The Bidet Saga
When our life involves living in 250 square feet with one bathroom and often no other toilets in a several mile radius, it's imperative that we make sure our plumbing is functioning properly. You may recall that after months of dealing with a finicky toilet, we decided to bite the bullet and replace it. We ended up buying an upgraded Thetford RV toilet, which has been working much better. Over all, we've been pleased, except for one nagging issue. We thought, since we're upgrading our toilet anyway, that perhaps we'd want a bidet. We know lots of RVers who have opted to install one, and even though we've never been bidet people in the past, we see lots of perks in having one in the RV.
First, there's toilet paper conservation. One issue we've been having, that we've been keeping a close eye on, is that our black tank valve doesn't seem to be shutting the whole way. This means that we're relying on our secondary valve, the Valterra valve, to catch drips from coming out our black tank. Typically, we like to keep our gray tank open when we're at full hookup campgrounds, but now we can't. It's not a huge issue, but it could become one. If our Valterra ever failed, we'd run the risk of liquids escaping the black tank, leaving only solids behind. That's a surefire way to form what RVers affectionately call a "poo pyramid." We don't know exactly what's going on with our valve and plan to get it checked out when we can, but 99% of our campsites have not had sewer hookups, so we've just been keeping everything shut anyways. What concerns us is this story, where the Hanks' valve wouldn't shut and eventually got stuck to the point where it broke. Turns out, there were little bits of toilet paper stuck in their valve. We've been cleaning out our tanks extra diligently, as often as we can, but we know it wouldn't hurt to have less TP going into the black tank.
Second, we're wondering if needing to flush less TP means we'd use less water. That's a whole scientific test that we'll be sharing with you soon, but we're always looking for ways to improve our water usage, so we thought perhaps this could help.
Third, the RV life means we sometimes forsake hygiene for sitting in the wilderness, away from all civilization, relying only on our RV's resources. Bidets are supposed to clean the nether regions better than toilet paper, and we could probably use that when we're limiting our showers to once a week. Before you get grossed out, we have plenty of alternatives to showering. We wipe ourselves down often, and even with our limited showers, no, we don't smell. Ask anyone we've hugged since hitting the road. It's actually funny, that since we started RVing, we probably focus more on hygienic practices, simply because we don't have all the options readily at our disposal, so we've found efficient ways to stay clean and fresh when before, we just always did the run-of-the-mill, expected-by-society stuff...like showering twice a day (ahem Anthony).
And so, we set our sights on buying a bidet, for the ultimate bougie camping experience. Because we upgraded to an elongated toilet seat, similar to those used in residences, we first ordered a bidet toilet seat. Only, it didn't fit. Our Thetford has a sleek look, but unfortunately the aesthetics became a nuisance when we realized that the lips around the bowl make the toilet incompatible with many third party seats...and with many bidets, we soon realized.
If we couldn't get a bidet integrated into a toilet seat, we really wanted a bidet attachment that would fit underneath our current seat. We ordered one and quickly discovered that the plastic was far too thick to sit properly. The lips on the toilet were still an issue, but the thickness of the bidet also made our seat unable to close.
That was when we realized that this bidet search would be much more involved than we initially thought, but we kept scrounging around. There are lower profile bidets that aren't as thick. If it fit around the lips, we'd possibly be in business. Only, we were in the middle of Wyoming and didn't have many options for getting a bunch of bidets delivered to us. We thought about the most likely to work option: A handheld bidet.
Some RV toilets actually come with a hand sprayer. Because RVs use less water in the bowl, sometimes gunk gets stuck on dry areas of the bowl, and it takes a lot of bowl filling to flush it all down. The hand sprayer lets you target the crap - literally - and spray it down using less water. We liked the idea of having this perk if we bought a handheld bidet, but in an ideal world, we'd have one that didn't involve such a learning curve. We wanted to be able to sit on the toilet, turn the dial, and have the water squirt where it was supposed to squirt. A handheld meant we'd need to develop the appropriate technique to aim where we wanted to. The plus side to this though, is that once we learned the technique, we could cater our aim to our specific bodies, because let's face it, we're all slightly different down there!
We had the added obstacle of finding a bidet that would actually fit in our bathroom. Yes, the bidet itself would just sit on our toilet, but they have dials, and some are frighteningly large. The first bidet that we ordered - the thick plastic one - was specifically a "lefty bidet." Brondell, the company, calls it a "Southspa." Like southpaw. Get it?! The concept is kind of funny. As a lefty myself, I can't imagine most people would have trouble turning a dial with either hand, but I do see the perks for perhaps someone who is disabled and needs the dial on a certain side. For us, the left-sided dial made sense because we have more room on the left side of our toilet. Now that the Southspa was a no-go, we were looking mostly at right-handed bidets, because they're of course more popular. So not only did we need to worry about whether or not the bidet would fit under our seat, we also needed to make sure the dial wouldn't stick out too much, or else it would hit the wall.
The handheld bidet was looking like the best option. We wouldn't need to worry about fit, and it would serve more purposes, cleaning both the bowl and our booties. We were staying in Dubois, WY when all this was going down, and we knew that there was a Walmart in the town of Riverton, a little over an hour away. Could we potentially find a bidet online and have it shipped to the store? We searched for bidet sprayers and found one that looked like it would be a contender, and it was already available in the store! The only problem with the sprayers is that all the mounts are supposed to hang from the tank of a residential toilet. We don't have a tank. So we'd have to figure out a way to mount the sprayer. We ordered the bidet and made plans to drive over to Riverton the next day to pick it up and search the store for other mounting options.
The next morning, Anthony got an email that his order had been canceled. Our credit card company flagged our purchase as fraudulent and the order was canceled without so much as an email. Later we discovered that Walmart found our activity suspicious because earlier that same day, we had ordered something and sent it to my parents' house in Massachusetts. Walmart doesn't think we can be in MA and WY at the same time and didn't understand that we're currently in WY but our home address is in MA. Ah, the nomadic life.
Anthony called the store and asked if they could hold the bidet sprayer for us to come and pick it up. They said yes, and we headed out on our over-an-hour drive. To buy a bidet. This is our life now. There's literally no shame in this situation.
When we got to Walmart, we decided to head into the store before going around the side for curbside pickup. We wanted to find mounting options for the sprayer in case we couldn't use the "residential" one it came with. After walking up and down several household aisles, we found ourselves in the bathroom aisle, where we found lots of shower heads and similar products. Then, at the end of the aisle, a shocking number of bidets. More than we had ever seen in a store (but then again, when until now would we ever look?). Brondell bidets, Tushy bidets, Mainstays bidets, seat attachment bidets, hand sprayer bidets, portable bidets, single nozzle bidets, dual-nozzle bidets. We had hit the bidet jackpot! There was only one thing left to do: Buy every single one that looked like it might fit the specs we needed.
Let's just say we gave the cashier a good laugh when we checked out.
In our haul was also the same bidet sprayer that we had asked to be put on hold for us. We called Walmart later to let them know we no longer needed the one they were holding for us. Turns out the guy had just started his shift and no one told him why a bidet was sitting in the middle of the stock room and who the heck Anthony Vicari was. Good thing we called!
And so, with our bidet haul back at the rig, we got to work going through each one to see if it would fit. Most of the seat attachment kind were a no-go, except for another Brondell, this one much thinner than the first one we tried. We successfully attached it to our toilet, but we weren't convinced it was stable. The lips on the toilet bowl were getting in the way, so the attachment needed to rest above the lips, creating a space. We feared that over time, the bidet might break under our weight. And with that, we concluded that the handheld sprayer was the best option for us.
As for the mount, we reversed it and adhered it to the wall by our toilet. This means that the part that typically hangs over the side of the toilet tank is now facing the other way, and it really serves no purpose, but it was a quick and easy solution that doesn't look too bad. If someday we find an adhesive mount that works better, we'll switch it out, but oftentimes the simplest solution is best. We suppose that goes for the handheld sprayer as well. It's low profile, easy to attach to our RV water hose, and gives us the ability to aim and shoot with precision.
If you're thinking about putting a bidet in your RV, it's definitely possible! The only reason we couldn't use a seat attachment was because of our specific style of toilet. We needed to use a few adaptors and attachments that were specifically for our RV water connections, so if you want to know the specifics on that, just ask Anthony. In our research, we did see an RV bidet being sold. It's a seat attachment style and specifically lists the toilets it doesn't work on, except it's not a comprehensive list because our toilet isn't listed, and we know this bidet wouldn't work. The only perk of the RV bidet is that the dial could be attached to either the right or left side, accounting for the limited space in RV bathrooms. Besides that though, you can choose virtually any residential bidet and modify it for your needs. Just make sure that it's not so thick that your seat cover won't close!
We should also mention that some bidets offer a hot water input, but in RVs this can become a pretty in-depth modification. We know RVers who have routed their hot water line to their bidet, but we don't even have a hot water tank, so we weren't about to mess with figuring out how to get water from our tankless hot water heater to a bidet that's across the room from the shower and sink that have hot water. So we're opting for ambient temperature water. Not bad in the summertime, but winter will likely be another story. Let's face it: RV water lines are not very well insulated and that water can get pretty frigid coming up from the cold ground!
So now that we have our handy bidet sprayer, what's the plan? Will it help us stay more hygienic in our outdoorsy way of living? Will it help us conserve toilet paper and water? Will we even be comfortable using it? Will we learn anything else about our RV plumbing in the process? These are all questions we'll be answering over time, as we give ourselves ample opportunipees to test out our new concraption.