How Come The Holding Tank Gauge On Our RV Always Reads Full?

by Anonymous

Waste tank 1 reads full when empty.

ANSWER: Thanks for submitting your question on our Ask An RV Question Page.

This is a common problem for a lot of RVers. The gauges not showing the proper level in your holding tanks could be due to the probes used to measure the waste level in the holding tank being dirty which causes them not to work. The first thing you can try is some RV Probe Cleaner and see if that gets the probes working again. Do not use probe cleaner in your fresh water tank.

Other RVers have had good luck by dumping some original Dawn Liquid Dish Detergent in their Black and Grey Water Holding Tanks. The Dawn seems to break up all of gunk on the probes. Again, do not use the Dawn in your Fresh Water Holding Tank.

Sometimes dumping a couple bags of ice cubes into the holding tank and driving the RV around will help clean the probes.

If none of the suggestions above work, there could be other problems causing the gauges not to work, such as a bad sending unit, a bad gauge, etc. In those cases you would have to have a Certified RV Technician diagnose and repair the problem.

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Some RVers just give up on the tank gauges ever giving accurate readings and have become pretty good at just knowing when to dump the tanks.

Hope this helps.

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Happy RVing

RVing Al

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