Wild waste workings

[babell2]

I am still gaining information as I slowly strip my 1980 MCI-9. In sink plumbing, what would be the benefits and drawbacks of having a in house style garbage disposer in one basin dumping into the black water tank and the second basin with screen only dumping in the gray tank?  Thoughts being the extra food particles would wash out with black water and keep gray water tanks free of extra debris. Yes I would have to adjust the black water tank to hold a little more volume.  Looking for comments on this line of thought.
Thanks
babell2

[bevans6]

My personal preference is to have the grey and the black combined.  I can't see any upside or downside to your plan, so I guess do what makes you happy.  I would normally put scraps and food in the garbage that in the waste tanks but to each his own.

Brian

[fe2_o3]

Our house disposal takes quite a bit of water to use. Running dry is supposed to be bad for it. Running extra water to grind up the undesirables will use up waste water storage... Cable

[Chopper Scott]

How about getting a dog? Actually I can see where using the disposal would add to the waste water. I have been surprised to many times about how fast those tanks fill up.

[Dave5Cs]

Yep we use the trash bucket and dump it when full, Done.

Might want to check also to see if anything Like the acid of some foods (like Tomatoes etc.)might change the Balance of black tank or create extra Methane gas or act as an ignition?

Dave

[babell2]

All good points!!!   I guess a lot of dish scraping is in my future.  I don't want to have to carry 300 Gal of fresh just to run a disposer.

[JohnEd]

Sure it would "seem" to work without a problem.  It should be compatible with either tank and I would go with the gray water particularly.  The black should be left to its own devices to "digest" the waste in there and it is usually a much smaller tank.

Combined waste tanks will certainly work.  Down side is that it is a much larger tank....usually.  With two you can dump your gray water in a ditch or in the garden without food waste.  It is not legal anywhere that I know of but I think Ca still gives you a tax break for "upgrading" your home to use waste gray water for lawn or garden irrigation.  The Green freqs that I knew in the 70's were doing that to their homes.  A little soap is a good thing for the garden but Drano isn't so you have to treat your gray water as though it were going into a septic system.   I keep a 50 ft garden hose to allow me to dump my gray to a distant sanitary drain or???  With a mascarator pump you can send the black down a 5/8 garden hose to a distant drain.

I would still install it as it is a great appliance but you can only get use if you are parked with water available.  I sure get a lot out of mine at home and I'll bet you do too.

John

[JWallin]

Our combination works great. Dogs, dishwasher, and Rid-X.

[PSmith]

We boondock almost exclusively so we pay attention to water use and gray water levels.  Black no problem.  A disposal would use too much water for our style.  \
Just our way..

On tank sizes, if we did it again, we'd choose a larger gray and smaller black.  We have 58 gal gray and 43 gal black.  I plan to install a transfer pump ( defroster circ. pump ) from gray to black to extend capacity of gray.

phil

[redbus]

We have a 100 gallon Black/Gray tank with a valve to divert gray water  for the times we are on a extended stay with sewer hookup.My Kitchen sink empties into the tank to add more water in it. We can Boondock for up to 10 days with water conservation and dump after 7 days when hooked up to sewer with doing dishes 3 times a day and very little conservation.