About two weeks ago, right around the same time the awning bit the dust, our toilet starting leaking…and not fresh water. Our bathroom (and for a few days the whole trailer) started smelling like an old folks’ home. I got online, researched our model of toilet, and figured out the problem. There are a couple of gaskets that seal the bowl to the pedestal on which it sits. Those were worn out, so whenever we flushed, just a little would leak out. A little, of course, is all it takes. Pew!
So I had to get back online and track down replacement gaskets. Found them, ordered them, and waited. Got them last week, but I was busy with school. Had to wait for the weekend to arrive so I had the time and energy to fix the darned thing.
Yesterday I decided to roll up my sleeves and have at it. This meant turning off the water, dumping the holding tanks, and tearing apart the john. This was enough to convince me if I wasn’t already pretty certain that there’s nothing, and I mean nothing, sexy about plumbing. I had to wear a bandana over my mouth and nose so I wouldn’t retch at the smell.
An RV toilet is basically a seat with some fresh water piped in that flushes directly into a black hole underneath the trailer, a sort of fancy portajohn. Despite the chemicals we flush into the holding tank, there’s no making it daisy fresh. It’s still just a big plastic tub of feces and urine that gets emptied about every two days. You’d think the RV would reek all the time, but it doesn’t. There’s a ball valve standing between us and said pit, and it seals up nicely. There’s also a vent fan in the bathroom, and that helps quite a bit.
So I got the toilet bowl off and removed the offending gaskets. That done, I got to take care of the fun part: cleaning the pedestal and the inside the ball valve. That required a big bucket of bleach water, a toilet brush, and lots and lots of towels. By cleaning, I mean scrubbing off layers of shit. Yum. Thank god the bleach has sort of seared my nostrils by this time and I couldn’t really smell the worst of it.
Once the toilet was cleaned, I was able to install the new gaskets, put the toilet back together, turn the water back on, and test it out. Success! No more leaks. I bleached down the entire outside of the toilet and the bathroom floor, then I climbed in the shower and scrubbed myself silly. Then I bought a new air freshener. No more old folks’ home!
I was quite proud of myself, really. I’ve never ripped apart a toilet before. I’ve been saying for the past couple of months that living in an RV has caused me to develop a close, personal relationship with my own sewage. Well, now that’s actually true. I saw and smelled way more effluvia this weekend than I cared to.
Once I got the toilet fixed, I still had half a Saturday to kill, so I set about taking care of some little problems that had cropped up. I repaired a broken latch on the closet door, I replaced the light in the vent hood over the stove (again), and I cleaned all the mirrors in the house. That last is a bigger chore than you’d imagine.
RV manufacturers figured out somewhere along the way that putting a LOT of mirrors in a small, dark space gives it more light and the illusion of size. This is exactly what they want potential buyers to see upon first entering an RV, thereby duping us into believing that, yes, in fact these little trailers really are quite homey. Honestly they are, but they aren’t as big as the advertising would lead you to believe.
Anyway, in our particular RV, there are almost as many mirrors as there are windows, and that is to say a whole helluva lot of them. In total, we have seven mirrors – a closet with two mirrored doors, a full-size mirror on the back of the pocket door, two mirrored medicine cabinets, and two etched glass mirrors over the entertainment center. Couple those with the twelve windows in this place, and that’s a lot of damned Windex.
Later in the evening after running several errands, I plopped down to watch some TV and suddenly realized we have far too many remotes. Lex spent part of Saturday hooking up the TiVo. That added one more remote to our collection to bring us to a total of five of the things. The big problem is that there is no tidy place to store them all. I’ve been stacking them on the back of the sofa, and sometimes they end up scattered around, with one or two on my desk, another on Lex’s desk, one on the sofa, and yet another on the kitchen counter. Naturally, the one I need at any given moment is never close at hand. We have remotes for the TV itself, the TiVo, the Xbox (well, that’s a controller and a remote), the digital converter box, and the surround sound system.
Something, you see, must be done, so I did a little research and discovered that someone has already solved this problem for me. There’s something called a “sofa buddy” or “bed buddy,” depending on what you’re using it for. Well, it’s a strip of fabric with several remote-sized pockets sewn into it, and it drapes over the arm of the sofa, allowing the remotes to hang to the outside of the sofa where they are always, literally, within arm’s reach. The other option is to tuck one end of the thing under the mattress so you can reach remotes from the bed. Either way, these things seemed just what the doctor ordered, so I ordered one, too. Found them on eBay of course. Ten bucks including the shipping.
As I’ve mentioned before, RV living does require some creative problem solving when it comes to finding space for things. We’re doing well on both fronts thus far, but give it time. I’m trying to be good about the throwing stuff out before bringing more in thing. I’ve run out of my own novels to read, so now it’s library or Kindle time. No more buying paperbacks. The only books we’ve bought since moving in have been RV-related or digital.
Now, if we can just get that awning fixed, we may well have almost everything in the RV working at the same time. *knock wood*
i’m starting to get a tad jealous of all your handy feats and accomplishments. Love reading the stories. Very proud of you. Still, know there is pouting and fear that i will lose my position.
*love*
Well, I either learn to do some of this myself, or we drop $100 deductible every time we need some tiny thing fixed. So, handibutch, I have no choice but to make do. Still, I’ll never have your mad skillz!