Category Archives: Family

Some trailer maintenance

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After the fall trip, I knew that I had at least a water leak to find, remember this picture?

This was an obvious leak, other clues were the water pump cycling on and off (losing pressure). I wasn’t too concerned since I didn’t see any water inside the trailer, coming under the wall where the pump is. One time I saw liquid coming from under the wall, we were traveling east to Klamath Falls, OR. We stopped at a pull off and I saw it. I was not happy. When we got to our nightly stop, I investigated. There were no other symptoms. I pulled up the closet floor (you will see more later) and found an old potato that had gone so bad, it was liquified. That was NOT the issue this time.

We were headed to California for our holiday visits with family and I wanted to fix it by then. So I removed the floor in the closet and found the leak. The blue arrow shows the water drops and the red arrow shows where it was going, then out the bottom of the trailer:

I made a replacement segment of pipe and replaced the bad section:

Airstream, in its’ infinite wisdom, pretty much must have placed the floor of the closet on top of all the components underneath. I guess they thought no one would put any weight on the floor, even if it is the largest storage area in the trailer! Once replaced there was no leakage but the floor still rested on the pipes, even more so now since I made it just a hare longer. I stopped the leak but did not address the cause. Since we were leaving later on a short trip, that didn’t need too much in the closet, I just did a quick and dirty fix, with the plan to do a better fix later. I put a small vertical support piece and two 2x4s to elevate the floor over the pipes.

Our holiday trip came and went without event. Well, a minor event. Pulling out the trailer from our son’s backyard, the gate was not secured well enough and the latch introduced itself to the back panel.

Ouch! Oh well, it is just cosmetic and shows we do use our trailer.

We had an upcoming trip starting in June and I had a few projects to get going on. Here we go.

I had both 30amp and 50amp outlets set up at home but they were on the same pole. We had a carport, for the trailer and truck, on order for quite a while, and in anticipation of that, I had to move the 50amp outlet close to the carport. The source of the electricity was south of our garage on the power pole next to the house. I had to get the wires to the back of the garage on the west side of it. Since it was 50amp, the wiring had to be 6/3 and I opted for direct burial. 6/3 wire is really thick and very stubborn. I knew our son was coming to visit so I needed to prepare it for him to help me.

The first stage was to get the wire from the power pole into the garage. Trenching ensues. Now I might not have buried it deep enough but shoveling is not fun.

I did use conduit to get into the garage and from the power panel.

Here you can see the conduit coming from the breaker box and the current 30amp outlet (for guests).

When our son showed up to visit, with his family, I put him to work. I got the wire into the garage but now we had to go up the inside wall (not sheetrocked), over the rafters, and down another inside wall. This was non-trivial with that stiff wire. Eventually, the 50amp outlet was in place.

We had a carport installation scheduled for right after we came home from the holidays, the first week of January. We got a call on the way home that the crew was sick and they needed to reschedule. OK. Everyone that they couldn’t get to would get pushed back a few days or a week. Nope, that is not how the company decided to do it. They pushed us back a full month! Not very fair for them to do that but what can we do? Eventually, it was installed, and here is a picture of it with its normal inhabitants.

Next! We had an air conditioner replaced a little while back and installed a Soft Start component to that A/C. This component allows the air conditioner to take less amperage to start up. Starting is the biggest electrical jolt when running an A/C. These devices should make an easier life for the A/C and allow operation on less amperage, possibly even with a generator.

I saved the Soft Start from the old A/C and purchased a new one for the second A/C we have. This way we are covered on both. The first installation on the 2nd A/C went perfectly and helped quite a bit (you can tell by the sound). The second one was going well until I had to remove a connector from an existing capacitor. I pulled off the soldered multi-connector on it. I was able to get a replacement from Amazon.

Here is the box that contains the Soft Start circuitry.

The next step was to get the A/C’s running on generators. I already had a Honda EU2000 but that wasn’t big enough. Sams Club had a bigger one for a good price, but it wasn’t big enough either. So we run them in parallel. You can connect two generators together to combine their power. It did work and we could run one A/C with them, I didn’t try two but that might work.

When you run two generators in parallel, you connect them together with a set of wires (you can get that a Harbor Freight) which is simple enough. However, you also have to connect to the separate ground connectors that are on each generator. Quick disconnects might have worked but the Honda had a difficult connector. I found, on YouTube, another way to connect the ground. By using a standard outlet connector and only connecting the ground wire, you can simply plug the ground into any of the available power outlets on each generator and it works just like the ground screws externally. This shows the parallel cables and the streamlined ground connector.

On to the next one. This had to do with stabilizing the floor that created the water leak. The temporary fix was OK but it didn’t allow me to put any weight on the floor. I needed to be able to use that area. I created a framework to support the floor. Under that framework, I supported it with 4 simple posts (down the middle), to support the cantilevered part (to the top), I secured it under the side wall (to the bottom). It is very sturdy.

To secure the floor to the new frame, I used some Tee Nuts and countersunk screws.

One thing we both like when traveling is ice for our drinks. Roxie really loves it. We don’t have enough room in our freezer in the trailer and it is inconvenient there so we carry a Yeti 45 with us. We purchased it in 2017 in Pennsylvania when we started full-timing. I normally put it on a couple of milk crates in the back of the truck which raises it where I can reach it over the truck tailgate. The issue is that it will fall over and slide around since nothing holds it there. I decided to build a platform for it. I wanted it the same height as the milk crates but with a lip around to hold the chest from tipping and sliding. I also wanted to ensure a toolbox or other item would fit under it. Here is the result:

We are preparing for a trip to Alaska with our friends, George and Marcia. On the last trip, we took in 2019, the only real issue we had was one of our winterizing valves cracking and leaking. The story is here. I thought I would do something to protect that part of our trailer, along with our freshwater drain. I also noticed I was missing part of the belly pan below. Here is the unprotected view:

I decided to get a piece of aluminum flat bar and make some protection.

I attached them with VHB tape and covered that with aluminum tape. I didn’t want to use screws or rivets due to putting a hole in one of the tanks under the belly pan OR having part of the belly pan ripped open if I hit something. This way if these hit, they would be ‘sacrificial’. I also covered the hole in the belly pan. We will see how it goes.

There were a couple more minor fixes. With our ’92 trailer, I put in a SHUB. This is a shower door that retracts into itself. It was much nicer than the accordion folding plastic door that was original. On this trailer, when the shower door broke (not under warranty) I replaced it with a SHUB also. It has worked great for 8-9 years. Recently it started leaking under the front edge. I solved it by recaulking it according to their instructions. The caulk was really old. Here it is cleaned before caulking:

One last one and then we will go. This trailer has a really nice storage area under the bed, accessible from the outside. However, since the trailer is now so old, the locks are no longer available for this door. Naturally, one of them started failing. There is, however, are kit that replaces the old locks with the new, readily available ones and fills in the gaps caused by the difference between the two.

As an aside, I was able to grind down all the Olympic rivets that I had replaced around the trailer so they look much nicer now, like above.

With that, we are on our way to Montana to meet our friends and start our trek.

Reminiscing in Redding

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We made it to Redding and stayed at the Premier RV Resorts, asking for a shady spot for a week. We got a surprisingly shady one across the creek and near the back. Some of you know the history of this location but for those of you who don’t, I will enlighten you. If this is old news, just skim through it.

My history, with my family, of Airstream travel, has been documented on this blog. However, with a love of RVing, comes a love of camping whether it is in a government campground or private RV park. In 1970 we were living in Thousand Oaks CA, my father working for Westinghouse and we were camping whenever we could. Westinghouse decided to close the office where my father was employed. They gave him the choice of moving to Baltimore MD or leaving Westinghouse. Growing up in the Pittsburgh PA area, he chose to leave. His next move was to purchase a KOA in Redding CA!

I was 10 years old when we moved there in January, and I was ‘privileged’ to change schools in mid-year! We were now owners of a campground and we got to see the other side of RV’ing.

It was interesting growing up on a campground during my ‘teenish’ years. During the non-school days, I had a built-in job, working all summer at the campground. My job usually involved cleaning the bathrooms!

My parents did a lot of improvements to the campground over the 10 years they owned it. One addition was the expansion of sites on the other side of our creek. We added about 40 extra sites and had to build a bathroom there (I am standing by the door of it above). Since they were on the other side of the creek, a bridge needed to be built.

I don’t have a picture of the original bridge, which was just a set of culverts covered by dirt and asphalt. I do have a picture of the current version of the original bridge:

Ironically, it still looks basically the same. A level of concrete, and asphalt egress, has been added but it still will flood just like it used to. It happened to us many times, the heavy rains came, the creek swelled and we would have about a foot or two of water rushing over the top (like the washes in Texas)! This made it very difficult for RVs on the other side of the creek to get out. We needed a second bridge.

My dad, being a frugal person, found a different solution than a fully engineered and commercially constructed bridge. He decided to use a railroad boxcar. Now, this might have been taking his love of trains a bit too far! He purchased a boxcar, had the top portion cut off, leaving just the floor and frame underneath. Concrete supports were placed at each end and they placed the boxcar:

My dad thought there might be some trepidation from people that needed to use it so he took some promo shots showing it was safe:

He drove our trailer on the bridge to show the strength. We ended up using it a lot during flooding and even when the creek was dry. It took some very precise alignment when crossing the bridge and straight-line accuracy. Flash-forward to now:

The bridge is still standing! Some enhancements have been made and it is no longer in regular use for RVs, but you can bike or walk across it whenever you want. At the behest of some neighbors in the park, I asked if we could pull our current Airstream on the bridge to recreate my dad’s shot. My request was not received favorably, so this is all you get.

We have visited the old KOA (as we call it) numerous times in the past few years. It is very strange to call them as they still have the same phone number (albeit with a different area code): 246-0101. Since we were a KOA, in the phone book we were listed along with radio and TV stations (young people, Google ‘phonebook’). We would get phone calls from people and they would request a specific song to play. After many times, explaining we were not a radio station, but a campground, we came across a better response. We would tell them we would try to get that song on the air and hang up.

The staff at the current campground have learned who I am during this time (we still have not received any free nights – wink) and I have sent them many old pictures in the past:

They even have taken some of the photos and made a collage they have in their Rec room:

You can never really go back to the way things were but you can always relive memories. That is what happens whenever we go camping here.