When you’re boondocking, do you dump? Your grey water, that is.
Our wheels had barely started turning the first time anyone introduced us to the concept of dumping grey water somewhere other than a septic system.
Wisconsin’s Amish country beckoned but the nearest dump station was closed and our grey tanks were full.
We asked a farmer if he knew of another station.
“Yah sure, right there” he said as he pointed to his field.
Our heads spun ’round. “Are you kidding!” we asked. He wasn’t. “Just your greywater of course. Go ahead and pull in, the field needs it.”
We couldn’t believe it. As dedicated backpackers who took every precaution to avoid polluting water sources on the trail, we were horrified.
But our 35 gallon grey tanks were full and we had nowhere to go. So we did it. Eeew.
The Blue Boy Blues
Avid boondockers know; when you’re settled into a spot, going to the dump is a huge ordeal.
Some folks haul a blue boy around. Many are brave enough to use the blue boy for blackwater dumping, which seems pretty disgusting. We would never, ever get that close to our own poo water (other than the occasional RV dump mishap).
You’ll see blue boy enthusiasts driving 3 miles per hour through Quartzsite, which appears to take longer than just pulling up stakes and moving the rig.
Our fifth wheel is too small to keep a blue boy, so that option is out for us.
Desert Dumping
Our boondocking experiences have taken us to many places where dumping greywater in an open field was accepted by the local population, whether they were land owners or fellow RVers. Usually it’s in the desert.
At the Slabs, it’s a given. Some folks push the envelope of decency by digging gopher holes for grey and black water. Trust me, we won’t go there. Ever.
Playing by the Rules
Stealth greywater dumping is always contingent on the dumping area being safely away from water, other campers and only in barren locations. And if you’re going to dump gray water, do it at night (by daytime the puddle has evaporated). Only use biodegradeable soaps and never allow liquid kitchen wastes to go down the drain. That’s just smelly.
If you do, or are considering the possibilities, here’s a handy little device made specifically for this purpose.
The Valterra T1020-5VP Gray Water Drain Adapter.
We saw a camper in Ajo, Arizona using one. Just attach a garden hose and point it away from your rig. Downhill, of course.
Many RVers will deny doing the gray water dumping deed. Chances are, if an RVer has ever boondocked long-term, they’ve done it at least once. Being willing to admit it is another story. It’s just like a saying among scuba scuba enthusiasts:
There are two kinds of divers out there: Those who pee in their wetsuits, and those who lie about it.
Graywater dumping is a complete non-issue compared to people dumping blackwater on the streets of my neighborhood here in Borrego Springs, CA, leaving large patches of street streaked in yellow and brown. The gas station at the corner advertises a free dump site but apparently it is out of order at times and I have seen people angrily ‘let loose” their tank right on the spot upon finding that it is out of order.
Behind my house there is a dead end corner at the end of a short spur road that comes off a busy traffic circle, and people are always dumping back there too. Occasionally they camp there as well, which seems pretty dumb considering all the wide open space we have available in the park around town.
Except for June 8-Sept. 8 when it was too hot, I spent a year van camping in Coachwhip Canyon west of Salton City. I’d bring 6 gallons of water for the week which would provide for cooking, coffee, drinking and one piping hot facecloth bath and shave near to every weekend, when I would go to various large cities on business. People rarely drove all the way up the treacherous canyon with its bottomless gravel pits and soft sandy washes, and when they did, they were scared to approach my scary looking home tucked away back under a tall cliff. I wanted to be alone.
June 8-Sept. 8 was spent guerilla camping in the same van in San Diego, a very tough and dangerous lifestyle. One night in Rose Canyon a cop sat behind my van for an hour or so with his brights on, waiting for movement as I lay still. Another evening my van broke down and after a $5 bribe I spent the night parked out on the corner point of a gas station at Balboa and Mission Bay Drive, with groups of people walking past all night. I had angled the van so that the morning gas station clerk would not be able to see me working on it once dawn came and I had bought the needed part. Off I went. I had heated arguments with cops in Mission Bay Park. Today that would probably get me shot. I’d spend afternoons on Fiesta Island, surrounded by families on vacation, riding personal watercraft and whatnot, and it made me feel like Aqualung even though I was always clean shaven, clean and in clean clothing. I’d see the same RV and van campers here and there all over town. There must have been about 10,000 of them in San Diego then, and that was 1998. The best places to camp were between big trucks parked along streets in Kearny Mesa. Only a few Koreans lived in that area and not much else. One had to go to a different spot in a different area in the city each night in order to keep ahead of the cops.
It was nice to get back to the solitude of the desert. First thing I see when I get to the top of Coachwhip Canyon is an oil smear leading to an oilstain on roadside bedrock. Someone had busted their crankcase. And in a side arroyo, toilet paper stuck out of the sand here and there like tiny prayer flags flying in silent homage to “short-flighted mud falcons”. Apparently, some two-legged pigs had been there.
A year of that was enough.
Wow! It’s hard to believe that anyone would dump their black tank onto the ground, into a ditch, on a street or anywhere except a dump. Even standing grey water, after some hours, is toxic and shouldn’t be dumped – so far, we have not done the grey water thing. We have a Nature’s Head composting toilet, so we never dump anything black anywhere.
As to grey water, we are experimenting with a filter that contains rocks, sand, activated carbon and zeolite to clean the water before we use it. We filter before we filter, to get out hair and all that and then I’ll feel really good about dumping our grey water.
Thank you for the article and all the comments. It’s always wonderful to hear what other RVers are doing.
You have no idea how happy I am to find this! We just changed from tent camping to an RV (ok…it’s a 16 ft Scamp – you might not call it a full grown RV). It has small everything and I was originally worried we’d run out of fresh water. I’ve come to the conclusion getting rid of the water was a way bigger issue! When we used to tent camp – in developed campgrounds not back packing- i always dumped the dish washing water in the bushes – and spit my tooth paste in the fire ring. Never thought a thing about it. What I’d really like is an external grey water tank so we could take all our water back home and dump it on OUR vegetation – maybe the iceplant that lives over the septic tank leach field.
Geezo. I just wanted to be able to take a shower now and then! Who knew it could be so fraught.
You are so funny! Well you have no idea how you made our day, thanks! I’d say a Scamp is a pretty darn cool RV. If we hadn’t have started full-timing we probably would have the same type of RV. And like you, we were backpackers and used to do the same thing with our toothpaste spit and dishwater. Even in a Scamp, your grey water impact is so minimal, far different from the 30′ fifth wheel owner we recently camped next to in a state park. He dumped his grey water right into some foliage separating his campsite and ours!
(Sorry about multi posts…my auto correct created too many typos, so I wanted to correct them. Let’s hope the web master deletes the other two posts. I tried but couldn’t.)
Biochemist here. Everyone wants to protect Mother Earth. Good. Nice to hear it. But, protecting Mother Earth does not mean we need to lose our sense of logic and common sense. Mother earth wants AND NEEDS your pee and your poop. I highly doubt that all the wildlife out there asks or wonders if its excrement is polluting the planet, nor did humans ask that until recently. Remember the outhouse? When you camp in a tent in the woods, do you “just hold it” until you get home or do you run behind the nearest tree large enough to afford you some decency? Mother earth ain’t afraid of your butt. She’s been changing diapers for millennia.
Ok, that said, one sitting’s excrement doesn’t create a health hazard outside, ever, anywhere. Find a tree and worry not. (Ok not in the public park, but that has to do with decency, not because it would be harmful. Lol.) The hazard isn’t in WHAT you’re dumping, but the QUANTITY of what you’re dumping…and where. Yes, your black tank, due to volume, and federal law, needs to be disposed of properly. Overflow tanks, ie blue tanks, are perfectly fine for blank water. Wear gloves, a mask if you must, use a long hose, and stop worrying about it. You will live. I promise.
Now…about grey water. It’s fine to dump by the side of the road, in a drain ditch, forest, (except where prohibited by law), field, etc. Use bio friendly soap and why worry about it? Again, until the world created municipal waste treatment plants, everyone just threw the dish water out the back door and pooped in a hole in the ground! And guess what…THE EARTH IS STILL TURNING and I personally believe it’s BECAUSE they threw the water out the back door and pooped in the ground! Mother earth is a smart woman and caretaker. There’s microbes out there that will just LOVE your bio friendly soap, your poop, and your skin cells! Gees you left 1 million skin cells on your carpet just today alone. I guarantee mom loves those cells more than your carpet does.
Do you see how a little knowledge and honest decency of “we should take care of mother earth” can get dumb? Even to the point where our desire to help her actually hurts her! In our attempt to “be clean” and “pick up after ourselves” we starve our planet of some bacterial waste that not only does not harm her, but helps her! Let her have your dish water! Throw it on a pine tree! Mom will thank you.
That farmer KNOWS all about the chemistry of grey water AND black water. If that farmer had owned a composting cistern, he’d have let you dump your black water too! Farmers are chemists and brilliant when it comes to what will and won’t harm their plants.
Good old mother earth is waaay smarter than any of us. We are fools to think we’ve figured her out. Each generation always thinks they’re the smartest and most enlightened, only to have people 500 years later laugh at them. It will be no different for us. But here’s what I believe…that the world WAS smarter when it was pastoral, and pioneers worked the land by hand and let the horses crap in their fields as they plowed it. Progress and knowledge has made us stupid. Einstein knew it would; he foretold it. So, dump your gray water in a ditch, and forget it. Dump your blackwater at the dump station.
Katajo, that’s awesome insight, thank you for the thoughtful comment and powerful food for thought. You’re so right, and now next time I’ll feel that much less guilty about doing the deed. Now I’ll go digest this info for a bit . . . haw haw, that was a joke 🙂
People use to use latrines that were literally holes in the ground. I think that it’s funny how some people are horrified to go against the rules. But honestly, when your in situations like the ones mentioned above, you really don’t have a choice! Imagine if you were in the middle of the woods for a week, and you had a couple galleons of fresh water. Would you need another whole container for disposing the water you’d use to wash your hands after a meal or bathroom break?!? Would you bathe with that water too? No. You’d wash your hands and bathe in a creek because the fresh water needs to last you to drink and cook. Is that going to pollute the stream? If you think the answer is yes, then you need to stop swimming in lakes and oceans or use less hair product!!!! Just because your in a mobile mansion doesn’t mean you’re not also still off the grid and in nature.
It’s funny how some people find this so disgusting….when the most strick States allow or want you to drain your gray on the ground. I bet all of you have indoor toilets……at one point in time people thought that was the most disgusting thing…..lol
Keep your gray water tanks sanitized and give it back to Mom Nature
Never though of it that way Steve but you’re right…an indoor toilet must have seemed soooo gross to the old timers! Too funny.
I have dumped gray water on my gravel driveway at home. This was only in small quantities though, after winterizing, or the trailer being used as a guest cottage for a few days. Less than ten gallons at the most, and always dumped after dark with outside lights off because I have a few nosy neighbors.
When camping for long stays without a sewer connection we use a Blue Boy tank. I am perhaps a bit more daring and have towed it at higher speeds than most, especially on paved roads. I have also used it to dump black water on a few occasions. If you use a hose to fill the Blue Boy, and connect it at the dump station, it isn’t as nasty as you think.
My trailer has a rather small gray water tank and the black water tank rarely fills up on a 2-3 night stay. Therefore I bought some dishpans that fit perfectly in the bowls of my galley sink. I’ll place those in there when washing dishes, and periodically dump them down the toilet.
Another version of that scenario is most local State Parks where we stay have strategically placed gray water dump basins. If I think I will need the black water tank space, I will use the dishpans in the sink, but dump them into a 5 gallon plastic bucket, and dump that bucket as needed at a gray water basin.
As for dumping gay water on the side of the road or back in the woods, I haven’t done that, but it might happen some time in the future.
Christoper thank you for your honesty, and those great tips about placing basins in the galley sink. That’s something we’ll definitely remember!
Thanks for reading.
Hi Rene – I’m just jumping in here, because I didn’t quickly find a direct email link to you. We are building out a Sprinter van right now, and installing a composter that separates urine and feces. We’re wondering about whether the grey water from the kitchen sink can go into the urine tank – will it serve as good dilution for then using on plants, or just be smelly? A lot of articles out there about diluting urine by half for watering [non edible] plants…. Any ideas? Thanks!
Hi Anne. That’s a great idea, but whether or not it would smell could depend on what you put down your kitchen sink. If you’re in the habit of being super picky about wiping dishes clean with a paper towel before washing, and not letting things like cooking oil, coffee and other foods go down the sink, then it might work. My RV Life article about greywater recycling in RVs tells more. If you give it a whirl let us know!
The problem with grey water is that it contains more than what you put in it. If you’re thinking that a tank of grey only contains water, soap and the odd skin cell you’re fooling yourself.
Grey is a haven for bacteria and all soap, biodegradable or not, puts pressure the environment when breaking down into its components.
If you really do need to dump grey, consider dumping it through a home made filter. Take a plastic bucket, drill holes in the bottom.
Fill, in this order, with gravel, sand, charcoal, sand, gravel. This will help to take the worst contaminants out of the water.
Andrew that is really something to think about, thank you for taking the time to share your awesome suggestion, I like that a lot. Since our dog Wyatt recently acquired a bacterial infection of unknown origin (which put us $2k in the hole!), it’s made me much more conscientious about stuff like this. Thanks so much.
The environment is important and needs to be protected so we can enjoy it. We need to stop protecting it so much that no one is able to enjoy it. Lines of decency need to be drawn, but the environment was made for us. Use it and use it wisely is all I have to say. Don’t dump grey water where I have to smell it. I was a farmer most of my life, grey water could stink, but it waters plants, they grow a nice deep green, and the soaps in it repel aphids and other pests. Now that saves on pesticides. Stop drinking all the lies fed to us by the environmental groups, somewhere in the late 70’s we found a good balance, now new reg’s are just a form of peeing in the wind.
Now for us in 10 years of RV camping, we have had one black accident on our first night out, and dumped two 10 gallon buckets of grey in pinch. We go to the effort to pull up camp and drive to a station. Probably harm the earth more by driving than by pulling the handle. We do believe the earth next to a heavily traveled path is expendable, as after 50′ nothing from the grey will travel there. Look at time anyway, you will find the earth is one great big etch a sketch, volcanoes, floods and earth quakes are always erasing it and drawing a new land scape.
Hi Darrin, thanks for commenting and reading. Funny you wrote, because it was actually a Wisconsin farmer who was the first person to tell Jim and I it was OK to dump our grey water in his field!
I have to agree with most of what you said, I only wish that more people were smart enough to use common sense!
Rene,
How do you clean your dishes without adding liquid kitchen wastes to your greywater? Do you just use paper plates? Also, is it bad to have liquid kitchen wastes in your greywater? I understand that it might be smelly but if it’s in the tank then can you really tell?
Julia, we’re especially careful about liquids like those found in cans of beans not because they’re dangerous but whew…they can be super smelly if they go into the holding tanks. Since we rarely cook meat, we don’t think about grease getting in there, but if we were carnivores we wouldn’t let that happen. We just sop up as much as we can with paper towels before washing. I notice that sometimes our sink will emit a farty stench but that’s usually from debris left in the P-trap. All I do is throw some vinegar down the drain that that usually takes care of it. I’ve never had to use any greywater treatment potions that the RV stores try to sell us on. Just a little vinegar is all you need for most stinks, and the occasional very thorough rinsing.
Waste not want not says I and as the body so the RV grey tank.
Human dung has been a concern for the traveler for millennium, but the records are scant (or is that “scat”) with regards to waste management. From the Roman marches across the European continent and further to the early caravans across Eurasia, there has been little gray area with regards to grey water as waste managment has always been of vital concern. The old adage “never s**t where you eat” never rang truer than back in the days of pre-germ theory when few folks discussed cholera as an illness born of poor sewage treatment, but alas, ours is a civilized day and age and we now know better.
For those of you who take temporary warmth and comfort in the “pee in the wetsuit” analogy, I would pro-offer that we as a species are always looking for the shortest distance between any two points so if a drip of grey while driving works then congratulations, you’re basically doing what most trains around the world do as well. I recall early in my youth of traveling across Europe via rail and having to answer nature’s knock. I was fascinated that my waste would simply drop from the toilet onto the passing ties beneath me. I’ll never forget Mr. Stool tumbling like a Chinese acrobat when he hit those ties, man, what a site I used to think. But looking back, it’s surprising our effluence would simply drop would drop on the tracks.
I have a neighbor who teaches a few months a year in India, he says the sanitation conditions are so poor that he was cautious about handshakes when he traveled on Indian trains for fear of dysentery, running water is not always readily available and thus sanitation always in question. But how did our ancestors manage?
On the eve of the first millennium the Vikings were just starting to colonize both Iceland and Greenland and with forays into Canada and North America in an area they called the Vinland, how porta was their potty you’ve got to ask?
The impetus for these eastern migrations for these formerly mainland Norsemen & Norsewomen was real estate crowdedness, too many people living in too small an area ergo the hop from Norway, to Ireland, to Iceland to Green Land and the odd visit to North America ala Cape Cod and the eastern seaboard of Canada. But where was the latrine and why didn’t folks perish from contact with their waste? Cause they learned young that you don’t “”s***t” where you eat, not a bad lesson at any age says I.
For the smart camper I would venture the dumping solutions are many, but if you have to dump your dump, then the question that needs to basked is: “will someone eat here any time soon and if so, for how long?”.
Enrico strikes again…
Love the dissertation on dung, Enrico!
We’re not talking dumping our Mr. Hankies here, just the grey water. And for those of us who don’t eat animal products, well, I can bet that our grey water is a lot cleaner than those who do!
Eric, it sounds like you don’t maintain your holding tanks. When I return from a trip I sanitize my fresh and gray tanks with 200 PPM of chorine. The State laws of Ca, Or, and Wash. Allow draining gray water. It’s simple…THEY WANT THE WATER put back in the earth. I drain my gray water on the ground when ever I can…..and my gray water never stinks….clean your tanks people!!!
Everyone’s honesty about grey water dumping is SO refreshing! Haha, weak pun intended. But seriously, I was shaking in my boots over publishing this and I’m glad to see that others have reached similar compromises and understanding about these RV lifestyle matters!
NOW you’re in trouble!!
I have to admit that we’ve kinda come around to the same conclusions as you. We were avid pack-it-in-pack-it-out backpackers for many years before RVing and so the idea of dumping grey water was horrific for us, and I always rallied against it. After many months of RVing we had an experience very similar to you…somebody told us to just dump it on their land. So, I’m not as nutty about it as I was previously. It’s still something we prefer not to do, and we’ll always follow local rules, but situations do arise where we do it…gently…Never the black tank, but sometimes (rarely) the grey.
Nina
Ummm… yes. Only if desperate though and never black water. If I know we’ll be camping for a long time with no sewer we use public showers and I’ll wash dishes in a tub and throw it out. We do try to water the vegetation when we do.
Oh yes…of course! There aren’t many times other than boondocking that we would do it, but Matt installed a “trickle hose” to our rig so it just drips out a little at a time. That way, you could have it open going down the road and by the time you reached your destination, it’s empty. Or, while sitting still, it doesn’t create a pool.
I figure there is MUCH worse that I could be putting out there. If people are poo poo’ing it…then I hope they aren’t eating ANY conventional/non-organic foods, which put a ridiculous amount of chemicals into the earth. I think people forget the other ways their choices impact the earth. We all have to decide where our “happy place” is regarding our environmental conscience. It’s different for each person…and I won’t judge others. Unless they are dumping their poop next to me. Gross 🙂
Miss you guys!
First of all, I have to say I completely understand why they say not to most people do not go the distance and buy biodegradable soaps while RVing.
But on the other hand, most counties in Florida are under a fire warning right now and we use biodegradable soaps so I don’t see a problem with our gray water specifically. The campground has specifically asked that we do not dump our gray water, but I’m thinking about doing it soon because the ground is turning to dust! We don’t take showers in our rig and the soaps we do use are biodegradable.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t it eventually end up in the ground via the drain field ANYWAY?
Ron from HitchItch just sent us a link to a very detailed description about how they handle their grey water when boondocking. Interesting.
I admit the grey water deed… when it is necessary. I don’t make it a habit. We dumped grey water on our own pristine land while building a home in the arid pinion juniper country of western colorado. We noticed that the trees that got the water were able to resist the bark beetles and survived the infestation. I like the “dribble while you drive method” too.
mark
Applawse! Applawse! Thanks for raising your hand!
Hmmmm…we’ve got a serious bark beetle problem here in Larimer County. I might have to consider that idea for our property.
Rene, I admit to being a greywater dumper. The contents of our grey water is soap (a product used in the suppression of wildfires), skin cells and debris, and very little food waste from washing dishes.
I have even stayed at locations where the local rangers encourage grey dumping.
The earth is forgiving and knows how to deal with purifying waste.
Who among us has not peed in the woods?????
Thanks for the giggle David, love your answer!
You guys have caused quite a stink. Pun intended 😉
Not from our tank, but we wash dishes in a 5 gallon basin and I’ve been known to water the grass with it when our tanks are getting close to full. Doesn’t bother me much, and we use biodegradable soap.
Ditto Jay, we tend to handle dishwater this way to save space.
We haven’t done it in the U.S. (we don’t camp in the U.S. much) but we’ve done it in Mexico where open/functioning dump stations are even less common than here at home. And frankly, the way waste is handled at the Slab is one of the reasons we don’t much like it there even though we’re enthralled with the “freedom” notion and at imes enjoy the hippie throwback culture. So now I’ve come clean too! And yes, only gray water.
Bravo Cathryn! Thanks for keeping me company. You’re right, the waste situation at the Slabs can be gross. We stay over by the Canadians, most of whom don’t dig gopher holes (at least any that we’ve smelled).
Freecampsites.net linked to this post over on their facebook page. The discussion there brought up a good point. So, I have to ask. What did you do with your waste, especially poo, when back packing for weeks at a time?
Hey thanks Jenn, I didn’t even know you guys had a FB Page! Good question about the poo. To answer…
When we backpacking, we would dig catholes. I often wondered how many catholes were dug around a particular, popular backpacking area and often worried about accidentally digging one up. We often came across areas where people were too lazy to dig, and that was just SO sick. I mean how hard is it?
In some super sensitive areas we’ve been in, regulations required people to pack out their poo. Eeeeeew! It was at that point we decided that perhaps we should re-consider the whole backpacking thing! 😉
While camping near Yuma, we stayed at a free location, that was as packed was a campground, so we could visit with a few friends from RTR2011. In the trees behind our campsite there were piles upon piles of human waste. I guess they couldn’t be bothered to dig a hole. So nasty. It was the first time I had ever seen anything like it.
oh man…you are in so much trouble! =)
Heh heh! That’s why I didn’t write this when we were actually camped somewhere. With our URL emblazoned on our rig, it’s hard to be stealth.
I’m only in the shopping stages of RVing. but I hope to never dump my grey tank anywhere but a septic tank.
That goes triple for a desert environment like Quartzsite! Desert areas are made up up of micro environments. Things like grey water and other invasive dumpage can impact the delicate balance of the desert inhabitants, both fauna and flora, in ways that are both invisible and enduring. Doesn’t matter if your using biodegradable anything! Once the balance is destroyed in an evironment like the desert it may never recover.
Just because a product is biodegradeable does not mean it’s not destructive, for the record. Many biodegradable products produce methane gases in the breakdown process. Methane was not typically found in the desert. but with the dump foriegn substances it can be found now. You can bet it’s having an adverse affect on the native species!
Rant over!
Cyndi & Stumpy @ RVly Ever After
Cyndi, I hear ya on that, and I totally see your point. I also understand about biodegradeable soaps. I’ll begin by saying that this isn’t something we do on a regular basis when boondocking, I swear. But it’s something that I wanted to own up to because as Jenn called it, it is definitely a pink elephant among boondocking RVers.
My own eco philosophy is this…we all impact this planet to an extent. Every footprint we set down in the wilderness, be it desert or mountain, impacts the ground forever in some way. I think about this when rambling across the seemingly empty desert in my hiking boots, or when mountain biking down single tracks in the Rockies.
Long ago I realized that US citizens weren’t going to give up their cars to save the planet, I stopped hating people for driving and stopped participating in confrontational Critical Mass rides in San Francisco. It’s like trying to argue politics with the opposing side; it gets everyone nowhere.
I finally accepted that as long as we commit to making as minimal impact as possible on the earth, we are that much more ahead of the person who refused. Together, it all adds up.
So we don’t make stealth dumping a habit and only resort to it occasionally. We practice an almost-vegan lifestyle, and we drive as little as possible when we are settled somewhere. At our place in the Rockies, I don’t let bleach or chemicals go into our septic system. I could go on and on.
As our friend Dave Berman likes to say, “commit to doing the least you can do, then commit to doing at least that much.”
I like that philosophy.
I agree with you completely on the Quartzite/Desert area dumping! I wouldn’t dump my gray unless I knew there was a dump station near by. There’s a reason there aren’t dump stations in the middle of the desert! 🙂
We’re at a campground with a dump station that is connected to a drain field and the drain field is about 150feet from our campsite. It’s my understanding, anything that goes into the dump station ends up in the drain field then into the ground.
When we’re traveling and our grey tank is full, I might set it to ‘dribble’ a bit as we drive. In the summer, the dribble evaporates pretty quick. I’m looking forward to putting in the USI-RV system, where you use your grey water to flush your toilet. In a really isolated area, one could use a Watercone solar still, and distill the grey water back to fresh water. With water restrictions here in Florida, grey watering for lawns would be an excellent idea. The idea that grey water is bad is peculiar to me.
Danny I’ve thought about that system too. If you get it, I want to hear about it.
This is what we do also when we can’t find a place to dump greywater.