Don't let leaky RV toilet problems ruin your road trip

One of the RVing lifestyle's greatest annoyances is toilet trouble. We depend on these humble appliances for so much, and since there's only one on board the average RV, when it has problems, everybody suffers.

Perhaps the most common complaint (aside from unwanted smells) is a leaking RV toilet. Drips from the terlit aren't only an annoyance; they can also lead to serious damage if not cured. But in the middle of an RV trip, who wants to shut down the entire household water supply and spend a few good hours crawling around on the floor, sticking your nose where no nose was really ever intended to go?

Having suffered RV toilet troubles too many times over the years, we decided enough was enough. Household plumbing designers automatically put in a trouble-stopper in every American bathroom for decades: It's the common shutoff valve, tied into every toilet water line around the country. Why can't RV designers give us the same break? Got a dripping RV toilet on the road? Simply reach down, turn off the stop-cock and eliminate the drip. Turn the valve on when you need to flush, take a few drips yes, but then shut the thing off until you can get to a place of repair.

Putting in a shut-off valve is a simple, inexpensive process. Most RVs are currently plumbed with that infamous grey or off-white tubing called PEX. It's easy to work with. You might consider copying our approach.

First, shut off the water pump and disconnect "city water." Locate the water supply line on your toilet and follow it down a few inches. For us, this meant cutting off a piece of PEX that came out of a stub wall behind the toilet. From there we simply added a "twist lock" style elbow fitting. The kind we used was from Lasco. To use it, you simply cut tubing square, twist the collar on the fitting to "unlock" the fitting, slip the tubing into the fitting, and shove the tubing in until it stops, then twist the collar the opposite direction to lock the tube into the coupler. No special tools, no leaks, no fuss. We used an elbow that allowed tubing in, with a male pipe thread on the other side.

With the new elbow in place we simply attached a short flexible plumbing supply line to male pipe thread, and from there, we attached a "straight stop" poly plumbing valve. On the other side, a flexible toilet supply line led to the toilet inlet.

Now if something goes wrong with the toilet, we simply reach down and shut the stop valve. It's a little more trouble, but it beats the daylights out of ruining a road trip by either having no water available anywhere in the rig, or taking the time and effort to fix the problem.