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

The addition of these two pieces provide the extra height to ensure the RV sewer connection can be made by screwing in the RV male cleanout into the new 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

The anomaly was solved for less than $15.00.  We enjoyed our stay using this configuration but we also took these two new sewer connection pieces with us when we left the resort so we can use them at other RV parks and resorts where we might encounter this same anomaly.