Keeping your powder -- er paper -- dry

Our first BIG RV, when we moved away from a teeny-tiny-truck-camper was an even BIGGER truck camper. Just what the dear-heart wanted: An air conditioner and a BATHROOM! No more porta-potty blues for her, no sir! But the big old camper had a big-old bathroom problem: Wet bath.

Yes, some RVs have a bathroom situated in such a way that you can sit on the pot and take a shower at the self-same time. For some, that's a mighty convenient thing, especially for those of us with bad knees or sore feet. But it does tend to create one unintended consequence. How do you keep those bathroom roll goods from turning into a pulpy mess, and useless for their intended purpose?

wackyvorlon on flickr.com

We've heard several ideas to try and resolve the soaking-toilet-roll issue. Some say, "Just stick the toilet paper outside the bathroom when you take your shower, and put it back inside when you're done." Now, admittedly that simple solution ought to do the trick. But I've found that along with bad knees and sore feet, sometimes comes a little disconnect in the upstairs department, too. Mister, it's called, "Got to REMEMEMBER to put the TP outside."

Others said they didn't have any trouble in that way; they simply put the TP roller just outside the bathroom door and left those roll-goods there permanent-like. Uh uh. You've never lived with "Mrs. Fastidious," or her mother, the one who said proudly that after decades of marriage, her husband had never seen her unclothed.

Other suggestions include the illustrious use of clever TP roll covers. Gallon freezer bags as an example. Or coffee cans. One backpacker noted, "Coffee cans are wonderful for keeping your important papers dry and ready for use under any outdoors weather condition. And they come in two flavors, European Roast and Gourmet Supreme.....er, I mean metal cans and plastic cans. The nice thing about the plastic Folgers can is the built-in handle for easy carrying."

We never did resolve the problem suitably. We just got a new rig with a dry bath.

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.