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Thursday, May 12, 2011 - Lafayette IN

Lazy Daze Torn Apart Bathroom, May 13, 2011
Lazy Daze Torn Apart Bathroom, May 13, 2011

Oh shit... part 5

See Monday's, Tuesday's and Wednesdays's posts for parts 1, 2, 3 and 4 of this messy story.

After cogitating overnight I decided not to drop the tank and attempt the plastic weld repair. Right now I have a tank that functions, at least in a limited way, and there is the risk that the welding will make things worse, or that something unforeseen goes awry, leaving me with no usable black tank and no easy way to get a new one out here any time soon. That's not a spot I want to find myself in.

Before leaving the campground this morning I did a thorough dump & rinse with the macerator pump to see if I could get the rest of the stuff out of the tank. As I thought there was a lot of stuff still in the tank - now the gage reads 0 as it should.

Maybe I should rethink this whole black waste management system in light of my thought coming out of the brutal hard freeze last winter in San Antonio NM that I'd like to make this RV more resilient, more easily managed in extreme conditions. Able to remain livable longer and more comfortably without power hookups. Or during a power outage.

There are several ways I might deal with human waste - here are the first that come to mind:

  1. Use the original system with a repaired tank.
  2. Use the original system with a new tank from Lazy Daze.
  3. Install a composting toilet.
  4. Install a marine toilet discharging into to a new standard size black tank with a hand pump.

Night camp

Wal-Mart Supercenter in Lafayette IN

Walmart Supercenter Store #1547, 4205 Commerce Dr, Lafayette, IN 47905 - (765) 446-0100

More Toward Realism than Fantasy

I've always been drawn more toward realism than fantasy, because it seems to me that realism is endlessly interesting and finally indeterminable. Realism is a species of fantasy that's much more integrated and hard-core than fantasy itself, but if you are ready to come to grips with the inevitable slipperiness of most available facts, you come to recognize that realism is not a direct approach to the truth so much as it is the most concentrated form of fantasy.

Birds and Lions, Norman Mailer, the New Yorker, December 23 & 30, 2002

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