Last updated on October 9th, 2019 at 01:48 pm
If you store your RV at home, being able to empty your RV holding tanks at home is a great convenience. You may want to Install an RV sewer dump on your home sewer line. But if your home has a septic system, you should have a good understanding of how it works before adding a home RV sewer dump into the system. If not done properly it may require costly repairs to your septic drain field. Dumping a forty-five-gallon holding tank all at once won’t be a problem if the RV dump line is installed correctly, as described below.
The critical thing to remember is sewer lines should not have quick drops because the water will leave the solids behind to build up in the drain pipe. With the proper drop, solids are kept with the liquid and float to the septic tank entrance.
One inch of drop in a one hundred foot line is almost overkill; you should try for no more than a half-inch drop per hundred feet. Significant elevation changes should be done with 90-degree drops.
Connect your RV dump line into the septic system between the house and septic tank, NEVER into the drain field. Installing the RV dump AFTER the septic tank and before the leach lines will eventually clog the lines and may require digging up all the leach lines and replace them to get his system working again.
Another option is to drop the discharge from your RV dump directly into the top of the septic tank, preferably before the baffle, if your tank has one, but after the baffle will work if that is the only possibility.
If the dump will be used daily or very frequently, one needs to make sure to hook in between the house and tank, but for occasional use dumping into the tank after the baffle will work. The baffle in a septic tank ensures that the solids go down, not across the top of the liquid and out into the drain lines.
If dumping in after the baffle, it is a good idea to make sure the waste enters perpendicular and even to drop the end of the dump down into the water level a few inches to help direct the solids to the bottom. I always put the dump about six inches down into the water. NEVER bring waste in AFTER the baffle in a horizontal configuration as the agitation could send the solids across the top of the liquid right into the drain field outlet.
When installing new septic systems on lots big enough for RVs to be parked, I always offered to include an RV dump free of charge and connected it between the house and tank whenever possible. I figured it would save digging up the yard later to install one, and the additional cost of the pipe was minimal.
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