RV Dump & Gen Exhaust Lines

[EPaulikonis]

Heartland may want to take a closer look at the height and placement of both the waste dump line and the generator exhaust. I just returned to Ohio from a trip to Daytona, FL this past week. We hit a lot of snow coming back home and the conditions were getting worse as we moved north. I ended up hitting a piece of hard-packed snow, more like ice since the temp was -7F, that bent the exhaust pipe up, tore off the sewer line at the "Y" coupler to the double tanks and breaking the smaller line that fed into the bottom elbow, and that whole assembly flipped up and dented the metal skirt on the driver's side of the rig. Only good news was the tanks were empty and it didn't damage any of the valve assemblies.

Outside of clearance for road hazards, we also had an issue at a Flying J dump station in GA. The ground was flat where the rig was parked, but the opening for the dump tank connection was elevated ~6" and there was a 4" curb around the opening to create the dump reservoir. I basically had to massage the hose to get all the waste into the tank and it took much longer to get the tanks empty.

Just figure there's plenty of clearance available to come up with a different configuration that may provide more clearance in the future.

 

[jbeletti]

Eric - sorry to hear about the recent issues with your unit.

Please note that there must be sufficient pitch on the waste lines to have decent downhill flow of waste. Perhaps there is more pitch than is needed. When you have rebuilt yours, please circle back here to update this thread on how much you feel you were able to raise yours and still get an effective flow.

As for the generator exhaust pipe, on my unit, there are sort flex brackets that attach the pipe to the underbelly. The pipe is probably less than 2 inches from the underbelly. For me, I don't think I'd want it closer. A good case in point is a friend who has a new Landmark. His exhaust pipe melted the plastic underbelly from being too close. I think in his case, he's missing a bracket that allowed a portion of the pipe to get closer to the underbelly. But the point remains - be really careful on how much you raise this pipe. Consider changing the plastic underbelly out to metal to be a better heat shield "if" you end up moving your pipe higher.

 

[EPaulikonis]

Thanks Jim. I was pretty bummed out, but thankful it's a minor issue. Didn't really have an option to hold tight until the weather broke as I had to be back to work by Thursday. Live and learn I guess.

Probably going to be a few weeks before I can get into the fix. I have the trailer heading to a local repair shop on Sunday for some warranty work on a hydraulic line leak and a light switch fix and the weather here in Dayton, OH isn't supposed to break anytime in the near future according to the forecast. The service manager, Josh, from Dave Arbogast expects warranty work to take ~3 weeks based on approval times from Heartland. I asked the shop to quote waste line repair, but fully expect it to be a ridiculous amount and I'll end up doing the repair myself.

I do have the trailer housed in a large garage, so I'll probably get a torpedo heater and the creeper out to drop the underbelly and see what the layout looks like. I'm not sure I'll be able to raise the sewer lines, but I'll definitely take a look and make upward adjustments where possible. I will also take a closer look at the generator exhaust line, but melting the underbelly was a concern. I'll follow up with photos of the repairs if I end up doing them myself.

 

[jbeletti]

Eric - sounds like a plan. Look forward to seeing your repairs and learning from it.

Bear in mind too that what happened while you were traveling was a road hazard that should be covered by insurance should you want to file a claim and eat the deductible.

Jim

 

[Jim.Allison]

You can buy different down tubes for the ONAN. The pipe only needs to clear the rig by one inch. I'm certain that heartland installs them this way, but aftermarket installers tend to misinterpret the installation instructions and use a down tube that is too long.

BTW; this is an insurance claim.

Heartland may want to take a closer look at the height and placement of both the waste dump line and the generator exhaust. I just returned to Ohio from a trip to Daytona, FL this past week. We hit a lot of snow coming back home and the conditions were getting worse as we moved north. I ended up hitting a piece of hard-packed snow, more like ice since the temp was -7F, that bent the exhaust pipe up, tore off the sewer line at the "Y" coupler to the double tanks and breaking the smaller line that fed into the bottom elbow, and that whole assembly flipped up and dented the metal skirt on the driver's side of the rig. Only good news was the tanks were empty and it didn't damage any of the valve assemblies.

Outside of clearance for road hazards, we also had an issue at a Flying J dump station in GA. The ground was flat where the rig was parked, but the opening for the dump tank connection was elevated ~6" and there was a 4" curb around the opening to create the dump reservoir. I basically had to massage the hose to get all the waste into the tank and it took much longer to get the tanks empty.

Just figure there's plenty of clearance available to come up with a different configuration that may provide more clearance in the future.

 

[akf15e]

I also feel the outlet for the dump is very low. In fact, while I was shopping for a new fifth wheel this winter I noticed the Landmarks looked much lower than any other brand, especially the SOB I was about to trade in. It was so noticeable that I even asked a couple of salesmen if anyone had reported any problems with either flow or damage. The 365's looked even lower and I remarked that it looked like it could be torn off by a road hazard. Not sure what other brands are doing to get their "stuff" to flow without problem, but HL may want to take a look. We've only had one night in the new rig so far, but it required the massaging that Eric describes, and that wasn't even a very high sewer opening.

 

[danemayer]

The wheels on our Landmark are right behind the sewer outlet. I'd think if my sewer outlet was damaged by a road hazard, it would be large enough that the tires would likely also be damaged.

Eric, did the block of ice you hit do anything to your wheels or tires or suspension?

 

[EPaulikonis]

No damage to the hydraulic jack, tires, or suspension that I'm aware of and I checked the best I could while on the road. We finished off a 4-hour drive the morning after the incident. Don't know if the ice/hard packed snow was deflected by the generator exhaust line or what. The exhaust line was bent in toward the center of the trailer and upward and the 90 degree portion was also bent to something greater than 90. I'm just thankful we were slowing down as this happened and it didn't damage more than the sheet metal and the pipes.

As for insurance, I'm going to hold off on filing until I have a better idea of the total cost. Sheet metal can be massaged to look presentable and I can do the plumbing myself if the shop quote is too high. Just can't see filing a claim and paying the deductible when I can fix it in a few hours time and only spend a couple hundred bucks. RV was just dropped off at the shop on Saturday, so I'm in a holding pattern for now.

Also want to thank Butch for echoing on clearance. Thought I was the only one who'd thought the clearance to be an issue.

 

[Jim.Allison]

There is probably no deductible on comprehensive. You can go pay $100 for an estimate and ask the insurance to pay you directly. Damaged fender is worth about $1000 and your generator and sewer is worth another $500. Even if you had a deductible you are leaving a grand on the table. If you are worried about a rate increase, don't! Comprehensive claims rarely cause an increase in premiums.

No damage to the hydraulic jack, tires, or suspension that I'm aware of and I checked the best I could while on the road. We finished off a 4-hour drive the morning after the incident. Don't know if the ice/hard packed snow was deflected by the generator exhaust line or what. The exhaust line was bent in toward the center of the trailer and upward and the 90 degree portion was also bent to something greater than 90. I'm just thankful we were slowing down as this happened and it didn't damage more than the sheet metal and the pipes.

As for insurance, I'm going to hold off on filing until I have a better idea of the total cost. Sheet metal can be massaged to look presentable and I can do the plumbing myself if the shop quote is too high. Just can't see filing a claim and paying the deductible when I can fix it in a few hours time and only spend a couple hundred bucks. RV was just dropped off at the shop on Saturday, so I'm in a holding pattern for now.

Also want to thank Butch for echoing on clearance. Thought I was the only one who'd thought the clearance to be an issue.

 

[EPaulikonis]

Decided to let the shop do the work since weather is still too cold for me to do the work outside and time is short until my next trip. Total cost for fix was ~$1,000 which aligns with my deductible, so no insurance claim.

Service center had much of the bottom liner removed to fix a warranty item (hydraulic leak; line ruptured to middle curb-side jack), so I had them do the service on the dump line while they had it apart. Didn't appear there was enough room to splice going into the "Y" piece that broke between the two tanks, so they re-plumbed the entire drop from that section. They did splice into the other smaller line that broke coming from the forward tank. No change in clearance at this point because they had to align everything with the run coming from the front tank.

 

[Jim.Allison]

Wow was that a collision claim or comprehensive?

 

[EPaulikonis]

No difference the way the policy is set up as both collision and comprehensive have the same deductible. This was a planned budgetary item and I do keep emergency surplus to handle the deductible(s) along with our routine camper maintenance fund.

 

[jbeletti]

Eric - happy to hear you got your coach repairs completed. So you're saying they were not able to give you more road clearance to the bottom of the sewer outlet. Did you get to see the forward tank when the underbelly was off? If so, did it look like there would be a way for Heartland to improve their design to have sufficient fall yet raise the sewer outlet?

Now that I have my LM 365 Ashland I have some initial observations. I had MORryde IS installed and lowered my coach by about 2". Lowering the coach was my goal. They used heavy wall 2" tube stock for the riser between my frame and the suspension system.

Before IS, when I looked at the sewer outlet, I didn't feel it was any lower than our normal height. What I did find as a potential issue was the generator exhaust pipe. I believe it's a bit too low. Even lower than the sewer outlet. I believe I'll need to raise this a bit. Should be a lot easier to do that raising the sewer outlet.

 

[EPaulikonis]

Jim - I was out of town the week the trailer was in the shop, so I did not get to see the tanks when they were exposed. The shop technician did not attempt to raise the outlet because they only repaired the line from the front tank. Had I been there during the process, I would have pushed to have them completely redo that line as well if I thought they could change the geometry of the line at all.

I'm assuming it's all a function of linear distance on a Landmark that causes the connection point to be so low. I was surprised to see a Big Horn in the shop at the same time, and I kept going between my Landmark and the Big Horn comparing the sewer pipes. The Big Horn's sewer piping was much higher, I'd guess by 3-5" at the outlet without measuring. One difference I did notice was the Big Horn had pipes that ran toward the front of the coach, so both the front and mid-coach tank had a line that paralleled the ground and the outlet was further forward on the coach. If Heartland took this approach on the Landmark, I'd venture a guess they could raise the line at least 2". I've added a crude drawing with current pipe flow in red and suggested pipe layout in green.

 

[jmgratz]

I did raise our sewer line by about 2 inches. There were very low, so much so that most of the time the rig sewer line was lower than most of the parks connections. I was afraid of it getting knocked off by road hazards. I could see no reason for it to be that low and the contents of the tanks flow just fine after it being raised. It was a simple matter of cutting the excess out and connecting the pipes back together. If you have ever worked with PVC you can do it yourself.

 

[jbeletti]

I did raise our sewer line by about 2 inches. There were very low, so much so that most of the time the rig sewer line was lower than most of the parks connections. I was afraid of it getting knocked off by road hazards. I could see no reason for it to be that low and the contents of the tanks flow just fine after it being raised. It was a simple matter of cutting the excess out and connecting the pipes back together. If you have ever worked with PVC you can do it yourself.

Thanks for sharing Jim. Nice to hear from someone who's done it.

I was able to shorten and raise my generator exhaust today (link) but I don't see how I can raise my sewer outlet (see image below - note that generator exhaust is in the original location here, not the new location). Each floor plan is different. Yes, there is a length of vertical 3" line that could be shortened but the 1.5" gray line connecting into the 3" is outside of and below the drop-frame section. Only if I could relocate that 1.5" line and make it come "out of" the drop-frame section, could I raise the rest. My guess is there's 2 tanks stacked inside that drop frame section. If this ever becomes a problem for me, I will drop that section of underbelly and scope out the situation.

 

[cookie]

Let's tear it apart next week.

Peace
Dave

 

[jbeletti]

Let's tear it apart next week.

Peace
Dave

I'm actually okay with the sewer outlet height "for now" Time will tell if it's right for me. I have bubbled this up to the plant to see if they can improve this. See you in LA!

 

[EPaulikonis]

Thanks for taking it up to the plant Jim. Hopeful they'll modify the layout to provide more clearance in the future.

I'm actually okay with the sewer outlet height "for now" Time will tell if it's right for me. I have bubbled this up to the plant to see if they can improve this. See you in LA!