Sewer connection

[chrisgoforth]

Does anyone have a sewer connection for their RV at home and if so do you know where to find out if there is any regulations surrounding one?

[jrwitt]

Check with you city or county permit department. They are the people that issue the permits (if required) and in my experience they are very helpful when you ask for info/advice. I am sure there will be some regulations, but probably pretty generic. You made need to install a p-trap and will probably be a requirement for the slope of the drain line running underground to the main sewer line or the septic system.

[Ramets]

Why not just use a macerator? That's what I do every time we visit our dtr.. That is if you can reach the clean out. But you'd have to be really far away. The clean out at my dtrs. is probably 75' or more away, but the macerator pumps fine at that distance. Just be sure to use the largest hose you can get. I believe mine is a 5/8" garden hose, but it was quite awhile ago that I bought it, so the memory is a little weak.

[MisterT]

A 'cleanout' is the same as your normal rv park sewer connection. Most every home home has one somewhere around the house(provided for plumber entry to cleanout potential blockages that may happen). This connection goes directly to your sewer or septic tank. It looks just like your rv park connection, but may be in a flower bed, etc...
When stayin the night in a parking lot, such as at a church, we often find a sewer connection on the property. It's a good option if you really need to empty your tanks.

[chrisgoforth]

My clean out is inside my basement so there is no exterior access to run a sewer hose to so I would have to have something installed outside. I guarantee my wife is not going to want an open sewer connection in her theater room. Lol my bigger question is more around the legality of it. Is it legal to dump your RV tanks into public sewer.

[ahicks]

Same code that requires a cleanout in the basement generally also requires one just outside of the basement wall - for access from outside.

If you can figure out about where your sewer line exits the wall, you can often poke around the area just outside that with a long screwdriver (or equivalent) pushing it down into the dirt searching for something solid. If dirt too firm to allow that, wet it down. When the house was built, the outside cleanout should have been on grade (flush with surrounding area), so you shouldn't have too much trouble locating. Should be fairly close to the surface.

[deandec]

Originally Posted by chrisgoforth

Lol my bigger question is more around the legality of it. Is it legal to dump your RV tanks into public sewer.

On your property it is probably legal to dump your rv tanks into a public sewer as long as there is no spillage. Its likely the same stuff that is dumped from your house.

Dumping your rv tanks at any random access to the public sewer may be illegal, but not because of the rv material you would be dumping.

If dumping a substance different than what is allowed to be dumped into a public sewer, then at minimum a permit is probably required.

If dumping commercially collected material, a permit would be required. Perhaps you would even need a screening device. (Finding a pipe bomb pumped from a portable toilet might be an example.) Cleaning such a screening device is not the most pleasant job.

[Gary RVRoamer]

It's perfectly ok to put your own personal wastes in your private home sewer, whether from your in-house bathroom or pumped from your RV. The one caveat on that might be in places where your sewer tax/service charges are based on the number of bathrooms, but that's more of a billing/payment question than a legal one.

However, if you ask to install another sewer outlet on the property, you run afoul of all sorts of regulations and zoning for sewer systems. And if you have a septic system, you may find you are exceeding the local plumbing codes, which sometimes relate the number of sewer inlets to tank size. For that reason, most RVers use a temporary connection to a sewer clean-out, as discussed earlier in this thread. Most local authorities are willing to ignore the occasional temporary use, but could not ignore it if you parked the rv and left the sewer line in place for daily use.

Using a macerator pump and a temporary (duration of the dump) connection avoids most legal issues. If you are lucky, you might have a clean-out close enough so that you don't even need the macerator to pump to it (gravity flow only).

[chrisgoforth]

Thanks for all of the great information it is very much appreciated.

[JohnBoyToo]

MANY places allow you to dump now... some rest areas on the interstates are free , many pilot flying J's are like $10.... etc..

Here's some info

but we have an aerobic system that the little buggies have enough trouble with two peoples stuff per day, let alone 100 gallons at once