A toilet is something you cannot get away from. When you own an RV, it’s paramount that it’s accessible at all times and works correctly for you.
Given that motorhomes, campers, and trailers are mobile, this can make things trickier when it comes to the washroom facilities.
Can you put a regular toilet in an RV or camper? Some people do, but we would not recommend it. Household toilets usually made from porcelain are not designed for the road. The occasional pothole and jarring motion can easily break your delicate “throne” without warning.
A real toilet in an RV is a water hog in comparison to efficient RV toilets. So, your black water tank fills up much faster and needs emptying more regularly.
Also Read: Showering in an RV
Can you replace an RV toilet with a standard toilet? Well, you can… but installing a real toilet in an RV isn’t usually sensible to do.
Can You Put a Regular Toilet in an RV or Camper?
When thinking about installing a residential toilet in the RV, here are some reasons why it’s best avoided:
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1. Space Limitations
Most household toilets are substantial in size. Ostensibly, they’re designed for big bathrooms where space isn’t limited.
Most separate washrooms in a camper, trailer, or motorhome are compact. Often, extremely so.
Therefore, it’s difficult to even find a household toilet that’s small enough to fit into the bathroom of your RV or camper.
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2. Construction and Materials Used
A cheap black toilet and other home toilets are all designed for a stable environment. One where there is access to plenty of water and the plumbing is present to fully flush the toilet.
Given that an RV is mobile and the fact that if you replace an RV toilet with a regular one, it won’t be fixed to anything is… problematic. The amount of vibration from transportation will damage the porcelain.
Eventually, it will break from the internal damage caused by the vibrations.
Also, converting an RV toilet to a house toilet isn’t a good idea either.
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3. Water Requirements
For people on vacation or traveling in their RV or trailer regularly, they may use around 2.5 to 5 gallons a day. Especially if they’re a family or a couple who doesn’t restrict or monitor their water use.
A home toilet can easily use up the entire daily allowance with just a few flushes!
It’s not uncommon to see a couple of gallons disappear when trying to use a regular toilet in an RV.
Also, the fresh water tank will require refilling more often because it’ll lose water at a rapid pace.
Furthermore, unless you change your plumbing arrangements and the RV remains mostly stationary, the black water tank will also need emptying more often (not fun).
4. Regular Toilet’s Holding Tank
When you replace an RV toilet with a standard toilet, you’ll discover that the holding tank contains at least half a gallon to a gallon of water.
Also, the tank lid is porcelain and isn’t fixed in place!
It’s easy enough to turn onto a side road where your RV is being rocked about. Then see the regular toilet fall over spilling roughly a half-gallon of water all over the bathroom floor.
The damage from the water seeping through the floor covering and onto the RV’s walls then becomes a potential long-term damp and mold problem. It only had to happen once.
Also Read: RV Toilet Leaking at Foot Pedal
5. Refit Is Harder Than It Looks
Replacing an RV toilet with house toilet is harder than it looks.
Few people have much knowledge about it because it’s so rarely attempted.
More often than not, they get removed later at great inconvenience as an experiment that didn’t work.
And if going to sell the RV or camper later, a potential owner will likely have an intensive dislike for the residential toilet with all its extra inconveniences too.
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When Does a Household Toilet Make Sense in an RV or Camper?
For mostly static RVs, you can replace the RV toilet with a standard toilet and have fewer concerns.
A park model RV is another situation where replacing the RV toilet with a house toilet would be fine. Given that the RV or camper won’t be hitting the open road, there’s less risk of the toilet falling over.
It could still break from RV instability caused by a hurricane, violent storm, or earthquake though.
RV parks usually have sewer hookups that are capable of managing the half-gallon or more of water that flows through a household toilet with every flush.
Linking up to sewer facilities at the park means skipping the blackwater tank emptying process making it more pleasant. Also, the full hookups mean the freshwater tank doesn’t keep running out either.
With that said, the park may not appreciate the extra water being used if they’re offering hookups at a fixed price – because you’ll be using considerably more H2O than other RVs nearby.
And remember, installing a regular toilet in an RV or camper is no joke. It’s time-consuming, difficult, and only semi-permanent. If the RV ever needs relocating, it’ll make that task harder to complete.
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Installing Flush Toilet in RV
The task to replace RV toilet with regular household flush toilet is a major step. Converting an RV toilet to a regular toilet is not for the inexperienced RVer either!
Don’t replace RV toilet with a standard toilet, if at all possible.
While it can be done, it will quickly become a pain afterward because unless you’re in a static position with a park RV model, you will quickly run out of water.
This will necessitate refilling the water tanks regularly and stopping off to do so. Just like with how long and how often you take showers, repeated use of a household flush toilet will deplete the available water in record time!
And both together will be a nightmare.
Ultimately, replacing an RV toilet with house toilet models is a bad plan. It’ll also need someone who’s handy with RV plumbing systems to do it for you.
Preferably, they should have done it successfully at least a couple of times before too.
RV Toilet Options
You’re no longer stuck with what the RV came with for bathroom facilities. They’re changeable if you wish to do so. Here are the choices:
1. Composting Toilet
The composting toilet uses no chemicals or water. Therefore, it’s ideal for people boondocking for an extended time who are worried about running out of fresh water. The black water tank won’t be filling up quickly either.
Two tanks are used within a composting toilet. They cleverly separate solids from liquids.
In so doing, it reduces the smell that’s mostly created when mixing “number 1” and “number 2” together. The composting materials work to break the matter down which eventually might be used as fertilizer.
The liquid tank needs more frequent disposal of its contents. However, it’s an easy, less smelly, and altogether more pleasant task than dealing with most black water tanks.
Nature’s Head Self Contained Composting Toilet [affiliate link] isn’t cheap but offers more convenience than other toilet types.
ⓘ If you click this link and make a purchase, we earn a commission at no additional cost to you.
2. Ceramic Toilet
A ceramic toilet is one of the improvements that RV owners like to do.
Gravity directs the waste product to the holding tank below. The toilet itself sits above the holding tank.
Water is used to direct the solids and liquids down to the tank underneath. Then when it’s time, the black water tank is emptied at an RV dump site.
Because ceramic gravity toilets make use of a substantial black water tank, it has a higher capacity than portable toilets do.
Also, a ceramic toilet doesn’t move around when the RV is mobile either. There’s a lid that closes quietly and a sprayer is usually included to ensure the toilet (or yourself) is clean after use.
The Dometic 320 Series Standard Height Toilet with convenient hand spray [affiliate link] is an ideal Ceramic toilet.
ⓘ If you click this link and make a purchase, we earn a commission at no additional cost to you.
3. Portable Toilet
Portable toilets are chosen for campervans, campers, or trailers that didn’t come with their own toilet or plumbing linking it to a black water tank.
Some smaller RVs maybe didn’t come fitted with a black water tank.
There’s a black water tank present within the portable toilet itself. It’s small which means that depending on how many people use the toilet facilities, it could fill up within a day or two.
At which point, it must be emptied to use again and a facility must be found locally to do that.
It operates somewhat similarly to a gravity toilet model; water is used along with a water pump to move the waste down to its own black water tank.
The Camco Premium Portable Travel Toilet [affiliate link] with its three directional flushes is a recommended one.
ⓘ If you click this link and make a purchase, we earn a commission at no additional cost to you.
Additional Information
Don’t forget to pick up a LeakAlertor 6000 Toilet Leak Detector [affiliate link]. It can really save your day!
Also, ensure that you only use Scott Rapid-Dissolving Toilet Paper [affiliate link] as your RV toilet paper of choice.
It dissolves much faster and easier than regular toilet paper to avoid clogging up either your toilet or the black water tank.
