What has Annie been up to? Eh, nothing much (Annie)

First, let me say that being laid off is AWESOME. I told Chilly that I may never work again, it'll be up to her to support me in the manner to which I am accustomed. In exchange, I'll cook and clean and fix stuff. Think she'll go for it?

Here are some of the recent fixes and mods The Duck has enjoyed.

I didn't like our kitchen faucet. It was ugly, old and too short. See?

Much better!

In order to put in the new faucet, I needed to muck around underneath. The old piping is the lovely polybutelyne (PB for short) that was the industry standard when The Duck was built. The problem with PB, it was discovered years later, is that chlorinated water causes tiny microfractures over time. You can't see them, the only indication of a problem is when the line fails and you've got water everywhere and you swear. We wanted to have all of the PB replaced but that didn't pan out, our plumber balked and I didn't feel competent enough to do it all myself, so we've still got mostly PB lines. Anyway, the grey piping you see in this photo is PB. The white and braided metal lines are going to the faucets.


When I put in the new faucet, I left the PB alone but all the torking I did screwing on the new faucet lines caused the bigger grey fitting you see in the right-hand picture above to leak, and that's not a leak I can fix by tightening anything. So, I figured since I have to replace that fitting, I may as well do it up right, replace both sections (hot and cold water) of PB with Pex and add in on/off valves so that we don't have to turn all of the water off to the coach whenever we need to cut off water to the kitchen sink.

Ta da!

You can see that I just tied into the existing PB. Replacing that entire line would mean squirming into the super-tight corner of the kitchen cabinets and in behind the stove then down into the pump bay. I won't tackle that big of a job unless or until the line fails.

No other fingers were harmed in the making of this improvement.

NEXT!
Inside the refrigerator compartment on the outside of The Duck is the line and fittings for the ice maker. It started leaking. This was annoying because we don't even use the ice maker but the fact that we don't use it meant I didn't have to fix it, just stop the leak, so there's your silver lining.
Here's the leaky bastard, the dark metal screwy thing attached to the blue piece. If you look closely you'll see a drop of water suspended from it, mocking me.


And here it is disconnected from the ice maker and capped with a garden hose cap. It still leaked.


So I got serious and toddled off to Fletcher's and Bill put together a fitting with a cap that would seal the hose. All I had to do was take off the end piece of the existing hose at a fitting and tighten this onto it. It doesn't leak now!

NEXT!
We have an Atwood hot water heater that runs on propane. The on/off switch and status indicator lights are on the range hood above our stove. Recently, we noticed it would fire OK but then cut out and the 'Pilot Out' light would come on. That indicator is a bit of a misnomer because we don't have a pilot light, it's an electronic ignition water heater. The indicator is really telling us that there's a problem, it either tried to fire and couldn't or it couldn't maintain the flame. I suspected a problem with the thermostat and went to talk with Bill Fletcher (we LOVE that guy!). He thought replacing the thermostat was a good place to start but if it didn't work I'd be looking at replacing the board (much like the recent furnace board replacement, just much easier to get to). A new board runs over $100 but a new thermostat was under $14, so I went with that. I don't know why but I don't have any pictures of this replacement project. I just blanked on it, I guess. Here, though, is a picture of the final product. The black foamlike square has adhesive on the back and seals the thermostat to the hot water heater. To replace it, I had to peel off the old and disconnect the four wires, pull out the old thermostat and ECO discs then just reverse the process with the replacement parts. It was super easy and it worked! No 'Pilot Out' conditions since the replacment.

NEXT!
Now to the most recent project, our living room floor. This one I just did yesterday.

See this carpet? It's outta here! And what's with those weird swirly stain things? Here's the view looking forward.


And here's the view looking back towards the kitchen.


Told you it was outta here! One of the reasons to go with vinyl from carpet is the guy in this photo. He sheds like a crazy shedding thing.


And he's huge!

Other reasons to have vinyl instead of carpet...

The wood is in pretty good shape, no soft spots anywhere.

Remember the Allure vinyl we put in the kitchen? More of the same here. It comes in 1' x 3' pieces which you can easily cut to fit your space. In this photo, you can see where the wiring comes out of the floor on the right and goes to that wall outlet. I notched out the Allure to make way for it.

And here it is all finished! (not shown was the trip to Home Depot for more vinyl and the transition strip up by the doghouse) This took most of the day, I didn't actually finish until 10:30 last night. Look at Chilly trying to get her feet out of this shot. Cute!

I left the carpet around the driver/passenger chairs and over the doghouse because I really don't want to mess with them. I'd have to remove the chairs and I'm sure the carpet is glued to the doghouse. I just don't have that many swear words in my arsenal to attack that job.

I still need to secure this block of wood that is covering up the outlet wiring. I'm not going to screw it down but will glue it instead.

We love how this turned out!

And while I was doing that, Chilly livened up the living room atmosphere with leftover sparklies from a wall light we had at our last house. Which way to the brothel? I kind of love it. Both living room wall lights are thusly adorned.


Still on the To Do list is something I've been needing to do for a while now. When our Bounder was manufactured ('97), it was a code requirement that the propane detector (usually mounted in the kitchen below or close to the stove) be connected to a solenoid at the main propane tank. This solenoid is in constant contact with the detector and if the detector alarms then the solenoid cuts off all gas flow to the coach. Once the alarm is reset then the detector sends power to the solenoid to open the valve.

Here's the current propane detector. They don't make these anymore.

Our detector and solenoid aren't communicating too well these days. The detector will go off for things other than (though hopefully including) gas leaks. Cleaning solvents will set it off, as will using canned air (!). When ours alarms you have to move the switch on the detector to Off/Reset then turn it back on. If the detector doesn't sense the presence of gas then it sends power to the solenoid to open the valve and restore propane to the coach and you're back in business. At least that's how it's supposed to work. For us, resetting it so that we have gas again can take hours of off and on and off and on and off and on. It's not in alarm mode all this time, it just doesn't send the necessary juice to the solenoid to open it back up. No gas means no furnace, no hot water, no stove (no COFFEE!), so yeah, it's a big deal. We were once without heat overnight because of this thing.

And here is the solenoid at the tank. It's the piece with the yellow and white wires attached.


It's no longer required by code to have a solenoid at the tank. Replacing our existing detector and a new solenoid would mean having to run a new wire down to it because this old wiring, I'm told, would present a fire hazard for the solenoids that are made these days. I again consulted with Bill Fletcher (what a guy!) and he said he'd just take out that solenoid if it were his coach. I talked it over with Chilly and she agreed, so it's got to go! I got a new fitting to go between the regulator and line to the coach, I just have to take the solenoid out.

Here's the new detector. All it will do is alarm if it senses a gas leak (or cleaning solvents or canned air...). I can't put this in until the solenoid is out.

It fits exactly in the space where the old detector is and will use the existing wiring coming from the batteries to the detector.

I also bought this little portable gas sniffer ($30 at Amazon).

NEXT!

We're going to have all 8 tires replaced next month so I've been doing some research. Replacing tires on a motorhome isn't like replacing tires on your car, load ratings are of utmost importance. These things are heavy! Our GCWR is 23,000 pounds so we have to make sure to buy tires sufficient to this load, with some cushion built in for overloaded conditions (though we hope to never run overloaded). On our particular chassis, Ford F-53 built in 1997, we're limited to 235 85R16 tires. It's the 16 that's the issue, because ideally we would run on 19.5 tires that have a larger load cushion, but doing so for us would mean having to buy all new wheels, which would add a couple of thousand dollars to the price. As much as I'd like to go bigger, our wallets would be screaming. So, having settled on the size, I went in search for the brand. Looked at a lot of Firestone, Michelin, Yokohama, etc but finally settled on a tire that gets really great reviews and is a nice price. General Grabber. They're rated to 3087 pounds so that will work for us.

So yeah, I think that's all I've got for now. Did I mention I'm loving unemployment? LOVE IT! I was joking earlier that I'll finally get to unclench and boy is that true!