Water everywhere

Hi
we are away at the moment, and have a problem with the wash room sink drainage, the water is coming up into the shower tray from the sink. there appears to be no  blockage. Has anyone got any ideas . Thanks

Waste tank full up?

Parked on a slope?

PB

Sounds a bit like it, thought the waste alarm should be lit....... Not something like an airlock, is it? Always used to have drainage problem with the last van (Lunar) but not this one

Thanks for your quick replies, the waste tank is empty, so it could be an air lock . Dumb question now how do we get rid of an air lock ?

It could have been some sort of blockage as well. Put plugs in the shower tray drains. Fill kitchen sink full of water. Open kitchen sick plug and hope that gravity does the rest. That is they we cleared them in the Lunar. Never had the problem with the broadway though.

No doubt someone will be along shortly with a much better idea

We had this sort of problem with our Lancashire EK.  It is actually a design fault but can be solved fairly easily and cheaply - our dealer did it FOC. But it never happened with an empty tank.

Under the van you will find (if the arrangements are the same as ours) three pipes that go into the waste tank on the offside and one on the nearside. They all enter the side of the tank, rather than the top. The one on the nearside is from the kitchen sink and so there is no problem with backflow but three can be a smell problem which can be cured by fitting a trap (see later for source).  On the offside one of the pipes leads to a Y connector and serves two of the three outlets in the floor of the toilet compartment. Another deals with waste from the 3rd of those outlets while the 3rd is from the sink. The sink will benefit from a smell trap while the other two must have non return valves fitted.  The traps are available from CAK tanks and are part number WD1425G and you will need an adaptor WD1323 for one end. The supaflex hose fits onto the adaptor, the adaptor onto the trap and the trap fits onto the outside of the tank inlet spigot, all push fit.  The non return valves are also from CAK - WLV1215.  This time the valve fits onto the inside of the tank spigot and you need a short length of 25mm pipe to adapt the other end to the supaflex hose which is too big to fit over the valve connection. Ask CAK for advice on this - they may have an adaptor.

The problem that we had was waste water coming up into the shower tray on journeys with its attendant smell when the tank had more than a small quantity in it. I believe that it comes up on left hand corners when the waste water will rush to the offside of the van and up into the tray with no impediment.  You van stop it by leaving the plugs in but that is not a real solution. The smells are made worse because the tank outlet is about an inch from the bottom of the tank, so it never fully drains at the emptying point.  I have solved that by leaving the drain tap open en route when cornering does the job.  You need to mark one end of the drain tap so that you can see if it is open when you get on site, though, so as not to pollute the pitch. 

I do find it surprising that A/S don't fit the traps and valves as standard. The downside is that periodically they will clog with crud and hair and will need to be unclogged to maintain flow.  That is very easy with the traps as they have a removable bowl but the non return valves will need to be taken off for reverse flushing.

If A/S put the waste pipes into the top of the tank somewhere in the middle then the surges would only occur when the tank is nearly full.  The situation is not helped by the absence of a 50%full indicator which the Sargent supports but which A/S choose not to implement, as they use a float gauge and maintain that the stud type as sued for fresh water tank corrode badly in the waste tank.

I hope that helps.

As an afterthought check that the Y connector is not fed from the sink and one shower outlet. If it is then swap pipes around (or get the dealer to do it) so that the Y is from two low level outlets.  However I would be surprised if they have done that wrong.

Is there a split in the pipe inside the vanity cupboard under the sink. If its leaking there it will run into the shower tray. I'm lucky mine split just when it comes out from under the van floor by the back wheel. Easy to fix with standard caravan waste pipe £2 per metre you need 2 metres to do the job. Jim

Thank you all for your replies, all very helpfull espcially inspiredron could not get a more comprehensive reply from a dealer:hugegrins: . When we bought the van there was a smell in the washroom area, we thought it was the tank so we gave it a good flush out and the smell went. When we get home we will look at it more thoroughly, thank you have been a great help we are still learning ,Kevin and Hazel

It sounds to me that the van was not level.

As mentioned the waste pipe runs all feed to the tank via various junctions and manifolds but all the waste pipes are much on the same plane so, depending on the layout of the van, it is easy for water to run from one waste outlet to another instead of the tank if the the van is not level.

Peter

Today I was able to take a photo of the waste arrangements on our Lancashire as they are now:


This is how they were on delivery:



On our van there is no possibility of the sink waste coming up into the shower tray unless the waste tank is hugely overfull. 
The outer two of the three entries into the tank serve the shower tray, those with the Y piece being the two outlets nearest the kitchen and the other serving the outlet near the side wall of the van while the middle pipe comes from the bathroom sink. The middle one has the smell trap and the other two have the non-return valves.
The kitchen sink enters the tank at the nearside end.

Just to let you all know we are now sorted. When we got home we looked under the van and noticed that a clip had come of the bathroom wastepipe,which had dropped making a u shape and not allowing the water to go to the waste tank. Thanks for everyones help again 

I had a similar problem once when the waste pipe came off the sink waste fitting because there was insufficient slack to allow the shower wall to pivot without pulling it. Water ran down inside the pivoting wall and into the shower tray. Luckily I was able to get enough ease to fix it