May 3 - May 12
Hilton Head Island Motor Coach Resort - Hilton Head Island, SC -
addendum
While we thoroughly enjoyed our stay at this resort, we
encountered an unexpected anomaly.
When we went to setup on our site, we found the sewer
connection terminated with the typical 4-inch PVC female cleanout. However, when trying to connect our sewer
hose, which is terminated with the typical 4-inch male cleanout, we could not
make a secure connection. The resort’s
4-inch PVC female cleanout was actually about a half-inch beneath the grade of
the surrounding cement pad.
 |
|
Sewer connection below grade
|
Since the typical RV sewer hose has a very short right
angle connection to the 4-inch male cleanout, this prevents the RV sewer hose-provided
male cleanout from securely connecting via a screw-in connection to the resort
female cleanout.
 |
| Sewer connection problem |
When I contacted the resort person who led us to our
site, he indicated that many sites were configured like this and that we could
simply place our sewer hose with the 4-inch male cleanout into the resort’s
4-inch PVC female cleanout without securing the connection by screwing the two
pieces together. He suggested anchoring
our sewer hose to the resort sewer connection with a brick or board lying on
top of our sewer hose connection. While
this will work in some situations, in other situations, when you open the black
or gray valves to flush the RV black or gray tanks, you have to keep your foot
on the connection to ensure the sewer hose does not suddenly come out from the
sheer force of dumping the black or gray tank.
After surveying many sites around our site, we found that
almost all had the resort’s original below grade sewer connections modified
with the addition of a 4-inch PVC male adapter and a 4-inch PVC female cleanout
connected to the new male adapter.
 |
| 4-inch PVC Male Adapter |
 |
| 4-inch PVC Female Cleanout |
 |
| Male-adaptor and female-cleanout |
We asked the
person who led us to our site if the resort could fix the anomaly by providing
the 4-inch PVC male adapter and the 4-inch PVC female cleanout he indicated the resort did not have these
spare parts available for rental user’s and to permanently modify the site
would require contacting the owner of the site.
While this situation would be expected in lesser RV
parks, we would not have expected this in a resort as nice as this one.
A trip to the Lowe’s back on the mainland in Bluffton,
provided the necessary 4-inch PVC male adapter and the 4-inch PVC female
cleanout. We returned to our site, plugged the 4-inch PVC female cleanout into
the 4-inch PVC male adapter.
then screwed the male adapter end into the resort’s
female cleanout. Next, we connected our
RV sewer hose male cleanout to the elevated new female cleanout.
 |
| Sewer connection solution |
