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Old 07-05-2023, 04:48 PM   #15
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Originally Posted by Mudfrog View Post
Not positive but I think I read someplace, maybe in these forums, that the person's tank developed a negative pressure inside it while traveling down the road. Venturi type effect maybe? If so, I suppose it could be enough to suck a P trap dry and that it was dry by the time you got home. Really no ideas otherwise..
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Originally Posted by stevenapril View Post
That seems like a reasonable explanation as I'll refill the traps and it's fine now. I'll just refill them every time I get home.
Not real sure how a negative air pressure could develop in the gray or freshwater tanks unless the caps were missing off the vent pipes and they were cut with the leading edge slightly high so as to cause a vacuum to occur down the vent pipe - and then if so, to achieve a roughly 2” (typical minimum P-trap height) of water or greater negative pressure.

Not saying it isn’t happening - just interesting it happens.

Depending on the coach, some showers dump right into the gray tank with no trap.

And - if you’ve ever had to clean out a P-trap before, you’ll know those pipes are not all spic-n-span clean - which can be a source of odors, especially if the vertical pipe before the trap is a long one.
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Old 07-05-2023, 04:55 PM   #16
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Quote:
Originally Posted by MrMark52 View Post
Not real sure how a negative air pressure could develop in the gray or freshwater tanks unless the caps were missing off the vent pipes and they were cut with the leading edge slightly high so as to cause a vacuum to occur down the vent pipe - and then if so, to achieve a roughly 2” (typical minimum P-trap height) of water or greater negative pressure.

Not saying it isn’t happening - just interesting it happens.

Depending on the coach, some showers dump right into the gray tank with no trap.

And - if you’ve ever had to clean out a P-trap before, you’ll know those pipes are not all spic-n-span clean - which can be a source of odors, especially if the vertical pipe before the trap is a long one.
In my case the coach is brand new, we've only taken a handful of showers to date.... so I dont think that's the source of the smell. Like I mentioned earlier, once I refilled the P Traps and put the drain plugs in... the smell went away. For now I plan to do that every time I get home with the coach.
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Old 07-05-2023, 05:12 PM   #17
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This was a problem on the Winnie and the Southwind. The traps would admit bad smells under some conditions. Leaving the sink drainers closed in the kitchen, the drain closed in the bath, and a flat "stopper" in the shower made it go away. We have a dump in the driveway and never made any correlation between empty and not empty black and gray tanks; we usually but not always wait to dump until we get home unless we're really close for the last stop on the way.

This is not a problem in our Tiffin. We actually forgot the routine one day and noticed later that (a) we forgot and (b) it didn't matter. We haven't done it since!
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Old 07-05-2023, 05:47 PM   #18
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This was a problem on the Winnie and the Southwind. The traps would admit bad smells under some conditions. Leaving the sink drainers closed in the kitchen, the drain closed in the bath, and a flat "stopper" in the shower made it go away. We have a dump in the driveway and never made any correlation between empty and not empty black and gray tanks; we usually but not always wait to dump until we get home unless we're really close for the last stop on the way.

This is not a problem in our Tiffin. We actually forgot the routine one day and noticed later that (a) we forgot and (b) it didn't matter. We haven't done it since!
I wonder what is different about the Tiffin?
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Old 07-05-2023, 11:20 PM   #19
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We used to have that problem. I replaced the vent caps with ones designed to pull air out the vents as we drove. Problem solved, never had it again. That was maybe seven years ago.
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Old 07-06-2023, 07:13 AM   #20
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I wonder what is different about the Tiffin?
I no longer own the other coaches, but I don't recall that they had air admittance valves.
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Old 07-06-2023, 09:42 AM   #21
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We used to have that problem. I replaced the vent caps with ones designed to pull air out the vents as we drove. Problem solved, never had it again. That was maybe seven years ago.
I would think it's remotely possible that caps designed like that might actually cause the issue. This would be the venturi effect I mentioned above.
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Old 07-06-2023, 08:33 PM   #22
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They do use the Venturi effect, yes. They do fix the problem. Any breeze, whether natural breeze or 70 mph road travel breeze positively pulls the stink up and out. Our first few trips some 7 years ago or so just would run us out of the house, could hardly stand to breath once we got out on the road.

Installed these. Fixed. Never a problem. Maybe something is wrong with the plumbing somewhere, I don’t know, and to be honest, I don’t care. This was a relatively simple fix. YMMV of course.
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