SeeLevel Tank Monitor

The Castaway is a beautiful coach. Not perfect mind you. There are a few weird things about the coach that I find a wee bit irritating. For example, our tank monitors.

We have a system which monitors our black, gray and fresh water tanks. Despite being in the year 2016, our coach reports the status of the tanks this way: E, 1/3, 2/3, F.

We spend most of our time in the coach in a hybrid dry camp. We have 30 Amps of shore power and no water or sewage hookups. We do have potable water that we can bring into the coach through a temporary hookup. Once the gray and black tanks fill up though, we have to find our way to a dump. We will be taking a drive this evening to a Flying J located about 20 minutes from where we live and that is because our black tank hit the dreaded “F” status. Whenever that happens, our toilets shut down.

I find it really frustrating to determine how close is close with our existing system. Why didn’t Newmar put a better system in place? A system like the SeeLevel RV Tank Monitor? This system, created by a fine Canadian company, Garnet Instruments, provides tank level information using a percentage of full readout. As in, your black tank is 95% full.

I suppose we would not be as annoyed if our coach was always on a hookup. Our current arrangement is more akin to boondocking and we are constantly guessing as to our actual capacity.

When the freshwater tank reads “E”, is it just below 1/3, or roughly 30 gallons remaining? Or is it empty with less than a gallon remaining?

Irritating.

We will be heading out to the Hershey Show in September and I hope that the SeeLevel product will be on display. I’ve looked at several videos on the installation process and it looks like something I might be able to do on my own.

Here is one such video by Motorhead Garage.