Today we want to talk briefly about RV tank sensors and a tip that we have for you
as an alternate option if your tank sensors aren't working properly. As a lot of RVers know,
the tank sensors in your black, gray, and or water tanks can work just fine, or they work one day and
not the next, or they completely stop working accurately at all over time. So what can you do
if your tank sensors stop working accurately? If you take a look at our control panel here, we have
controls to check our water, black, and two gray tanks. Gray tank number one in our rig is for the
shower, the sink, and the washer in the master bedroom. Gray tank number two is for the kitchen,
which typically would just be the kitchen sink, but in our rig we've installed the RV
dishwasher so all the water from that flows into gray tank number two for us as well.
And we have been having problems with our sensors. Problems with tank sensors can
be for many reasons. They can gum up for things like waste and toilet paper in your black tank,
soap scum and other debris in your gray tanks, mineral buildup in your water tanks or other
tanks, or the sensors themselves just fail over time. All of that can cause you to press one of
these buttons and you know that that reading isn't entirely accurate. This can happen even if you're
doing things like using toilet paper that breaks down easily, consistently doing your black tank
flushes, using water filters, and periodically doing tank treatments against buildup and residue,
as some examples. So Kevin is going to take you outside and show you what we've been doing
to get a lot more information on how much water we have coming in and is being used
by us in the rig so we know what we have left and how much we've been filling up our tanks.
So here we are on the driver's side of the RV. Our water compartment is right inside here.
So the hack that works so well for us, is that we have two water flow meters. The first one just
goes right on the water spigot and then goes to our hose that then goes to the water fill.
And that is super helpful for knowing exactly how much water we have put into our fresh water tank.
If I know I'm only going to be out boondocking for a couple of days, to save on weight
we'll only add 20 or 30 gallons. Or if I want to fill it up all the way, it tells me within a
tenth of a gallon how full the water is getting because I know we have a 65 gallon water tank,
and that keeps me from overflowing it when I'm filling it. The other nice thing about
the hose flow meter is that, let's say you're at a campground that doesn't have a sewer hookup, you
could leave this connected at the water faucet and then you'd know exactly how much water you've put
into your RV so you know you'd be getting close to maybe filling up a gray water tank if you've used
40 gallons or 50 gallons of water. So the second water flow meter, has a readout right here, but
it's actually connected to the inlet to our water pump behind the wall. So that tells us exactly how
much water we have used. You can set that up to 999 gallons if you want to. For us we set it to
60 gallons because we have a 65 gallon fresh water tank so that when it gets to zero every
time water continues to run through it it beeps at you to let you know that you're getting low.
So that's what it sounds like when we're getting low. Now we know it's time to go fill water.
So when you buy that it comes in two parts. You get the readout there and there's a cable that
goes to the flow meter itself. The install is pretty easy. I just took the water hose off the
inlet to the pump and then that hose just threads right onto the flow meter itself. From there
I bought a food grade stainless steel adapter that goes on the other end of the flow meter to
the inlet to the pump. So with the flow meter on the inlet to the pump, all of the water that you
use while you're using your pump flows through the flow meter first so you know how much you're
using. So another nice thing about the water flow meter that goes on the inlet to your pump
is you can actually put this read up pretty much anywhere you want. The cable is only so long,
so just for the sake of ease I put it right here and that just, it makes it easy for me to check
it every time I come out in the morning with the dog. I had originally thought that maybe I would
extend this cable and run it up into the bathroom so we could see it from the inside of the RV,
but this was pretty convenient and I come out with a dog every morning anyway. Christine will
tell you more about how much that comes in handy inside. So the two of these combined is super
helpful because I know exactly how much water I put in, and then I can know exactly how much
water we have used. And because we have a lot more waste water capacity than fresh water capacity,
I never worry about overfilling one of my waste water tanks while we're boondocking.
There are more expensive setups that you can buy so you know exactly how much water you have in
all of your waste tanks and your freshwater tanks. We chose this because it was relatively
inexpensive and pretty easy. So this one was a really easy buy right off of Amazon. The other
one comes from flows.com and we'll have links to both of them in the description below. So as Kevin
showed you outside, we have those two flow meters. He'll tell me how much water he filled through the
first flow meter as our starting point and when he takes a look at that second flow meter every day
he'll periodically let me know where we're at as we draw down on that through water usage
washing hands here in the bathroom and other uses throughout the rig. But a neat bonus is that when
that second flow meter starts counting down and we're about five gallons out from being empty,
it'll start beeping the way Kevin showed you outside and I can hear that same
beeping from here in the bathroom because it's right underneath us in the cargo bay.
Now it's pretty faint and you can't hear it on camera so we won't show that to you again
but it's audible to us and it's a really great heads-up. Then we know,
hey we better be even more conservative with our water right now or get ready to dump and
refill or head to a full hookup location. So this trick is most applicable to us for boondocking
but it comes in handy in campgrounds as well. It's better than not having working tank sensors at all
or it only telling you empty or full. That's kind of been our experience. It's kind of those interim
stages that don't function, like the two-thirds, or it's totally wrong, tells you full when it's
empty, tells you empty when it's full. So for us it's nice to know no matter what we at least have
some form of knowing how much water we're using, how much we have left, and are we getting
near the point where we need to be concerned about our tanks being full.
For me it also gives me more granularity. It's not just one-third, two-thirds, full.
It's down to the gallon, you know when we go out and look at the flow meter. So that's nice. Kevin
will tell me periodically what that is or I'll ask so then if, if we are boondocking,
I know do we have enough water left based on how much longer we're staying here for us to get
another quick shower in, can I do the dishes that we have or should I just stick them in the sink
until we get to the next place if we are coming up on full hookups. And that's about it. We didn't
want to drag this on longer than necessary so it's a shorter video today. We'll be back on
Sunday with the continuation of our travels and our story with getting our RV repaired. So we hope
you check back on that. If you have any questions about how we use the flow meters and how it works
for us and if it might be something that could benefit you as well, leave us a comment below
and we'll get back to you. See you next time. If you like our content, make sure to subscribe, and
hit the notification bell so you're notified the next time we release a travel video. See you soon.