26 May 2011

Erm, where's that water coming from?

Sometime last week, a particularly rainy morning had us wake up for a mad leak check. We found one above our bed … where we’d left the air ventilation flap open a little too far and a small amount of rain was splashing in. Two more similar leaks were also found, coming in via the kitchen and bathroom roof vents (we no longer leave them quite so open at night). Apparently leaks are quite common in an RV of Gil’s age, so we are quite pleased with this fact. In response to popular demand, here are some photos of Gil (the guy we bought him from, not ours) we’ll provide some of our own as time goes on, and yes that is a cassette player you can see in the dash.


The rain also had us decide to stay an extra day in the location we were in … and for Brad to decide it was time to further acquaint himself with Gil’s plumbing via sanitisation of our fresh water supply. Sanitisation involves something to do with clearing water that has been left in the tank and gone stale. Things were going well, Brad was popping in and out, water was running and various taps opened and closed, I was stuffing about with the nice motley green cotton I planned to make a throw for the couch out of (motley green cotton has now been returned – it was actually camoflague!). When a squeal from Brad revealed that blue water was flowing across the floor, originating from somewhere in the vicinity of the toilet, upon opening the toilet lid, Brad found it was approaching full with the same blue water and frantically tried to flush in the hope of draining it. Alas this led to the water level rising rapidly, not diminishing. Brad learnt two things at this time:
1. The bathroom sink drains to the black water (toilet) tank, as opposed to the grey water tank.
2. When the black water tank is full, it comes back to haunt you.
Before anyone worries about unsanitary conditions, we were not using the black water tank at this time, hence why we were only dealing with blue water. All water was quickly dried thanks the multiple rolls of paper towel Brad convinced me we should buy – I no longer argue about how many rolls he thinks we need to purchase. The ban on things other than wees in Gil remains in place indefinitely.

Step two in this process is to flush something else through the tanks to clean the sensors as currently the convenient panel below the microwave claims they are nearly always full, something that is causing a significant amount of paranoia, despite knowing it to be untrue … watch this space for more near misses.

I’ve managed to keep out of the plumbing business thus far, apart from providing wifely moral support and the odd foot to hold a hose. Given I’m cooking dinner for us every night (yes, Penny, Andrea, Garv I can actually cook something other than salad for one) I think we may be able to keep things this way.

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Several days later, we were using a shared “dump station” (see photo of Brad and his paraphernalia), when a man who I'll call Poop Cowboy rocked up. As we waited for our tanks to drain, he pulled on his several sizes too small black gloves, and admired how Gil’s bumper doubles as a storage place for the fancy brown and orange tube – his ridiculously huge trailer thing apparently had no such space – and made some idle chit chat about where we were heading next and getting some bigger gloves, I imagine conversation akin to this also takes place at men’s urinals, (but what am I imagining those for?). As Brad was packing away the paraphernalia Poop Cowboy finished his draining and started the rinse, the point when he suggested we might want to “watch out” as he let his sewer hose flick about like an angry snake, splashing Gil – and quite likely Brad. Note to self: buy Brad a haz-mat suit for wearing at shared dumping stations.

1 comment:

  1. hahaha thanks for this evenings entertainment I found this instalment great :) especially imagining Brad in the Hazmat suit or more specifically not in a hazmat suit when poop cowboy let loose! :)

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