I fought the john and the john...LOST! (I think.)

Day two of the battle against pot. Today, I got kind of mad at this whole leaking toilet situation. I got online and did some research about this plumbing, which I found is called "The Gray Menace." It turns out to be Poly-Butylene (PB), which was very popular in the era in which Sadie was built. Later, not so much. There were apparently a number of class action lawsuits about the stuff, primarily regarding its usage in home construction. Seems that prolonged exposure to heat and pressure had a tendency to rupture PB pipes. Thank goodness I always use a pressure regulator at the park faucet.

That being said, PB is what I have and I had to work with it. I removed the pot again and went to True Value with a piece of the pipe. My plan was to install a shut-off valve in the system, so we could at least use the rest of the plumbing, in the event the toilet needed to be removed.

I purchased a 1/2" X 3/8" compression shut-off valve, brought it home and installed it on the PB pipe stub. Jill turned on the pump. Hello; it leaked. I tightened the fitting another 1/4 turn and went about my business. Fifteen minutes later, I checked the fitting again...it was leaking. Tighten a quarter turn...wait 15...check...tighten a quarter turn...wait...well, we decided to go to Dallas and check on the house. When we returned, I checked again...it leaked.

OK. Now I was taking no prisoners. I turned off the water, removed the valve and...well, I had a problem. The brass compression ring that is part of the valve wouldn't come off the pipe. I got out my frameless hacksaw, and with a mighty 1/4 inch stroke, I sawed through the ring far enough that I could break it with the twist of a screwdriver.

Having removed the valve completely, I returned to True Value. Now, when you live in a small town and you go to a hardware store with 6 employees, they get to know you pretty fast. Amidst some good natured ribbing, I picked out my next array of parts for my aresenal. These comprised a PEX press-on Street elbow and a straight lavatory supply valve.

I went back to Sadie and installed said items. Then I turned on the water pressure and checked for leaks. No leak! Just to be safe, I left the system under pressure for about 45 minutes and never found a leak. At last, I felt comfortable reinstalling the toilet...until, that is, I remembered the broken sink sprayer that is attached to the toilet for the purpose of cleaning the bowl.

Alas, I was faced with a decision either to leave the broken sprayer, thus dooming myself to the possibility that I might have to remove and replace the toilet yet another time to replace it, or to endure the ribbing of the True Value guys. It was off to TV for me.

With some mild expletives and a couple more skinned knuckles, I finally conquered the john! Of course, the proof of the pudding will be in checking the bathroom carpet tomorrow morning. Will it be wet, or will it be dry?

Tune in next time to see if success is really success or if it is only defeat in success' clothing.

The Battle Against Pot

A few days ago, after Jill left for a visit with daughter Tara in Denver, I noticed the carpet in the bathroom was wet. Let me back up a moment. Prior to this discovery, I had foolishly let the gray water tank get too full. After my shower, I noticed the water was not draining out of the shower pan, a sure sign that it is time to dump.

I did the dumping and thought no more about the situation, until I went in the bathroom later in the day and noticed the wet carpet. Once before I had allowed the gray tank to over fill. In that case, the carpet immediately outside the shower had become wet. In this new incident, I attributed the wet carpet to the overfilled gray tank and the coach, perhaps, sitting at a slightly different angle, causing the water to "settle" in a different area.

Ever the optimist, I tried drying the carpet with towels and a heater with a fan on it. I thought I was making progress, until I got up in the night, used the toilet, and discovered my PJs were wet, where they had lain on the floor during my "business." That was the night before last.

Yesterday, I had to leave early for the drive to the Portland airport to pick up Jill. When we returned home, I found the carpet even wetter. Some investigation showed a little dampness around the place where the supply pipe emerges from the floor behind the toilet. With a heavy heart, I concluded that I needed to remove the toilet and investigate further. (The heavy heart was the result of having removed this toilet once before for a different problem.)

I read the installation/removal instructions in the manual and went to True Value to buy the "right" tools, because I remembered how difficult it was to remove the toilet with the tools I had on hand. I have to admit that the thought of having a "legitimate" reason to purchase some new tools mitigated my heavy heartedness a bit.

Upon arriving back home, and with all due alacrity and dispatch, I attacked the toilet. After some struggling with access to the bolts and more than one skinned knuckle, I had the beast out. I determined that the fitting joining the water supply line to the toilet was leaking. Upon further inspection, it appeared that the compression fitting was slightly deformed, probably as the result of 22 years of having been compressed. I also discovered a hose loose under the toilet and replaced it on its nipple, adding a hose clamp, which was in absentia.

I reattached the compression fitting and had Jill turn on the water pump. Oops! It was leaking worse than before. "Turn it off; turn it off," I cried. I disconnected and reconnected the compression fitting. "Turn it on!" Jill complied. No leak. "Turn it off." I began reseating the toilet and reinstalling washers and nuts on the virtually inaccessible flange bolts. Good, good; that one is on. OK, I think I have... Oh! No!! One of the nuts dropped into an inaccessible recess in the plastic casting that is the base of the toilet.

I removed the one nut I had been able to get on to the bolt, disconnected the compression fitting and removed the toilet again so I could shake the missing nut out of its hiding place. On the next attempt, I got the compression fitting tight and installed the washers and nuts. At last, the toilet was back in its proper place. I picked up my tools, congratulated myself for a job well-done and sat down to relax for the evening.

This morning. I got out of bed and went in to use the bathroom. Funny! The carpet seems wetter than when I went to bed. I reluctantly felt the compression fitting, and Yes! it was drip, drip, dripping on the carpet.

Tune in next time to see if our hero can stop the leak and re-install the pot without using any curse words.

And the adventure begins.

We are currently residing at the Ash Creek RV park in Independence, OR. The sale of our home will be complete tomorrow, and the construction of our new home is underway in Dallas, OR, about 15 minutes from the RV park.

We moved all our worldly possessions out of our stix and brix into P.O.D.S. (Portable On Demand Storage units), which left us effectively homeless, while we are having a new home built, complete with RV garage for Sadie!! We moved aboard Sadie in our driveway and stayed there a couple of days while we cleaned up the house before turning it over to the new owners.

Ash Creek RV park is nestled in the middle of Independence such that you might never see it, if you didn't make an effort. Our son, Patrick, works a block away and had no idea it was here. It is not fancy, but the facilities are nicely kept. Many of the residents are either full time in the park or are snow birds and stay here in the summer and somewhere further south in the winter. We are quite comfortable, and we believe we will be able to remain here comfortably for the 4 - 5 months it will take for our new home to be ready.

The one problem we have is that just about the time we moved into the coach, the fresh water pump stopped working, along with the overhead light in the bedroom and the overhead light in the kitchen. Since we are connected to city water and have other lights these problems have not been stressful, but they are in need of repair, whenever I can find the time to fix them.

Today is Fathers' Day, so we will be spending the day with Patrick and his wife, Katie. I'm sure the electrical problems will still be here tomorrow!

Final preparation for full time RVing (short term)

This is a late entry. I took Sadie, shortly after the installation of the new satellite antenna, to visit our favorite mechanic. In addition to lube, oil and filter change, I asked John to investigate why, when Sadie sits for a while, it takes a lot of cranking to start the engine.

Well, true to form, John and his colleagues investigated and found that a) it is not a fuel pump problem; b) it is not a fuel pump relay problem, as had been suggested by fellow RVers on an internet forum, because the fuel pump is mechanical, not electrical; c) the 22 year old carburetor had a tiny leak, so the fuel was leaking out of the float chamber. Hence, Sadie would start fine, if she had only sat for a day or two, and she would require extensive cranking if she had sat longer.

After I recovered from the shock of what it costs these days for a carburetor rebuild, I told John to go ahead and fix it. The idea of fuel leaking on the top of Sadie's engine, was not appealing to me. It took 24 hours, but the job is now done, and I look forward to more reliable starting. That is a good thing, because we will be living aboard for about 4 months, while our new home is under construction. So, starting the engine will not happen frequently, as it often does on a road trip.

We are now ready to move aboard, scheduled for June 15th. In the meantime, all we have to do is pack up all our worldly possessions for storage and move them into P.O.D.S. (Portable Onsite Delivery System) so they can be hauled away to a warehouse for safekeeping until our new home is ready.

Stay tuned.

A new crown for our venerable lady

Sadie got a new crown today. The weather was fair. We brought the old girl home yesterday. So, I got up on the roof and removed the old, non-functional satellite dish and replaced it with a newer, better one.

This one is a Dish 1000 model. When it is activated, it automatically searches the sky until it finds a satellite. When it has identified the satellite, it computes the relative position of EchoStar 119W and locks on it. Then it computes the positions of EchoStar 110 and EchoStar 129 and adjusts itself so that it is locked on all three satellites. It took about 5 minutes to accomplish all of this on the first try!

Since we will be living aboard for about 4 to 5 months while our new house is under construction, we thought it a good idea to have TV available. The new installation was not especially difficult. In fact, the hardest part was removing the caulking material that was on and around the old unit. Once that was accomplished, it was a matter of setting the new unit in place, marking the screw holes, applying some caulk to the base of the unit and screwing it down...with self tapping screws: no pilot holes necessary (or advised!).

Since this was a replacement operation, I didn't have to spot and drill a new hole in the roof for the cables. I simply removed the cover plate, removed the old cables, inserted the new ones, applied more caulk to the new cover plate, and screwed it in place.

The lower end of the installation was simply a matter of placing some F fittings on the ends of the coax cables and plugging everything in. There was one other task. It was placing the control unit through the side of the box on which the TV is mounted and which contains the power supply. By situating the new control unit through the side of the cabinet, I obviated the need to open the cabinet and fiddle with the controls when setting up or stowing the dish.

So, Sadie now has a first class satellite TV antenna. I'm jazzed. Tomorrow, I will install the new memory foam mattress. Then it is off to the mechanic for some mechanical tweaking.

And now for something completely different...(with apologies to Monty Python)

I'm missing Sadie tonight. It has been some time since we have been able to get out and use the old girl. There is a reason for that. We have sold our sticks and bricks...no, we are not going full time in Sadie. We are going to build a new home in a different city that is closer to our son Patrick and his wife, Katie.

The upshot of this change is that we will be living aboard Sadie for the duration of the build time. That is likely to be about four months. There are very few RV parks near where we will be building, but we found one about ten miles away that looks suitable. That park will be within a half mile of our kids' house, so it will be fun to be able to see them without an hour and a half of driving involved. They are both school teachers, so they have a lot of time in the summer.

Before we move aboard Sadie, there are a few things we need to do to her. Jill has recently had back pain while sleeping in the RV bed. We have ordered a memory foam mattress, which we hope will alleviate that problem. In addition, our satellite antenna has failed. It is so old that it doesn't recognize all the satellites in the sky and gets so confused that it just gives up. I will be replacing it later this week, I hope, weather permitting.

I also want to have the fuel pump relay checked/replaced and the transmission checked and serviced. Once those things are done, the hard work begins: deciding what we need to live and what stuff is optional. So, there are big doin's afoot for Sadie. We are excited, to say the least. We get to have a taste of full-timing in Sadie, and we get to build our dream home. Did I mention that our new home will have a garage/shop for Sadie?

We are blessed beyond measure (with apologies to Guyanne Valentine).

A walk on the wild side

Click the photo for a slide show

The weather was beautiful this morning, while we had our breakfast, but we could see that it was deteriorating. When the dishes were done, we donned our fleece and hit the trail. By contrast with the developed part of the park, which we explored yesterday, the area we saw today is almost totally wild. I say almost, simply because there are some obviously maintained trails.

In fact, there is a labyrinth of trails in this part of the park. We followed some of them and eventually wound up in someone's backyard! Well, not really, but we came upon a housing development and a beautiful new school. We headed back toward the park, investigating many of the trails we found. We saw more homes, an abandoned mill of some kind, an abandoned "ghost train" comprising a diesel locomotive stripped of almost everything, including the metal skin that once covered its framework.

As we arrived back at the park we began to notice some moisture in the air. We relaxed for a while in the coach. After lunch, we took Daisy Mae for a drive. We found some beautiful homes, which we could have coveted, had we let ourselves go. Several had RV garages and shop buildings...just what I would want in another home, if I ever get the chance to have another one.

After the tour of the "street of dreams," we headed north on the highway that runs by our RV park. It led us eventually to Scio, a town I have always wanted to visit, simply because I have passed the sign on I-5 for the Scio exit a million times. Scio is a LITTLE town, about six blocks long. There are some beautiful homes there, and there are some shacks there. We saw a number of churches, including a huge Baptist church. Judging by the size, the Baptists must have Scio wrapped up!

On the way back to Lebanon we took a little detour...of about 17 miles! We had seen an ad on the internet for the Mallard Creek RV Park and golf resort, so when we saw the sign, we had to see what it was all about. The RV park is quite lovely, with lots of level concrete pads. The golf course is very nice for a rural course, but is not by any means a world class course. That judgment, however, is the result of driving by a couple of the fairways and greens. It may be better than it appeared to me.

The thought that kept going through my mind was that someone had gone way out on a limb to build this wonderful facility in such a remote area. There were four or five RVs in the park, and we did see some golfers, but there is absolutely nothing else to do here but play golf. I wonder if there are enough golfing RVers to make this place pay. This is March. Perhaps, the place fills up in the summer. I hope so.