SOLVED: How to stop your motorhome/ caravan toilet smelling bad...

I'll be honest, this is going to be a bit of a strange video, because I'm about to tell you how good something smells. Hey I'm Kat and welcome to Wandering Bird, where we share tips and tricks for motorhomers and campervanners for your touring around the UK and Europe. And today it's all about smells. One of the most common questions that I get asked is how do we stop our toilet smelling? And I know that many people don't like to talk about this, it's not one of these pleasant topics of conversation, certainly not something you're going to discuss around the dinner table. But today we're going to be talking toilets, because it's something that if you're in a van or a motorhome that's got a toilet, then it's just an issue that we all have to deal with. Now when I was up at the NEC show, I got chatting to the guy from Solbio, and this is a little toilet cleaner. And he gave me a bag, because I'll be honest, he was telling me all the virtues of this product, and I've got a little video of him explaining how it all works. And I was a little bit sceptical. I'm really sceptical to pretty much any salesman about anything ever. And if anybody ever says, oh we're going to send you this product and test it, my response to them always, if it's something anything to do with motorhoming or campervanning, is always, sure you can send it, but I'm certainly going to use it for several months, try it out and see if it's any good. So we've had this since February. Now as you may or may not know, we've had some issues in the last month or so, certainly with Mr WB's illness. And we put this in the van on our trip, which happened, oh gosh, maybe a couple of weeks before he got Crawley. And we put it into the toilet, and then we went somewhere and we didn't empty the toilet. And again, I apologise for anybody, he may or may not be eating of this, but hey, the subject of the title should have given this away. But we left it in the toilet, and we didn't empty the toilet when we came back from our trip, because we were planning on going away within a week or two next, and then obviously he got unwell. So we left a toilet with things in it for near enough a month. And I'll be honest, we were both dreading coming back to the van, because we were like, it's going to stink, it's going to be disgusting, the whole van's going to be permeated with the smell. And we opened the door, nothing. Like, nothing. We went into the bathroom, you couldn't even smell it. And I know that this is just me on a video telling you that this amazing product that I got given for free is amazing. But I swear, it is really amazing. We have never had a toilet product that you can put in any... It smells lush. It just, it just smells so good. But you can put it in the cassette, and even whilst you're using the toilet, it still smells really good. It's the most bizarre, amazing thing I think we've ever had. It's probably going to hit my top five awesome products in the motorhome, because it genuinely works. And it worked for like a month. So it's really, really easy to use. I will put in a bit of footage here about the gentleman from Solbio explaining to me how it's used, because he gets better. So this is Solbio. So this is essentially a replacement for the blue chemical that you put in your toilet cassette. This is very different to the blue, or actually even the green products that you normally see on the market. There are no chemicals in this at all. This is 100% natural plant-based product. And it works in a very different way to the other chemicals. The other chemicals will try and kill all the bacteria that exist in your toilet cassette. Whereas this promotes bacterial growth, bacteria that do not smell. They out-compete all of the smelly bacteria, and so therefore they neutralise the smell. So they basically smother the bad bacteria. Is that roughly how you think of it? So what that means is inside your toilet cassette, it is actually being composted, and it's being cleaned at the same time. So on top of the product that does the job of the blue chemical, you'll get the smells of eucalyptus, mint, pine. If you want to have a little sniff of it. Go on, let me have a little sniff of it. Oh, oh, there are things. Oh, wow. You can have a little... I'm intrigued. I'm smelling toilet product. This is random. Oh my goodness. Is that genuinely what it smells like? So because there's no harsh chemicals in it, we can make it smell what we want it to smell of, which is a nice pine eucalyptus scent. So that's what that smells like? That's what that smells like. This is very concentrated, so your van won't... It won't overwhelm your van. I mean, for an example, I've been pouring this on my hands since Tuesday. If you smell it, you smell it. I don't smell... Smell my hand. I don't smell of anything. So it dissipates. It's not going to overwhelm your van. No, it's lovely. The smell is amazing. It's all very nice that it's an environmental product. Yeah. It's fantastic. Of course, you can empty it wherever you like. Yes, that's the biggest thing. There are no chemicals in it at all. But some of the practical benefits of this are you can decant it into something smaller. So when I go away, I take a 120ml bottle. Yes. It's got three doses in. Yeah. Leave that at home. So how much is a dose? How long would one of these bags last for do you think? It's got 40 doses in it. Okay. Again, because it's a plant-based product, it's totally safe. We can take all the water out of it. Yeah, okay. So it's very, very concentrated. Yeah. You dilute it at the other end, so you're not carrying around tens of litres of water. Yeah. So how do you know you've put enough in? Because you've also got the nozzle thing. It's got a measuring thing on the back. Oh, cool. But basically, two seconds will be one dose. Okay. You can get it over your hands. You're not going to turn yourself into a smurf. Good. Like you do with the blue. If you've got pets, you've got kids, it's safe. Oh, I'm excited. So how much do one of these retail for normally? So these are £24.99. Yep. Which sounds like a lot for toilet chemicals. Yeah. But when you bear in mind that there's 40 doses, it works out roughly around the same price as the standard. The standard ones. That's really cool. You can also use this if you've got a grey water tank. It will clean that out. Will it? Does it cut through the grease or does it... It will. Will it? And it will keep it clean as well. Will it? If you have a flush water tank, if you've got a separate water tank for your toilet, so it's multi-use. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Obviously, its main use is normally the toilet cassette. You don't have to carry three or four different products around. One of the things you need to do is when you're moving over to using solvent instead of your blue chemicals, you need to make sure it's fully clean. Chemicals in blue stuff will kill the bacteria and so it will stop it working the way it should. So take your toilet cassette, flush it out a couple of times, then you need to basically fill your container three quarters of the way out with water, put about 100ml of Solvio inside and then fill it right up to the top. OK. It will foam because it's a soap. Yeah. And the foam will hit the top of the container and clean the top. Leave it for a day or two and then flush it out. Yeah. It would have got rid of 99% of it, at which point it will be affected and then you will not need to clean your toilet cassette. I'll tell you what we do. There's a tap and a bag and the bag, Mrs WB likes the bag because it just hangs in the bathroom, really straightforward. And there's a little pump here and we put one squirt of this in the toilet cassette. That's it. Now on the back, it tells you to do a squirt of this and mix it with some water. We've never ever put water down our toilet cassette because our aim always is to make it last as long as possible between having to empty the thing. So filling it with water just seems counterintuitive. So we don't. We literally just put a squirt of this and then use the bathroom and it's just amazing. Genuinely amazing. What I love about this is it's suitable for many of the campsites, especially in Europe. They don't like you putting chemicals down there, so there were no chemicals in this. Absolutely 100% chemical free. It's natural and it has got natural soaps in it, natural essential oils in it and botanical extracts. But you can use it for your flush water tank, you can use it for your waste water tank, you can use it for your waste tank. And it's self-cleaning so it prevents the buildup of limescale, waste and urinary solids. What's that face for? Putting it in our waste tank. Yeah, let's put it in our waste tank. We're going to try it out. And it is organic and safe to be used in the forest. Very important. Yeah, I cannot recommend this highly enough. If you have issues with a pongy toilet, grab a bag of this and put a link to it below where you can buy it from. But yeah, absolutely recommend it. Right, I hope that wasn't too painful for you to sit through and if you were eating, really, really apologize. If you're new to the channel, hi, welcome. If you'd like to get more tips by all means hit subscribe. Thank you for your time and attention during a slightly delicate topic and I'll see you on the next video. Bye.