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Corrected Shower Drain Plumbing.
Here are some pictures of what the factory did and what I did to correct it.
One picture shows what the factory did. Another shows what I planned on doing about it. The last one shows the finished product.
The job was relatively easy. I removed the existing plumbing by unscrewing the connection from underneath the shower and where it tied into the black tank's vent line. From there, I spliced into the bathroom sink's drain line and ran all new plumbing up to the shower drain. I also screwed in a cap where the shower was draining into the black tank.
I was finally able to speak to someone from Forest River directly about this. The gentleman was nice enough and did indeed confirm that they do this on many of their products.
He asked me to explain to him why I see this as an issue. Here was my response to him...
1) It fills the black tank very quickly, thus causing me to empty the tank more frequently and use much more chemicals than I normally would, causing me to waste money by adding them more frequently than I should need to. Furthermore, depending on what your using to shower with (soaps, shampoos, etc.) it can be detrimental to the bacteria or other chemicals in the black tank trying to break down the solid material. He conceded that point and said he would relay this information to their engineers.
2) I explained to him that sometimes we camp in certain campgrounds that don't offer sewerage hookups at the site and don't allow gray water to be dumped on the ground. We carry a 30 gallon tote with us for this reason. We can simply dump our gray water when needed into the tote, and pull behind the truck to the dump station. Normally, we've always been able to go at least 3 days without having to empty the black tank. Not so with this unit. And I'm sure I'm not alone here, it's not very pleasant using these totes for the black tank. Get this... his response to that was he was not aware of any campgrounds within the United States that don't have sewerage hookups at the site... REALLY?! That response right there confirmed to me that obviously Forest River does not employ anyone with experience actually using these RV's.
I relayed to this gentleman of my intention to reroute the plumbing myself, and of course he was very quick to explain that doing so would void Forest River's manufacture warranty (which is only for 12 months and like pulling teeth to make a claim). I really don't care about that. Now, I'm in a different boat from many others. I have years of experience with RV's, both traveling in them and working on them. I prefer to do the work myself vs. bringing it somewhere else. So the whole voided warranty thing doesn't bother me a bit.
What does bother me is the fact that Forest River would intentionally do something like this without considering how it affects the actual usage and performance of the unit.
Anyway, I hope these pictures help anyone who may be experiencing the same issue with their Forest River product.
Cheers!
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