversions.com/tools/rectangletank.html)
Quote from: luvrbus on November 29, 2013, 03:24:50 AM
Here in AZ and other states the dumping of grey water is against the law,but the dumping of wash water (shower) is not a system with the kitchen sink tied into the tank where food particles are in the water is classified as sewage in most states just passing it on
But my neighbors dog can poop on my lawn every morning and evening. I don't buy into that silliness and hence have a hidden (routed next to the air tank between my rear duals) drain exit. 95% of the time, we have a sewer connection and it isn't an issue, but when parked on the side of the road or near parking lot drain, and showering, well...yeah.
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In my 4104 I have two tanks the fresh is stainless 140 gallons in an L shape and waste is also in an L shape but it is 150 gallons Both stainless ( made of Q qroup stafety related material lol )