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lostagain View Drop Down
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Posts: 2595 		Direct Link To This Post Topic: A Delicate and Maybe Stinky Topic
    Posted: 18 Mar 2018 at 10:10pm
We are heading out to boon dock in early May where even pit toilets are not around.  A friend who has Pod knockoff, said that he's thinking of using disposable toilet liners instead of flushing the #2 into the blackwater tank.  Assuming that one only uses the blackwater tank for #1, its capacity will not be reached for a pretty long time, absent the consumption of extraordinary quantities of beer.  

So my question:  Has anyone tried these bags?  What was the overall result?  Would you do it again?  Where can you get the bags (Amazon's are really expensive)?
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Fred & Maria Kearney
Sonoma 167RB
Our Pod 172
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henryv View Drop Down
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Posts: 259 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: 19 Mar 2018 at 5:28am
Are there any woods where you're going? What's Pod knockoff?
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furpod View Drop Down
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Posts: 6128 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: 19 Mar 2018 at 7:07am
So handle a baggy of poo and pee, multiple times a day/night.. to avoid.. what? Having to dump?

As far as capacity, we have been out for 10 days, black tank wasn't an issue. Fresh and grey are.
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Happy Tripping View Drop Down
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Posts: 473 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: 19 Mar 2018 at 7:37am
Originally posted by lostagain

We are heading out to boon dock in early May where even pit toilets are not around.

As an old tent camper, I have to ask, "What's the problem?" You're camping in the middle of nowhere. Great. 'Cat holes' and 'grease pits' have gotten the job done for many people over many years. If you have a family with personal privacy concerns, a fancier toilet using Boy Scout methods is fairly easy to rig, at least where trees are around. Perhaps you're in a place without trees? Out east or in the north, this is not a problem. That leaves only your fresh water tank to worry about. 

I hope you enjoy your trip.
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henryv View Drop Down
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Posts: 259 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: 19 Mar 2018 at 8:13am
I think that's part of boon docking. Getting back to nature and away from modern conveniences.
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lostagain View Drop Down
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Posts: 2595 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: 19 Mar 2018 at 9:12am
When I was young and went camping in the Sierra Nevada mountains,  you could drink from pretty much any stream or lake.  Even lake Huntington, a big P.E.& E. reservoir was safe to drink.  Over the years people pooped in the woods while camping and buried it in little.  Now you are at risk of a number of diseases if you don't treat your drinking water no matter where you go.  Cytosporidium,
giardia, shigelia, norovirus, are just of few lovely bugs we've left behind in our poop.  This is one of the reasons the folks at the U.S. Forest Service, the BLM, and the various park services tell people to "pack it out." 

There are plenty of articles and discussions in cyberspace about the consequences of using little holes and such bury our droppings.  There are unexpected consequences no matter how you dispose of your scat.  Suffice it to say, all have adverse consequences on the environment and there isn't room her to review them all.

So, the issue for me is which is ickier:  to deal with the solid waste at the pump out station and fight with paper clinging to the tank sensor giving a false alarm that the tank is full or to deal with the plastic bag liners that have to be stored somewhere for proper disposal later.  And proper disposal later seems to be one of the complications.  This is something that is a biological hazard and can't just be thrown in the trash.  Garbage collectors don't like it when they encounter broken poop bags; disposable diapers are bad enough.

I think I'm leaning in favor of not bothering with the toilet liners.
Never leave footprints behind.
Fred & Maria Kearney
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furpod View Drop Down
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Posts: 6128 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: 19 Mar 2018 at 9:39am
Panel lights, and sensors, are hokum. Ignore them, then you don't worry about if TP is stuck. When it quits going "sploosh" when you flush.. full.

Then dump. We have very very very rarely seen anyone fill a BT in normal use. You have to try pretty hard to poop and pee 30 gallons in a weekend.

By far.. and I mean FAR, more often, we see people who get a clog, usually in the "down tube" because they are trying to "save water and tank volume" by not using enough "liquids" with their "solids", when flushing.

Then we have to go through the whole "find stick, poke clog, flush with more water, burn stick, never mention again" speech..
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StephenH View Drop Down
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Posts: 6326 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: 19 Mar 2018 at 10:25am
+1
Use of sufficient water to avoid the "pyramid of poo" is important. Use of a good biological tank treatment such as "TankTech's Rx" or "Happy Camper" or "Unique RV Digest-It" will help to liquify and make sure the wastes are able to be emptied. Even they are not foolproof on keeping the black tank sensor working properly. It does take a long time to fill the black tank. The gray tank will fill much faster, especially if you take showers in your R-Pod. Your fresh water tank will be empty long before you fill either tank.

I've wondered why there is a 30 gallon black tank instead of a 15 or 20 gallon. We have made whole multi-week trips without filling the black tank. 30 gallons seems to be overkill for the actual use.
StephenH
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lostagain View Drop Down
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Posts: 2595 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: 19 Mar 2018 at 10:38am
For a weekend to fill the tank, you'd have to have a pretty bad case of giardia to fill the tank.  But after two weeks, I guess it depends on whether you fill your fresh water tank without the opportunity to drain the waste tanks.  Obviously, it's not possible to fill both wast tanks if you don't have a source of fresh water other than the 30 gallon fresh water tank and the few bottles of extra water you may bring along, and with boon docking, that's not likely.

My reluctance to fill the black water tank comes from a rather awful experience I had when I owned an Ericson 38 sailboat.  The prior owner had plumbed in a holding tank that was a big neoprene bladder with compression fittings that connected the inlet and outlet hoses.  I was staying on my boat and came down with a terrible case of the flue.  There was not an orifice in my body that was not draining some horrible substance.  After using the head for the "13th" time, as I was pumping its contents into the holding tank, one of the hose fittings came off and I had a flood of black water suddenly overfill the bilge and onto the cabin floor.  While running a fever of a 104 and trying to control the effects flu, I had to clean up the mess, and repair the holding tank.  It wasn't a very fun experience.  Thus, dealing with malfunctioning black water tanks is not one of my preferred activities.
Never leave footprints behind.
Fred & Maria Kearney
Sonoma 167RB
Our Pod 172
2019 Ford F-150 4x4 2.7 EcoBoost
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TheBum View Drop Down
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Posts: 1407 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: 19 Mar 2018 at 11:04am
I know some people who dump their dishwater down the toilet to delay the gray water tank filling up...and they still have plenty of capacity for excretions.

I'd bet that "R-Pod knockoff" has a tiny holding tank. I was camped next to a friend with a Jayco not much bigger than our 179. Over the course of a week, he had to empty his black tank into a portable dump tank and take it over to the dump station because the black tank was so small. I looked at several small campers before deciding on the R-Pod, and one of the main factors in choosing the R-Pod was the ample holding tanks.
Alan
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