No, I haven’t been blogging every single day lately like I have the last couple of years. I skip a day when I’m tired or busy or simply run out of time. And some days, quite frankly, I’m just not feelin’ it.
Yesterday it was all of those things.
Smoke drifting down from Canadian wildfires persists. Obviously, it hasn’t turned the sky orange or blocked out the sun as it has in the northeastern US, but when we drove to The Mountain yesterday morning we noticed a distinct color shift. Even the controlled burns conducted by Arkansas Forestry don’t do that.
At the fifth-wheel, both Deb and I had some specific things we wanted to get done. I went straight to the fresh-water system, which I’d filled with sanitizing solution the day before.
I opened the fill port (to vent the tank), turned the valves on the low-point drains and switched on the water pump for several minutes to start a siphon. Using a length of downspout extension borrowed from Deb’s cousin, I diverted the flow under the rig and toward the downhill side.
With time to kill while 60 gallons of bleach-water drained onto the gravel, I pulled out a stepladder and replaced a pair of solar-powered motion lights over the entry door. They’re add-on pieces, very simple, and once we’re up there after dark we’ll know whether they were worth the 15 bucks we spent on ’em.
The water slowed to a trickle and eventually stopped. I closed the valves, capped the tank and took our 55-gallon drum to Deb’s cousin’s well to fill it up.
Re-filling the fifth-wheel’s tank went smoothly, as before. I’m really likin’ that 20V transfer pump, but on Tuesday I’d noticed that the siphon (inlet) hose tended to curl up and float when I pushed it deep into the barrel, making it impossible to pump all the water out. Yesterday I zip-tied a length of one-inch PVC pipe to that hose to hold it in place, and it worked exactly as I’d hoped it would.
When water splashed out of the filler neck, I replaced the cap and turned off the transfer pump — we had a full load of clean water in a sanitized tank. I went inside, turned on the water pump and waited for it to build pressure in the lines, after which it’d shut off automatically.
Thing is, it didn’t. It kept running. It didn’t build pressure. There was no water from any of the rig’s five faucets and fixtures. I spent three hours chasing that and failed to find the cause. I’d done everything right, and yet the result was no water.
It killed my buzz, that’s for sure. I’ll attack the problem again tomorrow.
Meanwhile, Deb finished the interior floors, so the new-to-us RV is move-in-ready (albeit with no running water). She got the “smart TV” in the living space up and going, with streaming content via our MiFi brick. Smudge, of course, frolicked the day away.
I was disgusted with the day’s outcome — I hadn’t made much progress on what I need to do, and what I spent the most time on was foiled. We packed up and left before 4pm.
“It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose.
Capt. Jean-Luc Picard
That is not a weakness. That is life.”
Ernie’s new inverter had arrived at the campground via UPS while we were out. Deb texted the news to our mobile tech — who’d be leaving this morning for a long weekend of camping with his family — and he decided to come out last night rather than wait ’til Monday.
He arrived at our campsite around 6pm, fresh from his day job but ready to get down to business.
He worked quickly and efficiently, removing the half-dead unit and installing the new one. He put test leads on its terminals and the house batteries’ posts, tweaked a few settings on the master control panel inside the bus, and it was done — once again we had a working inverter/charger.
Now you might be wondering if, while the tech was working on our motorhome, I picked his brain about the fresh-water issue we’re having with the fifth-wheel. Really, would I do that? Damned right I would.
He confirmed that I was on the right track, more or less, and he validated the troubleshooting steps I’d taken so far. The conversation left me with a few more things to check, stuff I hadn’t considered. If I fail again, he’s willing to travel to Yellville to put it right.
I hope it doesn’t come to that — we don’t need to absorb another repair expense. If there’s any good news to report, it’s that we have a spare fresh-water pump, a brand-new unit that we’ve been carrying around for two years.
We’re taking today off, staying put, doing nothing of consequence. Personally, I need to put some distance between myself and yesterday’s frustration.
Take care of yourselves, Patriots. Stay calm. Stay sharp. Stay free.
#WiseUp #LibertyOrDeath #Ungovernable
#LetsGoBrandon #FJB
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