Merry Christmas, Sh#!ters Frozen!

National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, by far John's and my favorite movie. We have it on CD (now old school), digital, on my phone...everywhere. We love this movie and watch it throughout the year! It's the gift that keeps on giving....(if you watch the movie, you know what I mean).

Ironically this infamous line in the movie kept streaming in our heads. Instead of it being full, it was F-R-O-Z-E-N!

Yup! You read that right, frozen. My gosh... I think my Dad is laughing hysterically and my mom is shaking her head in heaven. "What on earth?" you ask? Well I'll explain.

Living the trailer life has some wonderful advantages.

* You can move in a moments notice

* Cleaning house takes about 10-15 minutes

* If you love outdoor grilling, its fun to do every night

* You meet amazing people of all ages

* You build an even better bond with your partner

* You feel like your part of the outdoors

However, winter in Eastern Washington, you get some serious cold weather. Which leads me up to how we spent two days without the use of our toilet.

Part of the glamorous life of trailer living, you have a grey tank and a black tank. The grey tank typically holds your water waste from the kitchen sink, shower/tub, faucets. The black water tank, well, holds the waste from your toilet.

We are hooked up to city water, electricity and to sewage. The sewage part, not so glamorous. You see... you keep your black water tank closed. Periodically, you must dump your black tank. Which comes out from your trailer into a hose (similar to Cousin Eddie) however, it dumps into your sewage dump which is a cement hole you hook your hose to right where we park our trailer.

Things we've learned...you see you can't leave your black water tank valve open all the time to dump into your sewage dump. If you do, your tank will not have any liquid from the water that flushes down. You need the liquid to build up so when your black tank fills, you can release and it will help A-L-L the waste move through. Many of you that own a trailer for camping or lives in one full time knows what I mean. You can google it and really be enlightened (wink wink smiley face).

This is something you must do on a weekly basis. Its a part of life...especially the trailer life. So John went out and opened the tank valve...nothing happened. He came to the door and asked if I heard anything? You know the magical "swoosh". I responded "no".He doubled checked to ensure the valve was working, and it was. He started checking the hose line, went inside to check the toilet...all was good. What could be happening? We stated "googling" and searching for answers. Our tank wasn't completely full, but we need to find out what is going on.

Unfortunately we are heading out to the niece's house for Christmas lunch. Nothing more we could do at that point and it wasn't going to hurt or damage anything with what was going on...we headed out.

We enjoyed a nice family get together, however John and I have been secretly researching on the internet what was going on and how are we going to fix it.

We came home and tried to see if the tank would dump. No such luck. We ensured nothing was crinking the hose, the valve opening and closing as it should...all good. Since it was getting late it was decided that we must NOT use our bathroom at all for the evening/night and use the facilities here at the RV resort. There are three buildings that house, laundry, showers and yes...bathrooms. However, not so fun at night to get dressed warm plus coat and snow boots to trek out in the 12 degree weather to use the facilities. Thank goodness we could.

Morning time and we are still searching and trying different things to make this black water valve open and dump. So when you don't know what else to do? You go to the office/store where everyone goes to pick up mail, grab some groceries or ask questions...which I did.

RV people are wonderful people. They're friendly and if you have questions, they have either experienced it themselves or know of someone who did. As I explained to the employees at the office, they jumped right in with several solutions. "First off, are you using the right toilet paper?" You MUST use RV specific toilet paper. If not...you could create a huge problem that can cost a lot of money. The answer was yes! Have you had any problems before?..."No"..."Is the valve working?" ..."Seems to be".....hmmmm.

The maintenance guy Mark, decided to go over and check out our trailer to see if he could figure out what was going on. As he scoped out our tank, he checked the valve and looked at the hose. He then said that he believed we had an ice block. He suggested we hang some blankets or towels to create a barrier around the black tank pipe that came out from the floor of our trailer. He said that all is insulated until you come out from the floor.

I grabbed my hair dryer and John got to work on creating a barrier around the pipe so when he started to heat up the pipe with the hair dryer, it would retain the heat in that area. Nothing was happening fast and our neighbor behind us came up and provided some additional insight....RV antifreeze.

During the freezing temps of winter and living full time, it is best to add RV antifreeze to your black tanks to ensure they won't turn into ice. He gave us a gallon and said to add it through our toilet and let it set for a bit. Then get back to using the hair dryer and begin to heat up the pipe where John thought the ice blockage was.

I went inside (I was freezing) while John continued the process. He was about give up when all of a sudden..."Swoosh." The ice block melted enough and our black tank opened and dumped! I was siting at the dinette booth and heard that familiar swoosh and jumped up saying "Hallelujah, it swooshed!"

John closed the black tank valve again and went in and added the RV antifreeze to the toilet that will go into the black water tank. Hopefully this will eliminate the ice issue going forward. We can only hope.

We've been doing this now for over 7 months....we are learning, we're becoming pros and we are having a bast. Like I said before, we don't know what we are doing, but we're having fun doing it!

Happy New Year!

#livingsimple #trailerliving #simplelife #blacktanj