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    Setting Up Camp waustx's Avatar
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    Apr 2017
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    Clevelandi, TX
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    Waste holding tanks severely bowed on the bottom

    So, I, like many others accumulated many gallons of water above the cloroplast in my 2016 376TH because we got caught in a torrential downpour at the end of the 2nd to last day of our trip back home. The next day we managed to travel the last 300 miles to home with severely sagging cloroplast that was actually pulled loose from the frame in a couple of spots. I decided to remove the cloroplast completely and found several of the pieces of insulation were soaked.

    After getting the cloroplast off and pulled out from under the RV, I decided to closely survey the underside of the coach to see how everything is routed / located. Of particular interest was how the wast holding tanks were mounted because of the posts I've seen regarding tanks falling off the mounting and my own experience of feeling that there was still something in the tanks even after draining. The tanks are all mounted, like others have mentioned, by hanging the lip at the top of the tank over the top of frame cross-members on each side of the tank. I noticed that all three tanks had a 1" by 2" tube steel support under the bottom that was bolted to the I beams on each side of the RV, but they were mounted only a few inches from one side of the tank and not more centered like you might assume.

    Even though I emptied the tanks before traveling home, when I push up on the bottoms of the tanks, it is obvious from the sound and feel that I am pushing up about 5 to 10 gallons of liquid. The bottoms of the tanks are bowed so severely that they appear to be about 1" to 2" below the edges of the tank and well below the drain hole at the end of the tank. That explains why they don't drain completely.

    Sorry to draw this out so long, but I'm finally going to get to my question: Is there any reason I shouldn't move the tube steel beams under the tanks to the center (or as close to the center as possible without interfering with access to anything) and actually angle it to match the tank's original slope so that it removes that bow in the bottom and allows the tanks to return to their original shape and to drain more completely? Is it bad to support the tanks down the center line of the tanks? The supports are already under part of the electric heaters on the tanks and I can't imagine that there will be enough movement to cause any serious wear on the tank.

    Here are a couple of PDFs with pictures and notes:
    Click image for larger version. 

Name:	Tank Support.pdf 
Views:	19 
Size:	184.7 KB 
ID:	22815Click image for larger version. 

Name:	Tank Sag.pdf 
Views:	15 
Size:	166.4 KB 
ID:	22814
    Last edited by waustx; 09-27-2019 at 08:57 AM. Reason: Corrections / add attachments

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