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Our beautiful new Drain Master electric valve control in the lower right. We are SO pleased! |
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Our wet bay valve switches upper right. They light RED when valve is open, GREEN when valve is closed. |
The big day finally arrived. Four days were allotted to do the job. We had assembled our supplies and products, done our research, and purchased, what we thought, would be the correct ABS pipe to do the plumbing job. As they say... the road to hell is paved in good intentions.
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It begins... |
First we assembled what we envisioned would fit in the limited space to get the tanks joined. Nope, didn't fit. It was crucial to make sure that there was always a downhill-flow from one end of the tank system to the other. Easier said than done! Back to Home Depot. More pipe fittings. More swearing and sweating and dust eating. Back to Home Depot again... You know the drill. Day 1... Day 2... Day 3... Ugh.
Finally, we came up with our pipe conglomeration (which we called "the unit" with disdain). It was actually a simple design, and of course simple is best, wish we would have tried it FIRST. It fits in the space with nary a fraction of an inch to spare.
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"The Unit" |
Reminds me a little of heart surgery... only I would rather have done heart surgery. We both needed heart surgery a couple of times. And maybe diapers... but I digress.
Turns out that in retrospect, had we known what we do now, it wasn't difficult at all. The installation of the electric valves and the associated wiring and switches (We chose to have them located both in the wet-bay outside and inside the coach with our other controls for remote tank dumping while in a park) were simple to install. The installation instructions and resources from Drain Master are SUPERB and we didn't struggle at all. After installing them, they immediately worked exactly as they were supposed to. Imagine our relief!
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After installation. The two valves are side by side. You can see how little room for error there is! |
The valves are sturdy. Next to the cable-operated factory installed valves there is no comparison. These work flawlessly, and they are extremely strong. I wouldn't want my fingers to be in the way when they shut! This should end pesky black tank "dribbling" when toilet paper gets stuck in the blade. I cannot see that happening with these valves. We always used to dread the ugly "surprise" we usually got when opening the cap on our sewer system to hook up the hose. It leaked all the time, after taking the valve apart, it was easy to see why. ICK.
No more struggling with sticky, non-functioning levers! Hurray!!!
After getting everything installed and satisfying ourselves that it was all working properly (the proper word would be "gloriously") we began the arduous process of re-installing the Coroplast under belly. What a job that is. Definitely don't want to be doing any of that again any time soon! We took the opportunity to tend to any rusty spots and other items while we were in there. We were happy to see that things were in pretty good shape, if not sloppily thrown together by the factory. We did a lot of cord and hydraulic line tidying up while in there.
So, now we LOOK FORWARD to our next tank dumping chore! How's THAT for an improvement?
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