261BHXL gray water capacity upgrade?

[dozer103]

Hello all! Can't find any direct info on this in my searches, so I'll just post it up. Our 2020 Salem Ultra Lite 261BHXL will fill the gray water tank frighteningly fast with my family of 4 taking showers and washing dishes. Has anyone added an extra tank or upgraded the system successfully to a 2 tank system from a larger model? Any guidance would be appreciated.
Cheers!
Cragg

[Reverse_snowbird]

Grey water tanks are notorious for filling quickly. Short term help would be an Oxygenics water saving shower head, dumping water from dishes into the toilet, and paper plates. Not sure where you are camping, but there are portable grey water tanks that you can tow to the dump station.

[TURBS]

Army showers

[eye95]

I have an outside shower. I used it once as an experiment. No curtain, so I wore my bathing suit. (I hope I haven’t just offended anyone.) So nothing went into the gray tank.

Before anyone worries, I did go inside to finish showering after I deemed the experiment to be a success.

[Garrette]

By Connecting a 3rd Valve to your outlet and opening both gray and black valves, the tank levels will equalize. In your case, gray water will flow into the black tank.

You will leave the valve connected until you dump or close both grey and black valves and dump the contents into a bucket.

You can do the same thing with a cap but a valve is a lot less messy.

This will give you a bit more grey capacity. Or purchase a blue boy but at 8.333lbs per gallon, they get heavy. Hope this helps.

[jimmoore13]

Not enough info to go on, but I'll make some assumptions:

1) You don't have "full hookups" at your favorite campgrounds, but you DO have a "city water" supply.
2) OR, you like to boondock, but the shower thing suggests this is not a boondocking scenario. Fresh water becomes too precious to shower a lot if you're boondocking. (Well, my wife showers. I jump in the lake.)

So, with those assumptions guiding my response:

A) If your grey and black merge into the stinky slinky dump port, that's great for flushing out the stinky slinky, but it sucks for handling the grey water. There are black dump to garden hose adapters, but I wouldn't handle what becomes fecal-matter-contaminated grey water. Solution: Add another grey tank dump upstream of the merge. What makes this easy is a Fernco Tee: https://www.homedepot.com/p/Fernco-1...-150/100372306
The Fernco enables you to stuff a Tee into a solid line, because the rubber is flexible.
Be careful, because campers tend to NOT use schedule 40 pipe. They use a thin-wall pipe. But it's not a problem. Just don't be ham-fisted when cutting and fitting the Tee.
B) Add a short length of 1 1/2" PVC to the free spot on the Fernco. Maybe 1" or so. Then glue on a...
C) Get a Valtera or Camco grey water dump valve. https://www.etrailer.com/RV-Sewer/Va...kaAsNFEALw_wcB There's a nice one with a threaded output, but a plain one and an adapter with thread can be glued in.
D) Add one of these...1 1/2" to 3/4" garden hose adapters: https://www.amazon.com/Valterra-Blac...3463177&sr=8-1
E) You should support this contraption somehow. I was able to use a tiny bungee. The rubber Fernco is soft enough that the dump valve will bounce a lot without support.
F) 18" of garden hose and one or two 5 gallon buckets. Whatever's comfortable. Dump about 4 gallons of grey water into the bucket(s) and tote it to a vault toilet, regular bathroom or, if boondocking and you're not in a swamp, a nearby tree. Dump.
My previous camper was low, and when I parked on a side slope, I'd use a 10' garden hose routed under the camper to the bucket.

Now you have an infinitely large grey water tank, AND YOU DON'T NEED TO CARRY 20 TO 40 GALLONS (165 TO 300 pounds) of extra grey water to the nearest dump station...which may or may not be where you are staying.

In my humble opinion, infinite grey water capacity is vastly superior to all the trouble and expense of a second tank. But that's just me.

P.S. On the outside shower front...another good option. Something like this setup next to your outside shower can do the job. If boondocking and not shy, skip the enclosure. I've showered a number of times outside with just a rubber entrance mat to keep my feet clean. But when you need cover...or insist on cover...there are a zillion options like this one. https://www.amazon.com/WolfWise-Dres...463989&sr=8-23
But...the inside shower is probably nicer with a better showerhead, and toting a bucket of water is easier than setting up an outside shower and using the crappy showerhead on the outside shower. If I shower outside, it's because I'm so dusty and dirty that I don't want all that landmass in my grey tank.




For those who want to argue about the sanitation of watering trees, this is what tent campers and popup campers do all the time. The kitchen sink in most popups ports out the side to a hose spigot that collects in your...wait for it...bucket.

[NCBBA11043]

Originally Posted by Garrette

By Connecting a 3rd Valve to your outlet and opening both gray and black valves, the tank levels will equalize. In your case, gray water will flow into the black tank.

This runs the risk of getting poop, TP and other nasty things in your grey water tanks. NOT A GOOD IDEA (IMHO).

[The Newsoms]

Originally Posted by Reverse_snowbird

Grey water tanks are notorious for filling quickly. Short term help would be an Oxygenics water saving shower head, dumping water from dishes into the toilet, and paper plates. Not sure where you are camping, but there are portable grey water tanks that you can tow to the dump station.

But make sure there’s not a piece of silverware in the dishwater. I haven’t figured out how I’m going to remove it yet. 😂

[Quilter3446]

Here is another solution that will help conserve both fresh water and grey water tank space. Some RV's are having this device installed from the manufacturer.


RV - Aqua View, Inc.

https://aquaviewinc.com/rv/

WITH "EXTENDED STAY" TECHNOLOGY YOU CAN:. Conserves your fresh and gray water tank capacities up to 40% without changing your tanks or adding weight!. SAVES FRESH WATER. The cost of fresh water is rising to the point that in some places of the world, it's actually more expensive than gasoline and even rationed!