It was a Saturday, and if you were picturing us out exploring somewhere, that is not what this weekend was. Nathan was on the waste tanks. Fabiola was on the laundry. Neither job went the way it was supposed to.
We were parked at Nathan's parents' place, which is one of the better problems to have, and we are genuinely grateful for the spot. It also means no sewer hookup. This is the part of RV life nobody puts in the highlight reel, so here is the whole thing, including the bit where a pump we needed simply refused to turn on.
Why moochdocking meant moving the waste ourselves
Some people who moochdock can tie into a cleanout at the house. We could not. The property is on a septic tank, it sits well away from where we are parked, and we were not about to start guessing at somebody else's system. It is not our house.
So the tanks had to go to the tourist park down the road instead, which means the macerator pump, the hoses, the shut off valves, and a portable tank. We had not run this setup in about a year, so there was a solid minute of standing there trying to remember which hose connects to which and which valve stays closed.
For the record, Nathan wore actual shoes and gloves this time. Plenty of you commented about the flip flops last time. Message received.
The macerator had power and still would not run
We got everything connected, opened the valves, checked for leaks, and found none. Then we hit the switch and nothing happened.
The obvious suspect is power, so we worked through it. The pump was plugged in. The green light on the inside panel was lit. We reseated the connection at both ends. We even moved the plug to the truck and started the engine to rule out the outlet entirely. Green light, still nothing. Whatever was wrong, it was not the electrical supply.
That is a frustrating place to end up, because ruling something out does not fix anything. But it does tell you where to stop looking.
The fix was turning the impeller by hand
There is a cap on the back of the macerator, and behind it is the shaft that drives the blade inside. Unscrew it and you can rotate that blade manually with a screwdriver.
Nathan tried it, felt it move a little, and decided it had not helped. That was the mistake. A video we pulled up said to keep going and rotate it all the way around, not just nudge it. With a longer screwdriver that could actually get purchase, he turned it a lot further, and the motor caught and ran.
So it was seized, not dead. Something in there had stiffened up enough that the motor could not break it loose on its own, but once the shaft was turned by hand the pump was fine.
If your macerator hums at you or does nothing at all and you have already confirmed it has power, try this before you buy a new one. We were minutes away from ordering a replacement we did not need.
It kept seizing, so we tried a drill
The catch is that it did not stay fixed. Every so often the pump would stop and Nathan would go back with the screwdriver, spin the shaft again, and it would decide to work for another while. We got the kitchen tank done, then the black tank, that way.
The kitchen tank came out much cleaner than last time, which we are putting down to not waiting 14 days to deal with it.
Somewhere in there we had the idea of chucking the drill onto that shaft instead of turning it by hand. Good idea, except we own a drill and zero drill bits, and nothing to adapt it to the shaft. Which is how the hardware store entered this story.
The store run, and then a second problem
Nathan went to Lowe's for bits. He came back with bits, plus a drill accessory set, plus a pair of DeWalt knee pads that cost $22 and were absolutely not on the list. Fabiola, who was already frustrated that the day had eaten her laundry window, had a fair point about the timing of it.
Lesson recorded: if you and your husband are going to have a disagreement about the schedule, do not have it immediately before sending him to a hardware store alone.
Then the day got worse. We think we blew a fuse. The converter stopped showing a light at all, and the pump would not run even with the manual trick. Back to Lowe's, where we learned that nobody there stocks RV parts and nobody on the floor had heard the word macerator. To be fair, why would they.
We ended up ordering a replacement cable from Amazon rather than a whole new pump, since everything pointed at the power side rather than the motor. It was not going to arrive that day, so the shower tank did not get dumped in this video. It was only about a third full, so we were fine. The kitchen and black tanks were the ones that mattered and both of those got done.
Day two, and the drawer nobody had opened in weeks
The next morning Fabiola finally got to reorganize a drawer she had been ignoring. On some travel day a while back she had stashed a container of fruit in there, out of sight, and then never took it out.
It was an apple. It had been an apple for quite a while. There was mold, there was a pair of goggles used as an improvised scoop, and there was a fair amount of screaming. Take the lesson: do not store fruit anywhere you cannot see it.
The same drawer turned up a s'mores kit from our first winter in Florida. The marshmallows were ten months past their date, the chocolate a year. Nathan ate a marshmallow and reported that he likes them stale. We bought that kit before we owned a fire pit, which explains a lot.
The most expensive laundry we have ever done
Fabiola finally got to the laundromat on day two, and the first one was a bust because the truck would not fit between the parked cars. The second one worked.
Then the prices. Four washers at $4.50, $7.50, $10.50 and $10.50, which is $33. Three dryers at $3, $3 and $2 on top. Forty one dollars to do laundry in a small town, and we still do not really understand why a single machine costs over ten dollars there.
It also took the whole afternoon. That is the part that is easy to forget when you are planning a day around chores that would take an hour at a house.
What we would tell you
Two things stuck with us from this one.
The first is practical. A macerator that has power and will not spin is very often just seized, and the manual turn on the back of the unit is a real repair, not a trick. Turn it further than feels reasonable.
The second is the bit Fabiola said while we were standing there watching a pump not work. When a project starts going sideways it is easy to spiral about what it is going to cost and what you will do now. Do the research, stay calm, and you usually figure it out. We have had enough of these days now to believe it.
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