Making RV Friends

There I was in the parking lot of City Market, folding my freshly clean laundry with my door open to get some airflow, and I see a guy in a big RV pull up and walk my way. “That’s a unique ride you got there” he says to start off the conversation. I invite him in for a grand tour and start talking about my camper.

Eventually the conversation leads to the things I am trying to fix (mainly my propane). It turns out that Steve is a newly retired HVAC guy and knows a lot of stuff about the stuff I know nothing about. Steve is on a 3 year retirement jaunt. He bought an RV and is traveling all around the United States and stopping to collect life experiences and cool stories from places like Slab City and Burning Man. Here’s a few photos stolen from his blog:

  

We do a little bit of trouble shooting the propane lines and find out that the flare on one of the copper line connections is broken. Lucky for us we are parked right outside of an ACE Hardware store. We go in and the guy is super helpful. He offers to let us use the flare-maker-crimper tool to fix it.

  

We get a bracket to attach it onto the chassis more tightly so that it won’t bounce around and break again.

The propane still doesn’t work.

There’s only a tiny little bit of propane spewing out of this newly filled tank. We do a lot more trouble shooting, including buying a new regulator, but it still has the same problem. We realize that the lack or pressure is right at the tank, even if you take all the pipes out of the equation, so we figure exchanging the propane tank would be our next logical step.

It’s Memorial Day weekend and all the stores are sold out of propane tanks to exchange.

So we go get a drink at the Ranch, gab about living in campers, and save the propane mystery for another day. I’m currently on the East Coast, but this will be my first priority when I get back to my little house on wheels!

Here’s a link to Steve’s blog: http://vanishingpoint63.blogspot.com. Check out the blog post called “Home Improvements,” he has some cool upgrades that gave me some ideas including solar power and hardwood floors!