Tag Archives: water leaks

2014/03/11 (T) End Of Palm?

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I was up early for no particular reason.  I worked on blog posts for a while and then decided to search for a User’s Manual for our Sharp Carousel II Convection Microwave oven.  We had looked before and not found one.  It is not available from Sharp’s website.  This time I searched by model number, R-1820, and bingo!, there it was.  Someone had scanned it and made it into a PDF, but it was all there and all completely legible.  Today was starting to feel like a lucky day.

I do not use my Palm Tungsten T3 much anymore since the Passwords Plus application got corrupted, and as a result I have gotten less attentive about keeping it charged.  At home I keep it in a docking cradle so it is always charged, but I have not done this in the bus. I still use the Palm Desktop software for my calendar and name/address/phone records, but mostly because I have not found an easy way to move them to MS Outlook and have not wanted to take the time to do it manually.  Besides, I like my Palm.  I’ve had it a long time and it has served me well, providing a convenient and portable place to back up my information.  I even replaced the battery a couple of years ago—which was no easy feat—to extend its life and uptime.

I checked it today and it was dead so I plugged it in to charge it up as I have done many times before.  This time, however, it asked me to install the Palm software from the CD and then configure the device.  I checked my calendar and my appointments were all gone.  Ditto for the N/A/P records.  The Passwords Plus app had also disappeared.  It was a new day with a clean device.  I pondered whether to set the Hotsync Manager to “desktop overwrites handheld” for all functions and see if it would restore the information to the handheld and decided to defer this project until later.

The dishwasher water leak at home was unexpected, but a conversation with Linda gave me confidence that the source of the problem had been identified and the situation was under control.  At the bus I had dumped our waste tanks on Sunday as the gray water tank was indicating full.  I had also topped off our fresh water tank.  Later I noticed a wet spot on the concrete pad under the center of the water bay.  Further investigation revealed a drip.  Ugh.

We have two water valves on our coach where the fresh water hose gets connected.  Our valves leak around the stems when the fresh water system is pressurized.  When the first valve is opened it allows water to flow into the on board fresh water tank.  The second valve connects an air hose fitting to the fresh water plumbing.  This allows the use of compressed air to “blow out” the water pipes when winterizing the coach.  These are the same kind of multi-turn gate valves used for shutoff valves on sinks and toilets.  They have a packing nut that tightens around the valve stem and compresses a packing material around the stem to keep water from leaking out.  They always need to be re-packed at some point.  Ours have needed to be re-packed for a while, and seem to be getting worse of late, so I decided to play plumber today.

I bought some Teflon packing material at ACE Hardware.  It is like a long piece of angel hair pasta.  ACE also had the more traditional graphite rope, but the guy who helped me recommended the stuff I bought.

The handles have a center hole that is fluted to match corresponding flutes on the valve stem.  The handle slips onto the stem and is retained by a small center screw.  To remove the packing nut you must first remove handle.  Easy in concept; impossible in fact.  They probably have not been removed since the bus was converted in 1990/91, and they were not interested in coming off today.  I think there is a special tool for pulling these handles, and I think I have one back at the house, but I don’t think it is going to help in this case.  When working on a bus conversion away from its home base follow the physician’s credo, “First, do no harm.”  This was a repair that did not have to be made at this time, and should not be made in this place, so I put my tools away and found something else to do.

We also have a 1.5″ knife valve on our fresh water tank to drain it rapidly.  These valves, in various sizes, are normally used to drain RV waste tanks.  They eventually develop leaks and need to be serviced or replaced, and that is the case with ours.  With a mostly full fresh water tank, however, that was also not a task for this time and place.

John knocked on the door around 4 PM to let me know that folks were gathering at Jack and Shirley’s rig for happy hour followed by a pot luck dinner.  There were 10 people there and we had a nice conversation.  Jeff had prepared his highly acclaimed pork ribs and they were very popular with everyone (but me, of course).  I had a chopped vegetable salad that Ali made the other day and set aside a portion for me.  It was quite good, and very refreshing on a slightly warm, sunny afternoon.

When I returned to the coach I dealt with some e-mail and then uploaded my featured bus article on Frank and Phyfi Morrison’s Cool Cruiser to Bus Conversions Magazine.  I put on PBS and watched a special fund-raiser concert featuring Steve Martin playing the banjo with the Steve Canyon bluegrass group.  My Palm Tungsten T3 was fully charged, so I set the Hotsync Manager to have the Desktop Overwrite The Handheld.  It took quite a while but it restored all of my applications and databases except for the old version of Passwords Plus.  That was an acceptable outcome as we migrated our passwords some weeks ago to a newer application that automatically syncs multiple devices via the “cloud.”  My anti-virus program notified me that my operating system was not up to date so I ran Microsoft Update.  Even though support for Windows XP ends on April 8th there were a half dozen updates just released.

 

2014/03/09 (N) Delayed

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Even though the weather forecast for today was for near perfect conditions with sun, no rain, and a high temperature in the upper 70’s—and as much as I would have liked to have John and Marian return and help me with bus projects—I decided not to work on the bus.  Linda was scheduled to fly back to Florida Monday afternoon and I needed to devote some time and energy to housekeeping chores.  I have been keeping up with doing the dishes, laundry, and the litter tray, but the bus needed to be vacuumed, and the floors, counters, shower, mirrors, and windows cleaned.  I would probably not make a good bachelor, or at least not a really tidy one.

Mid-morning I got a call from Linda letting me know that we had water damaged suspended ceiling tiles in the northwest corner of the basement near the electrical panel.  She sent pictures with her smartphone and then we talked and tried to problem solve as best we could.  She had not yet checked in for her afternoon flight the next day and we decided she should re-book for later in the week to give her time to figure out what was happening and try to deal with it.

She called our good friend, John Rauch, because that’s what we do when we have house issues.  John thought it was most likely an ice dam on the roof causing water to run down the inside of the wall, or at least behind the siding.  Linda was able to find a roof rake and calcium chloride pellets at a small, local hardware store.  (The big box stores were out and probably busy stocking their shelves with garden supplies even though we are still experiencing single-digit temperatures and have feet of snow on the ground with more likely to fall before winter finally yields to spring in Michigan.)  The rake allowed her to safely remove snow from the first few feet of the bottom edge of the roof.  The pellets are like hockey pucks and are designed to be tossed onto the roof ice and cause it to melt.

Later in the day Linda joined the rest of our immediate family at our daughter’s house for a slightly belated birthday celebration for our son-in-law, Chris.  I finished some, but not all, of my housekeeping chores as I want to do some them just before Linda returns so the bus is as clean as possible.  I worked on the Cool Cruiser article until early evening when John and Ali invited me next door for a small campfire.  Jim and Janet came down for a while and we all had a nice chat.

 

2013_09_10 (Tue) Wall Art and Bus Barns

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As part of getting the house ready for an October Open House / House Warming we continued hanging wall art today.  Getting the artwork up on the walls has had the double effect of making the house look a lot more like a home (or art museum, depending who you ask) and de-cluttering the library where most of the artwork has been stored.  This in turn has had the secondary effect of getting stuff off the floor and on to the previously blocked empty bottom bookcase shelves.

A couple of weeks ago we discovered water pooled around the base of the library bookcases closest to the rear doorwalls following a heavy (3”) rain, but were unable at that time to determine where the water came from.  It continued to be a mystery until early this past week when we had another heavy downpour, only this time we were on the scene and discovered the entry point.  Water was overflowing a gutter at an end that was tucked under a soffit against the rear wall of the library above the last doorwall panel.  The water was flowing down the outside of the glass and found its way in at the bottom under the sill plate.  Once inside it was running across the tile to the low spot.  It was sheer coincidence that when this happened the first time there wasn’t anything sitting on the floor in the path of the water; if there had been, it would have been obvious where the water was coming from.

On Tuesday morning we met with Dave from Morton Buildings to discuss our bus barn/garage project.  We walked the proposed site and then sat down to discuss our “requirements.”  Dave took good notes and said her would try to have the written proposal package to us by the end of the week.  Morton is a vertically integrated company that builds high quality timber-framed post-beam structures (pole barns) with metal siding and roofing.  They usually handle the whole job from permits to final inspection, but will work with a home or business owner to get them what they want.  Their buildings are expensive, but come with excellent warranties, so it is something we are going to have to think about seriously.

Tuesday afternoon I had a phone conversation with Paul from CEPI regarding the About This Report (ATR) online help system for which I am developing some of the content.  Late afternoon we drove to a funeral home on the far east side of the Detroit area for a visitation.  The owner of the bakery where Linda was the controller for the last 10 years lost his mother over the weekend at the age of 92.  He lost his father over the summer while we were out west, so it was particularly important that we make it to the visitation.