Being reasonably conservative with our water usage, we are able to last about 2 weeks in our trailer before our water tank is empty and the 2 holding tanks are full. We turn about 95 gallons of fresh water into about 45 gallons of grey and 45 gallons of black.
The last time we dumped the holding tanks and refilled the fresh water was last Monday when we moved from Imperial Dam to here. We plan to be here about 3 weeks so knew going in that we would have to dump at least once while here. As it would be a major undertaking to break camp, haul the trailer to a dump site (the closest is back at Imperial Dam), dump and then bring it back, I set up some portable tanks that we brought with us. For fresh water I have 2 15 gallon food safe barrels that I got from a beer making store back home along with 2 smaller 7.5 gallon water jugs. For the black and grey tank we acquired a 30 gallon plastic drum from a car wash that I have fitted with fittings to allow me to transfer waste water from the trailer to the drum and then dump when we get to a dump site.
As I am sure every one knows, sh#t won't flow uphill, which begs the question of how to get it from the holding tanks in the trailer up about 3 feet into the drum in the back of the truck.
Last summer we bought a macerator pump. This 12 volt pump hooks onto the trailers dump fitting and when running, chews everything up into a slurry and pumps it up through a 3/4" hose into the tank in the truck. 30 gallons of black and grey took maybe 5 minutes.
After that, I just hauled it to the dump station in town as I was going that way anyway. As the tank is only 30 gallons, I will have to make a second run sometime in the next week or so. Hopefully that should give us enough endurance to last until we head for Quartzsite after Christmas.
As for transferring the fresh water, I have a small 12 volt transfer pump that I use to pump the water out of the fresh water barrels into the trailers fresh water tank.
Otherwise, Chris has been doing a bunch more baking and I have been doing some hiking and general 'puttering' around the camp.
As I mentioned the other day, Tuesday mornings the local model club usually goes float flying. The location happens to be just around the corner from our camp. They do start early though; pretty much at dawn and only fly for a couple of hours.
Yesterday afternoon I dug out the Carbon Z Cub and got it ready and this morning packed it up and headed down to the lake. About 5 of the guys were there so I joined them and got in 3 nice flights. Everyone was all done and packed up by about 9:30.
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