who can take almost anything apart and fix it -- or at least figure out how it works! Other qualities for a man -- tall, blonde and handsome -- yeah, they're helpful too, but when it comes right down to it, a fix-it guy is well worth having!
Today it was Auntie Violet's toilet. She's been complaining that it no longer held water -- that the water just seemed to seep away. So it seemed a new seal was in order. While we were at Camping World, we checked them out. Seems there are two of them that fit her Landsea toilet, but we couldn't find the model number so that we could know which one was the right one. We probably should have picked up both kinds and returned the one we didn't need, but Forry took an educated guess based on all of the measurements.
It was too gusty to spray today, so today was the day to take everything apart. The top portion of the toilet assembly comes off and this seal sort of goes in the middle part (darn, why didn't I think to take a picture?!). Well, the seal we bought wasn't exactly like the one she had, but strangely enough, it actually seemed to fit better! Now we are wondering whether the wrong one was put in initially at the factory...?
Well, after letting everything sit for a period of hours (and a few tests), Forry had it all working -- AND he installed a new sprayer as well. (Ours was not always shutting off well, it tended to drip.) Oh, and the model number, he never did find it, even when he had it all apart.
Never thought I'd be writing about fixing toilets, but it's like everything else in an RV -- or a house, for that matter -- things wear out, break, don't work anymore and hopefully someone is around who can fix them!
Showing posts with label RV. Show all posts
Showing posts with label RV. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Thursday, January 8, 2009
Hurry up and....
We were up early this morning, wanting to get a good start. Forry had hooked up the toad last night and we had taken out all of the garbage and put everything away etc. We had spent an extra day at Old Orchard, getting some laundry done and making a trip into Home Depot at Chico. We needed to get a few things before we were ready to boondock (camp with no hook-ups for water or electricity or sewer) on BLM (Bureau of Land Management, i.e. public land) land at Quartzite.
We got four big packs of firewood and a bucket. The firewood is on the "bring sheet" for the Alpine Coach Association Rally that we are planning to attend from January 14-19th. The firewood is for evening campfires and the bucket is to catch shower water (the water that runs too cold to step into at first) that can then be used to flush the toilet. (All in the name of conserving water!) We've been to seminars at Life on Wheels conferences on boon-docking, but this will be the first time we've tried it for more than overnight. The other instruction is to come with your water tank FULL and both your gray and black water tanks EMPTY.
As we were unhooking the electricity and water this morning, I noticed that our neighbor -- who had been up and going even earlier than we had -- did not look very happy. He had the hood up on his toad (towed car) with a battery charger on with power from his coach. When I asked him what was wrong, he said he had left the key on in his car the night before and had run the car battery down and now his charger had been on for a half hour and didn't seem to be working. I called Forry over to check and sure enough there was NO spark at the battery terminals. So Forry went to get ours while the fellow kept protesting that he didn't want to delay us. After he hooked up our charger up, Forry remembered that his new compressor had a battery booster on it that could be used to start the car. But by the time he got it out, there was enough juice from the battery charger to start the car. The fellow was going to leave it run for a couple of hours in neutral while he was going down the road. It was a Honda and he said he had run it before while he was towing it without any problem...
So, it was ten AM before we got going. It gets dark by 4:30 and we didn't want to be looking for a campsite at night. About 4 PM we cut over to Hwy 99 from I5 at Los Banos to a little RV park called The Viking at Kingsburg. (There is not much of anything in the way of towns and/or RV parks on I5 once you leave Stockton) It is very different from any other place we have stayed. I had called earlier this afternoon and the lady they told me they didn't take reservations, but had "lots" of pull-through spaces left. We followed another rig (who turned out to be from Everett also heading for Quartzite) in. She went into the office and quickly came out and met me before I got there. If you are an overnighter, you are not supposed to go to the office, but are to pull into any vacant spot -- there were only two left -- then fill out an envelope from a box on a post, put your money or a check (no credit cards) in it and put it into a slot in the post. No human interaction at all!
This isn't a very attractive place and there are no amenities at all, so we'll just spend the night and head out again tomorrow. We'll check out a few places closer to Quartzite and stay there until the ACA Rally starts next Wednesday.
We got four big packs of firewood and a bucket. The firewood is on the "bring sheet" for the Alpine Coach Association Rally that we are planning to attend from January 14-19th. The firewood is for evening campfires and the bucket is to catch shower water (the water that runs too cold to step into at first) that can then be used to flush the toilet. (All in the name of conserving water!) We've been to seminars at Life on Wheels conferences on boon-docking, but this will be the first time we've tried it for more than overnight. The other instruction is to come with your water tank FULL and both your gray and black water tanks EMPTY.
As we were unhooking the electricity and water this morning, I noticed that our neighbor -- who had been up and going even earlier than we had -- did not look very happy. He had the hood up on his toad (towed car) with a battery charger on with power from his coach. When I asked him what was wrong, he said he had left the key on in his car the night before and had run the car battery down and now his charger had been on for a half hour and didn't seem to be working. I called Forry over to check and sure enough there was NO spark at the battery terminals. So Forry went to get ours while the fellow kept protesting that he didn't want to delay us. After he hooked up our charger up, Forry remembered that his new compressor had a battery booster on it that could be used to start the car. But by the time he got it out, there was enough juice from the battery charger to start the car. The fellow was going to leave it run for a couple of hours in neutral while he was going down the road. It was a Honda and he said he had run it before while he was towing it without any problem...
So, it was ten AM before we got going. It gets dark by 4:30 and we didn't want to be looking for a campsite at night. About 4 PM we cut over to Hwy 99 from I5 at Los Banos to a little RV park called The Viking at Kingsburg. (There is not much of anything in the way of towns and/or RV parks on I5 once you leave Stockton) It is very different from any other place we have stayed. I had called earlier this afternoon and the lady they told me they didn't take reservations, but had "lots" of pull-through spaces left. We followed another rig (who turned out to be from Everett also heading for Quartzite) in. She went into the office and quickly came out and met me before I got there. If you are an overnighter, you are not supposed to go to the office, but are to pull into any vacant spot -- there were only two left -- then fill out an envelope from a box on a post, put your money or a check (no credit cards) in it and put it into a slot in the post. No human interaction at all!
This isn't a very attractive place and there are no amenities at all, so we'll just spend the night and head out again tomorrow. We'll check out a few places closer to Quartzite and stay there until the ACA Rally starts next Wednesday.
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
A Catch-up Day
Mount Shasta was out in all of its glory yesterday as we drove south on Interstate 5. It always surprises me how mountainous southern Oregon is. We didn't leave too early as the weather forecast had said there would be black ice early in the morning. By the time we came through the several passes the roads were pretty much bare and dry, though there was as much as a foot of snow in places.
In the Siskiyou Mountains, you go through the highest pass on I5 at 4315 feet, then pop out into the high valleys of northern California with Mount Shasta shining in the sun.
We came as far as Orland, California yesterday and are staying at Old Orchard RV Park. We had stayed here when we came through last March. Old Orchard is an older RV Park with a somewhat unusual layout -- the 52 pull-through sites are all in a large circle. You drive around the outside of the circle and pull into your site. When it's time to leave, you just pull out into the inner circle and drive out. The center and the outside of the circle are all planted with walnut and almond trees of the original orchard. It was very pretty when we were here in the spring, but of course now the trees are all bare.
We'll spend today here, catching up on chores and being lazy. We need to plan our route to Arizona and make some plans -- albeit in Jello -- for the next couple of weeks.
Saturday, January 3, 2009
NO Snow!
We woke up to beautiful sunshine this morning -- it was so bright it almost hurt my eyes. We've gotten used to overcast dreary gray skies. The 7 Feathers RV Resort is a gorgeous place. It's only a year old. We're going to spend the weekend here and leave on Monday morning.
We took a walk this morning around the periphery of the property and along the creek that runs through it, The Umpqua tribe has done a great deal of work improving salmon habitat along the creek. They actually had their first spawning salmon return last fall. There are several dead snags among the evergreens along the creek. We heard and then saw a large pileated woodpecker. It must have found a treasure trove of bugs in a hole it hammered open, for it let me get right under the tree where it was working. I sure wish we would have had Forry's camera. His is much faster and might have gotten a better close-up.
Friday, January 2, 2009
Back on the Road!
We're back on the road again and it feels good! We left Hubbard this morning headed for Camper World in Wilsonville for an oil change and for them to try one more time to install the stabilizer. We didn't bother to hook up the toad as it was such a short distance and we knew we would have to just unhook again for them to get the RV in the service bay. I just followed Forry and the motorhome. The sun was shining at Hubbard (after a whole night of down pouring rain) but Wilsonville had about an inch of new show on the ground. Most of it was off on the freeway, but the parking lot at Camper World was a sheet of ice where no one had driven. This time they did have the RIGHT bracket!
We had to run back Daughter Dawn's (20 miles or so) with the toad while they were working on the RV as she called to tell me that I had left my plastic box of sewing machine needles behind. That doesn't sound too bad, but at $5-6 a packet and about 30 different kinds, it was worth the trip. We gave the grandkids one last hug and were on our way again.
By the time we returned to Camper World, they had all of the work done and had even done their test drive, so we hooked up the Jeep and took off about 12:30 finally heading south on Interstate 5! It was a funny drive -- we went from sunshine to rain to snow to slush and back again.
After hearing some RVer's talking about it on the CB, we decided to stop and spend the night at the new Seven Feathers RV Resort near Roseburg. We had dinner at the casino seafood buffet, then soaked in the hot tub just across from Auntie Violet. The weather forecast is talking about snow tonight for the pass into Californa, so we may just stay here for a day or two. It's a nice place.
We had to run back Daughter Dawn's (20 miles or so) with the toad while they were working on the RV as she called to tell me that I had left my plastic box of sewing machine needles behind. That doesn't sound too bad, but at $5-6 a packet and about 30 different kinds, it was worth the trip. We gave the grandkids one last hug and were on our way again.
By the time we returned to Camper World, they had all of the work done and had even done their test drive, so we hooked up the Jeep and took off about 12:30 finally heading south on Interstate 5! It was a funny drive -- we went from sunshine to rain to snow to slush and back again.
After hearing some RVer's talking about it on the CB, we decided to stop and spend the night at the new Seven Feathers RV Resort near Roseburg. We had dinner at the casino seafood buffet, then soaked in the hot tub just across from Auntie Violet. The weather forecast is talking about snow tonight for the pass into Californa, so we may just stay here for a day or two. It's a nice place.
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