Why does your RV bathroom smell like a black tank? You may not realize it, but gray tank water can smell just as bad as black tank water. We had to leave the vent fan on 24/7 to keep the smell out. Smells in the RV are a no bueno. But today, I will share what we discovered by showing you three simple and cheap ways to eliminate RV tank odors forever. Plus, stick around until the end because I have a must-have cheap RV upgrade to help you eliminate your black tank odors.
Why does your RV bathroom smell like a black tank? Well, I got this quick tip from Jim over at Clean Tank on what to do, and no, it’s not a break somewhere in your black tank, which is what I thought it was. When I open up underneath the sink, it just reeks in here. I thought I had an issue with the black tank having a crack or something mechanically wrong. But I will go up on the RV’s roof, and we will do something quick to ensure it’s clear and venting correctly. That’s a little windy up here. I’m on the roof of our RV, and what I’m going to do is I’ve got this old water hose that’s only been used for gray water in the past, and I’m just simply going to take this, and we located the vent right here off of the main bathroom. It’s going to pop the cap off or off most of the way, and we’re just going to flush that out for about 60 seconds, like whatever is in there. You can get wasp nests, and just stuff build up in there that something might be blocking, you know, that odor from coming out, and that’s why it’s going into the bathroom and smelling terrible. So, let’s give it a shot. Oops, all right, here we go. Pop the cap back on here. There we go; let’s see if that did the trick. Still smells in here. We’ll turn the fan on, give it a few minutes to vent, and then check to see if the smell is out of there and completely disappears.
The solution didn’t work for this smell. The smell is like half of the battle, but that tip will help you eliminate some clogs in your black tank vents. So, keep that in mind if you’re having an issue. But is this particular smell that we have coming from our black tank? I thought we had an issue with our black tank. I started noticing a smell in the bathroom that reminded me of a problem in our previous RV when the black tank leaked. As I was figuring out what it was, it seemed like it would get worse when we shower, and the gray tank would fill up. Then, opening up the cabinet down here would eliminate the stench. We had to leave the vent fan on 24/7 to keep the smell out. There is a valve down here. We’ll get a light in here and show it to you. That little valve is a part of this system below your sink. You may not realize it, but gray tank water can smell just as bad as black tank water. The air admittance valve is similar to or the same thing as what you would have in Sticks and Bricks, but it helps to make this system work together. It stops your P-trap from emptying completely, like from the suction or a siphon when running water through it. In my understanding of it, it just keeps the pressure equalized. The point is, it goes bad even though this RV isn’t that old. So the cool thing about it is you can pop it off by hand; it doesn’t require any tools, and you can find a spare one like this one here on Amazon. And these are not very expensive. So I will pop this thing off, get a new one, and see if this smell disappears.
As a temporary fix, we’re going to put a plastic bag over that with a rubber band, and you could do that as well if you have to get this on order and wait for it for a little bit. Putting a plastic bag with a rubber band around it might help keep the smell down. There we go; that will help stop the stench from returning to the RV. All right, got the new one right here, and we’ll take this bag off. It helped with the smell a little bit. There we go and cross our fingers that it won’t smell in here anymore in the morning. Yes, it’s been about 24 hours since we did this, and no more smells. So again, this was a cheap fix, about ten dollars for that part.
But what if your tank fumes in your bathroom? What do you do then? Well, I’ve got a simple, cheap, and must-have upgrade that we will share right now, and Dave, the RV Tech, is back to help us with this. We will swap out the old black tank vents and put them in the Lippert siphon vent. Yeah, these are awesome; they use even a slight breeze like we have today to help vacuum suck out those fumes and eliminate them from your RV. Also, there’s a built-in screen, so bugs can’t get there. So, let’s get those installed.
Have you ever run watered-down these to unclog them? Yes. Okay, I just did that over there when I was trying to troubleshoot that smell from the air from the air admittance valve. That’s pretty neat. Look at that screw. Oh my gosh, this wasn’t a covet build; this was 2019. You never know what you’ll find when you remove the sealant. Yeah, well, we’ll see if these 360 siphons are all cracked up to all the hype that everybody raves about them.
What are you putting at the bottom of this? Is butyl? Oh, that’s the butyl. Okay, so that seals it from the other side? Yes, okay, another layer of protection, I guess. Oh, there’s nothing there. That’s probably why that screw wasn’t sucked down. Just put it in an angle, huh? I’m going to try to get a hold of something. Nope, now there’s a hole right there, not some of the other six holes. We’ll just goop it on there well with sealant. Okay, I’ll try and run a screw in right there. Just maybe stab myself. I will use up some of that stuff with this chop. It’ll be sealed.
I don’t like digging at that stuff on the roof; sometimes you have to, but if you don’t have to poke around with a sharp object on your rubber membrane, you want that on there. What’s that going to do? That covers the screws, but I guess we don’t need it, right? I pretty much covered the screws with all that. Yeah, in this course, there. That makes it too high; you said this piece right here. I’ll probably cut that off. Another Milwaukee tool to the rescue, huh? Oh, I love that thing. Yeah, that’s handy. I’ve never seen one of those before. If you’re plumbing under a sink or something, you can turn that blade sideways.
I’m going to put some self-leveling on there. Okay, because I don’t want to, it pops on. It does, and it probably would never go anywhere, but now I know it’s not going. Does it look like these with that thing right there would be less likely to have bugs and stuff go in their drop, or do those have a? Oh, these are wide open; they just wide open. So okay, all right. I grabbed a water hose and flushed it down there for about a minute on somebody’s recommendation. Yeah, that works well. So if anything is stuck there, it’ll push it down into the tank.
Eradicating RV tank odors is easier than you think! Replace faulty air admittance valves, clear vent clogs with a water hose, and upgrade Lippert’s breeze-powered siphon vents for long-term freshness.