Airstream von Soich

We went over to the Airstream to try and get it ready for a trip to Penn Wood Airstream Park, and later on this summer, to Assateague.
The idea was to measure the counter and cabinet and remove the faucet cartridge from the galley. The faucet cartridge had other ideas, though. After an hour of wrestling and wrenching the cartridge, I managed to free it. Well, at least part of it. The center section came out but the outer part stayed. Since Moen actually makes tools to remove the outer part of the cartridge, I guess I’m not the first this has happened to.
Also, we decided to remove the interlocking foam mats as flooring and replace it with self-adhesive vinyl flooring in the shape of wood planks. Putting the new flooring in will be easier if we also remove the kitchen cabinetry first.
The plan is to buy cabinetry from Lowes, either regular ones, or garage-style ones.
In other news, the battery was almost drained. 24 hours of charging fixed that.

I inspected the Airstream for the first time since the crazy winter set in.

Things appeared to be in not-too-bad of shape; The battery could use a charging, some mouse droppings (but not too many, and no signs of nests),  the tires were all in various stages of deflation, and no obvious major leaks in the ceiling.

The real test, of course, is to hook up the city water and see if I spring any leaks.

I’m excited to use the camper this summer, but at the same time a bit apprehensive about getting it ready, and the Suburban being still able to tow it is always a consideration.

Yesterday, I installed the refrigerator and microwave in the airstream, and did some tidying up in preparation to taking the camper this morning to get it inspected.

I seemed to remember how to hitch it up OK, and didn’t have much trouble getting the trailer out of the parking spot at my in-laws (aside from picking up some branches in the stuff that sticks out of the roof), and slightly bending the FM antenna.

The inspection went OK as well, with the major problem being that the garage ran out of lightbulbs trying to replace all the running lights, and the left turn signal not working. (Turned out that it was a loose connection in the harness that runs from the car to the trailer.)

I brought the Airstream back to our house, and parked it in a VERY narrow alley. Nobody’s complained yet that I parked it there, blocking the alley, but really, they can go around the block…)

I’m having to pause in our preparations (hence the time available to write this post) because between my wife and I, one of us has to be on baby duty, and right now she needs to go to the bank and grocery store.

Our current plan is to leave as soon as possible, drive the two hours to the campground, and hope the office is still open when we get there. The weatherpeople say that there’s a cold front moving in, and it will bring cooler temperatures, right behind lots of wind and thunderstorms. Not exactly the kind of weather I want to be driving in… Oh well.

More updates as we get a chance.

Let water freeze in it.

I got back over to the airstream today, with my supplies for soldering the pipe, since the compression fitting wasn’t… fitting. After some problems with the solder joint also being too small for the old pipe, the saqme as the compression fitting, I finally got it on and soldered.

For the other side of the pipe patch, I thought i’d still use the compression fitting, allowing for future repairs, and possibly allowing a spot for water drainage next fall.

I went ahead and torched the pipe, and applied probably too much solder to the joint. Looks OK, but really, that’s not saying much at all. it could still leak. I then attached the compression fitting to the other side, and went to turn on the hose.

I ran back to the trailer (since the hose shutoff wasn’t near the camper) and looked under the sink. No water from the joint, but i still heard something spraying, and saw dripping water.

It turns out that the water pump has a plastic body, and some residual water had stayed in the pump, after I ran the water out of the tank last fall, and when it froze, the body cracked.

Well, I removed the pump, and went to Lowes to get a shutoff valve to attach to the cold water feed where the pump had attached. I apply that, and turn the water back on. No leaks from where the pump was, but I STILL heard “pssssssss”.

Remember that compression fitting?

I ran, turned off the hose, and then scrambled for a wrench and pliers. As I was trying to tighten down the nuts, the whole pipe came out of the fitting, and SPLOOSH, I got soaked with residual water spraying out of the pipes.

That joint is now soldered.

In  other news, after an extended examination of the LP gas lines, which all seemed to be working, I got the water heater to light (on the ninth attempt.) The water got hot. Oh, and the faucet in the kitchen leaks.

We’re going to have to put off our departure until at least sometime Monday, since we weren’t able to get the camper in for inspection on Saturday. And, we’re totally not packed, or otherwise prepared to go on vacation.

We’ve decided to go to Penn Wood Airstream Park, outside of Clairon, PA, since it’s close and relatively inexpensive. Unfortunately, this was the first day I got to go to the Airstream and check on the systems.

I planned on accomplishing the following:

• Refilling the air in the tires, making sure the tires hold air after sitting 11 months slowly going flat;
• Connecting the water lines, and firing up the water heater (which I’ve never done);
• Re-repairing the torn vent tubes;
• Testing the (electric-only) refrigerator, and reinstalling it if it works;
• Cleaning out the interior, to clean out the mouse-signs and sand from last year.

There’s a warning sticker on the air compressor that cautions you to only plug the compressor into an outlet, never an extension cord, and boy, they weren’t kidding! I ran 3 lengths of extension cord from my in-law’s house to the trailer, and tried starting the compressor. The noise it made was of the “aChug Hummmm…” variety, so I wheeled it back toward the house (and two of the 3 extension cords). There, I got an “aChugmmmmChugmmmmmChugmmmm…” I can’t really figure out how, but somehow the compressor just KNEW I was trying to cheat.

So after I plugged the compressor into the house outlet (where it worked fine), I ran the lengths of hose to the airstream to pressurize the line. When I went inside, however, I found that the trailer had grown a shower under the galley sink. Apparently, my plan of blowing out the water lines to avoid putting antifreeze in them didn’t work out so well.

Sure enough, there was a split in the 1/4″ cold water supply, right where the sink fitting was soldered into the cold supply. I hacksawed the split section out and took a trip to Lowes. I decided to go with compression fittings, since I’ve never soldered plumbing before, and seems like it would be easier to fix future breaks with compression fittings.

It seems that the pipes either expanded slightly all along it’s length, or the pipes from 1977 were made slightly thicker, because I wasn’t able to get the compression fitting on the sink side, despite cutting the pipe back several times. I think I’m going to have to learn how to solder plumbing, and quick, since we’re suppoed to be leaving next weekend, and I still don’t know if the hot water tank works, which is important, if we’re going to be using the shower.

I gave up on the sink for the moment, and went to fix the torn vent stack hoses. That turned out to be another problem, since removing the old tape revealed that one of the hoses was torn way below the level of the floor, and to fix that, i’d have to remove the belly pan to access it.

That problem put me way behind schedule, so I’m going to have to find time this week to catch up.

I hauled our air compressor over to the in-laws today, to help winterize the Airstream. It was kind of sad, since this made it clear that we were done using it for the season, even though we had wanted to do one final fall camping trip.

The first step was to plug in the inverter to top off the battery, and to power the water pump. Then I turned on the pump and the galley sink faucet, and let the water pump drain the fresh water tank. While that was going, I opened the grey tank and let the water drain right out. (the black water tank was already empty.)

After the fresh tank was empty, I shut off the pump, opened all the faucets,  pulled the shower hose off the wall and laid it in the bottom of the tub, and attached the compressor to the city water hookup with a short section of hose that has a male garden hose adapter clamped to one end, and the other end with a air-tool quick release fitting clamped to the other end (just using hose clamps.) I was using pre-compressed air at 60 psi; the compressor blows the breaker that leads from the shed to the trailer.

When I attached the air to the fitting, the remainder of the water, plus a lot of air, started blowing out of the faucets and shower. The pipes also started buzzing; I imagined that was the check valve getting blown around inside it’s seat?

While the air was going, I went inside and opened the toilet flush valve until the water was cleared from that too. (I tried the toilet sprayer, but nothing came out, water OR air. I wonder if that will cause problems?)

I closed the faucets back up, re-pressurized the water line,  and opened the drain valve on the hot water tank. A surprising amount of water sprayed out, along with some black gunk at the end. (Ew!)

The final step was to pour some RV antifreeze into the drain of the sink, shower, bathroom sink, and some down the toilet. Hopefully, this will be enough to prevent frozen cracked pipes, and avoid having the water lines contaminated with RV antifreeze.

We also pulled out the sheets, games, and some wayward clothes hidden around the camper, and swept it out. I still need to go back with some D-Con traps, since there were mouse “signs” all over, too.

We determined yesterday that the water in the grey tank smells just as bad, in it’s own way, as black water.

(more…)

The inspection this morning went well. Within the first 5 minutes, they determined that all the things that need to work worked. (more…)

I went over to the Airstream again after work today to prepare it as much as I could for towing to the inspection center tomorrow. (more…)

I was surprised to find that, when I went over to the Airstream after work, my wife had cleaned up my disaster zone of a work area, and also had installed what we had of the interlocking floor mats. (we need to buy more, since we now have more floor after the bunk rearrangement.) Looks good!

I had made a pit stop at the local hardware store to buy cables to use as stringers for the bunks, then headed over to my in-laws place. Unfortunately, the keys to the Airstream were locked inside their house, and nobody was home yet.

I busied myself by carrying out the pieces of wood I’d need to cut for the plywood bases of the bunks, and did a little click of the jack switch before I plugged the trailer into the 110v.

The jack is wired directly to the battery (courtesy of the dealer we bought the AS from) and the lack of any kind of response from the jack led me to believe that the battery itself was dead. This is a big problem, since both the jack and the breakaway system use the battery, not to mention the lights and water pump if we’re dry camping.

I’m worried that there is a short or some other active circuit (like a utility light being on) that drained the battery, and recharging the battery with an external charger won’t do any good if I can’t find out why it drained in the first place. I’m also worried that plugging the car wiring harness into the Airstream will put a strain on the Suburban’s electrical system, if it’s a short that’s causing the problem.

The Univolt is still providing 12V, and runs the lights and water pump just fine. Unfortunately, the park we’re scheduled to pull into Friday doesn’t have 110v hookups.

Well, my father-in-law came home, so I was able to get into the camper, marvel at the cleanliness and flooring, and install the cables zigzag-fashion on the L-channels that were on the sideboards of the bunks.

I shaved an inch or so off each dimension of the piece of plywood that had been used for one of the old beds, and dropped it into place. It was a tighter fit than I expected, considering I had measured it pretty well.

I reduced the tension of the zigzag cable, and the plywood dropped right in.

The other bunk had the same process, except I used two smaller pieces of plywood that can be lifted up if we need better access under the bed. Three big L-brackets attached the bunk to the floor.

Fortunately, I hadn’t destroyed the framework for the bed on the street side, so I was able to reinstall that bed for now, until we can come up with a viable bunk solution on that side. I think it’s going to have to involve even narrower mattresses. Amy suggests a futon bed mattress, cut down along the seam. That seems pretty reasonable to me, and would be smaller than the mattresses we have now, and wouldn’t intrude into the narrow bathroom door space. (For what it’s worth, the OLD bed sticks out into the door, too. It wasn’t just me!)

Tomorrow I hope to get the battery issue resolved. Otherwise, we’re going to have to camp with flashlights, lanterns, and jugs of water for the sink and “flushing”…

Current vacation outlook: not so good.