RV Water, Dumping and Plumbing. Dump Directory. 1st Divorce. Golden Gate. Nixon. Utah.

For "tRaVersing or RV day":

Tech Tips from Mark Polk
"How to help ensure your RV water is safe to drink
Here's an article by Mark about the ways to ensure your RV water system is safe to use. There are no guarantees that any water is completely safe to drink, but if you take certain precautions you can keep your RV water system safe to use. So where do you start? Here's where."

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Water Thief

"Those dratted thread-less Forest Service campground faucets
Some forest service and other public lands primitive campgrounds have a water supply within the campground, but sometimes the faucet does not have a threaded male end, supposedly to prevent campers from hooking up. That doesn't mean you can't use them to fill your RV. Here's how.

Or buy a Water Bandit: Water Thief  

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Leak Under Sink

"Hey, there is water leaking under here!" That's what my wife said yesterday as she was cleaning under the sink. Oh, how I don't like plumbing problems! But where exactly is the leak coming from? That's always the first thing you need to look for is the origination of the leak. I emptied the under-sink cabinet, turned on the flashlight and went on a leak hunt.

At first glance I noticed that the black drain pipe was dripping. Thinking that there was a leak in the drain I filled up the sink then let it drain, sure enough there was water dripping off the drain pipe that connects the two sink drains. Great! I think, "I'm going to have to take this whole pipe off and repair it somehow." I was not looking forward to that.

Here is the under-sink view:

But notice the two white water supply tubes zip-tied to the black drain pipe. I thought, "Hmm what if one of the water supply tubes is leaking - they are touching each other." So, I plugged up the sink because if there is no flow through the drain pipe a leak would not show up until I pulled the plug. Sure enough, even though I had the sink plugged the pipe appeared to be leaking.

Therefore it was not the drain pipes. Indeed! The culprit is here:
As it turns out the water supply tube was leaking where it screws into the faucet nipple. All I had to do to fix the problem was to re-tighten the nut (hand tight). I am assuming that after two years of the near earthquake conditions of travel this fitting jiggled loose. (Is jiggled a word?) So, for my fellow travelers, it may be a good idea to check the "tightness" of your water supply fittings every year or so just to be sure no leaks develop. Jim   From: http://rvnow.rvtravel.com/2006/12/leak-under-sink.html

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This sewer hose is designed to work in sub-freezing temperatures
Most RV sewer hoses are designed for warm weather use only. Once the temperatures fall below freezing, the plastics crack and the hose is done. In addition, most hoses use spring steel to form the ridges, which under occasional warm weather use may work fine, but once the use becomes more constant or extreme, the hoses will experience failure. So here is good news, an RV sewer hose designed to work even if the temp hits minus 44 degrees F. Read all about it.

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Plumbing problem? Think out of the box

"RV plumbing repairs can make even a seasoned professional plumber stand on his head. The problem is that so much of the plumbing in an RV is crammed into tiny, hard to get at places. Making “standard” repairs becomes an almost impossible task.

Witness a problem an RVer recently had. The connections from the gray water pipes to his holding tank were damaged, and every time gray water was run down a drain, it simply poured out over the top of the tank, instead of into it. After dropping the tank, the damage was discovered, and the only “cure” was to replace the pipes coming down out of the RV. But the connections for those pipes were crammed into a tiny space under the rig’s refrigerator.

The drain pipes from all rig fixtures were solidly fixed to walls and floors, and access to any mounts holding them in place was virtually impossible. The old down-pointed pipes had to be sawn off and replaced, but how to connect them back up?  No “give” in the pipes would allow conventional ABS couplers to be used. The RVer after much head scratching, went to a pro and asked for a consult, figuring he could at least do the work if he knew how to proceed.

The pro declared that he was glad he didn’t have to work on RV plumbing, and finally came up with the same solution as the RVer had envisioned: The use of hubless couplers. These “rubber sleeves with hose clamp” style devices allowed the RVer to cut away the old drain line, leaving a gap of an inch or two between the old and the new pipe that could be bridged with the couplers.  At close to $3 a pop, they are certainly more expensive than those 50 cent plastic couplers, but they made the job possible. The RVer also had to buy a short coupled, frameless hacksaw in order to work in the confined space, but with a few hours of effort, he saved a huge amount of money compared to hiring the job out."

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"Let’s go up top for a moment. I installed a Cyclone Sewer Vent on our toilet ventilator.  It swings with the wind, which is probably good.  What’s bad is when we have the cover of the Fantastic Fan in the bedroom open, the fumes seem to flow into the trailer.  I’m not sure if it’s a coincidence that the wind always seems to be blowing the wrong way."

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More Winter Water, Drain and Propane tips:

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When RVs Have To 'Go':

A comprehensive directory helping RVers find RV dump station locations to empty or dump their gray water and black holding tanks, When RVs have to go...      http://www.sanidumps.com/

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On This Day:

First divorce in the colonies, Jan 5, 1643:

"In the first record of a legal divorce in the American colonies, Anne Clarke of the Massachusetts Bay Colony is granted a divorce from her absent and adulterous husband, Denis Clarke, by the Quarter Court of Boston, Massachusetts. In a signed and sealed affidavit presented to John Winthrop Jr., the son of the colony's founder, Denis Clarke admitted to abandoning his wife, with whom he had two children, for another woman, with whom he had another two children. He also stated his refusal to return to his original wife, thus giving the Puritan court no option but to punish Clarke and grant a divorce to his wife, Anne. The Quarter Court's final decision read: "Anne Clarke, beeing deserted by Denis Clarke hir husband, and hee refusing to accompany with hir, she is graunted to bee divorced.""

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Construction begins on Golden Gate Bridge, Jan 5, 1933:

"On this day in 1933, construction starts on what will become one of America's most famous landmarks: the Golden Gate Bridge. When completed in 1937, the Golden Gate has a 4,200-foot-long suspension span, making it the world's longest suspension bridge. Since opening to the public in May 1937, almost 2 billion vehicles have crossed the bridge, in both the north- and southbound directions.

The bridge was named not for its distinctive orange color (which provides extra visibility to passing ships in San Francisco's famous fog), but for the Golden Gate Strait, where the San Francisco Bay opens into the Pacific Ocean. The bridge spans the strait and connects the northern part of the city of San Francisco to Marin County, California.

Prior to the bridge's construction, the only way to travel between these two areas was by ferry boat.

The bridge's chief engineer, Joseph B. Strauss (1870-1938), an Ohio native who built numerous bridges across the U.S., was involved with the Golden Gate project by the early 1920s. From the beginning, Strauss and his collaborators faced numerous challenges, including opposition from skeptical city officials (who were concerned about costs), environmentalists and ferry operators (who were worried the bridge would impact their business). Some members of the engineering community said it was technically impossible to build the bridge, and it was not easy to raise funding for the project at the beginning of the Great Depression (a $35 million bond issue to finance construction of the bridge was passed in California in 1930). Once construction began, workers had to contend with the strong ocean currents and heavy winds and fog in Golden Gate Strait. Eleven workers died during the building of the bridge, 10 of them on one day, February 17, 1937, when their scaffolding fell through a safety net.

Despite all of these issues, the Golden Gate Bridge, with its art deco design, was completed in four years and on May 27, 1937, some 200,000 people showed up to celebrate its opening. The following day, President Franklin D. Roosevelt pressed a telegraph key in the White House, signaling to the world that the bridge was open to vehicular traffic. The initial toll for the bridge was 50 cents each way.

The Golden Gate would remain the world's longest suspension bridge until it was surpassed, by 60 feet, by New York City's Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, which opened in 1964. In February 1985, the 1 billionth car crossed the Golden Gate Bridge. Today, more than 41 million vehicles travel across the bridge each year."

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Yesterday,   On That Day:

Utah enters the Union, Jan 4, 1896:

"Six years after Wilford Woodruff, president of the Mormon church, issued his Manifesto reforming political, religious, and economic life in Utah, the territory is admitted into the Union as the 45th state.

In 1823, Vermont-born Joseph Smith claimed that an angel named Moroni visited him and told him about an ancient Hebrew text that had lost been lost for 1,500 years. The holy text, supposedly engraved on gold plates by a Native-American historian in the fourth century, related the story of Jewish peoples who had lived in America in ancient times. Over the next six years, Smith dictated an English translation of this text to his wife and other scribes, and in 1830, The Book of Mormon was published. In the same year, Smith founded the Church of Christ, later known as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, in Fayette, New York.

The religion rapidly gained converts and Smith set up Mormon communities in Ohio, Missouri, and Illinois. However, the Christian sect was also heavily criticized for its unorthodox practices and on June 27, 1844, Smith and his brother were murdered in a jail cell by an anti-Mormon mob in Carthage, Illinois. Two years later, Smith's successor, Brigham Young, led an exodus of persecuted Mormons from Nauvoo, Illinois, along the western wagon trails in search of religious and political freedom.

In July 1847, the 148 initial Mormon pioneers reached Utah's Valley of the Great Salt Lake. Upon viewing the valley, Young declared: "This is the place," and the pioneers began preparations for the tens of thousands of Mormon migrants who would follow.

In 1850, President Millard Fillmore named Young the first governor of the territory of Utah, and the territory enjoyed relative autonomy for several years. Relations became strained, however, when reports reached Washington that Mormon leaders were disregarding federal law and had publicly sanctioned the practice of polygamy. In 1857, President James Buchanan removed Young, a polygamist with over 20 wives, from his position as governor, and sent U.S. army troops to Utah to establish federal authority. Tensions between the territory of Utah and the federal government continued until Wilford Woodruff, the president of the Mormon church, issued his Manifesto in 1890, renouncing the traditional practice of polygamy, and reducing the domination of the church over Utah communities. Six years later, the territory of Utah was granted statehood."

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President Nixon refuses to hand over tapes, Jan 4, 1974:

"President Richard Nixon refuses to hand over tape recordings and documents that had been subpoenaed by the Senate Watergate Committee. Marking the beginning of the end of his Presidency, Nixon would resign from office in disgrace eight months later."

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My Yesterday:

When I went to pick up Mikey to groom him, Sam's truck wasn't there, so I drove further down the road to where they had had the Moving Sale.  He was mostly packing things up and taking them to storage.  There, I bought a wide wooden filing cabinet and jewelry armoire cheap.  I didn't need them, but someone might.  Also, I wanted to make sure the sofa and loveseat set was still there, as Mindi needed it for her new place.  But some of the cushions were missing.

So I went down to Jay's to round up the cushions that Girlfriend had taken off the sofa set.  Mindi was coming over here to drop off her dogs and buy the sofa set.   Jay was in a foul mood and started hollering and screaming at me that I couldn't have the cushions until I brought him the computer cables that he had left in my van.  I think Girlfriend had him riled up over something, and he took it out on me. When I went back with the cables, he apologized, but I think Girlfriend now knows how ugly he can be.

By that time, Sam was back with Mikey, the poodle, so I picked him up and started to groom him.  I had him 'roughed-in', bathed and brush-dried by the time Mindi arrived.  Mikey had to be locked up in the kennel cage as Mindi's dogs were here now, and I don't mix strange dogs, especially two intact males.  I jumped into the Puddle Jumper, and led Mindi down to the Moving Sale, so she and the Nanny loaded the furniture on the big pick-up truck.  But there was no one around.  Mindi gave me the money, so I came home and finished grooming Mikey. 

After I dropped Mikey off at his home, I took the money to them at the Moving Sale.  I heard quite a few facts, or stories, about Girlfriend!  A lot different from what she had told Claudia and me.  I also heard some of the stories that Jay had been telling people about himself.  They are two of a kind, and I hope they will be good, not bad, for each other. This subdivision is scuttlebutt city.

Mindi's dogs, my critters, and I had a less stressful time for the rest of the day.