A week in the life of a full-time RVer – Part 1
Living in an RV full time isn’t that different from living in an apartment, until you get to chores. Most tasks only take a few minutes to complete or can be contracted out to your local RV repairman. The weekly tasks are basically the same as anywhere you live. You have to do a little cleaning from time to time. Our 39 foot RV takes my wife about 30-45 minutes to clean from front to back, including vacuuming. If we clean up the woodwork, it could take an hour. So daily cleaning is much less work than an apartment or a house.
However, the tasks start to change once we move to weekly and monthly tasks. Instead of mowing the grass or shoveling snow, spreading fertilizer, raking leaves, cleaning gutters, etc., in the RV we have to drain and empty the storage tanks, sanitize the water holding tank, level the trailer, check tire pressure, wash and wax the platform, change burnt out lamps and assemble or disassemble the solarium.
Starting with the weekly tasks, the most common task will be to empty the storage tanks. Now some people will tell you that as a full time worker you can leave the holding tanks open all the time. I’ve heard this from many people but when you ask the ‘experts’ they all tell you the same thing, these tanks are designed to hold liquid waste and then throw it away once it’s ¾ full. This process removes all waste. The idea is that if you leave the tanks open all the time, only the liquid waste will flow down the drain. Solid waste will accumulate in holding tanks and eventually need to be cleaned. I promise, during the spring, summer, and fall, we leave our tanks open and do a good rinsing and cleaning of them once a month or so. During the winter we keep the tanks closed. Why only in winter? Freezing! When the temperature drops, liquid waste starts to freeze in the drain pipes. Over the period of several days it can totally clog the pipe and you are left with at least one clogged pipe until it warms up or it could crack and rupture, leaking liquid debris into and around your camper. Let’s see how we learned this from experience, several times.
Now the process of unloading the tanks and washing them is very easy. I would recommend that you purchase a product called the King Flush which provides a central shutoff valve and hose connection. Once you’re connected to the RV’s sewer connection, you can flush individual tanks whenever you want without much effort. Simply close the valves on the tanks you do not wish to clean, connect the water hose to the King Flush, and close the King Flush valve. Turn on the water and let it flow into the open tank until it is about 3/4 full. Shut off the King flush water and open the King flush valve. Your tank will empty, depositing solid waste with it. I sometimes do this 3 or 4 times if the tank is very dirty. The entire process can take an hour. Whatever you do, don’t try to multitask while emptying the tanks! You can easily overfill the tanks and you will be flooded in the trailer. By the way, during the winter, I do not wash the tanks. But again, if you read the reasons for keeping the valve closed, you’ll probably understand why it’s not necessary.
Of all the tasks, unloading and washing the tanks is probably the worst task. For me it was like mowing and raking the garden when we had the house. It has to be done, but no one said you had to like it.
I was going to talk about the semester homework here; I’m running out of space. So look out for my other articles on RV living. Please remember to leave comments if you liked this article. Also, if there is a topic you want to know more about living in an RV, please let me know.