Monthly Archives: October 2015

Don’t Like Your RV Faucets? Change Them!

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As you might have guessed, RV manufactures do not use the best or the most expensive faucets when building your RV.  You might just love your sticks and bricks faucets and hate your RV faucets. What can you do with those RV faucets?  Replace them with new faucets.  You can use regular sticks and bricks faucets.  The only thing you need to do is measure the spacing between the handle holes.

Faucet Hole Spacing

Be sure to turn off the water to the RV and relieve the pressure (if any) in the hot water tank. Then turn on the hot and cold handles of the faucet you want to replace.  Clean out the stuff underneath the sink. Get a flashlight and look up underneath the sink and see how the water lines are hooked to the current faucet. You may have to get yourself up under the sink bottom to see what is going on. But you should see something like the photo below.

Faucet Water Connection Under The Sink
Sometimes a red plastic pipe is used for hot water and a blue or white plastic pipe is used for cold.
The fittings should only be hand tight.  If they are on the faucet stem harder than hand tight use a Channel Lock Pliers
Channel Lock Pliers 
and carefully loosen the fittings. Now you should see two black or blue flat plastic nuts with wings sticking out. See photo above for the flat nuts above the white water line.  Use you channel lock pliers to loosen and then remove these nuts.  What you have left should look like below.
Bottom of faucet shafts without water lines or black plastic wing nuts
Now you can pull the faucet out from the top.  Clean off the area where the old faucet was and get ready to install the new one.
For the kitchen faucet you can use. (Low Cost Kitchen Faucet )
Low Cost Kitchen Faucet 
You can also use a kitchen faucet with an integrated sprayer. (Kitchen Built-in Sprayer Faucet)
Kitchen Built-in Sprayer Faucet
You should double check the water feed line spacing before you make your purchase.
Here is a chance to put the faucet of your choice in the color and style you want into your kitchen.
So how do you put everything back together? Clean the area that the old faucet sat on with your favorite cleaner.  You want to make sure there is nothing on the top of the sink where the new faucet will be going.
Put the new faucet together according to the manufacturer’s instructions.   Then apply some Kitchen and Bathroom Caulk
Kitchen and Bathroom Caulk
around the bottom of the faucet (unless the faucet manufacturer says not to.)
and put the water stems into the holes in the top of the sink.
Bottom of faucet shafts without water lines or black plastic wing nuts

 
Put the black flat nuts back on and tighten them down tight.  You can use your pliers to tighten the black nuts down to be sure they are tight.  Then put the water lines back on.
Faucet Water Connection Under The Sink
Caution If the faucet stems are metal you may need to use plumbers tape.
Plumbers Tape
Just wrapped the tape around the metal stem before you screw the plastic water line back on.  If the faucet stem is plastic you should not need the plumbers tape. Make sure the new faucet is turned off and then turn on your RV water CHECK FOR LEAKS and enjoy your new faucet.
For the bathroom sink you can just follow the above instructions for that sink as well.  The bathroom sink is where you can get fancy and make something that is really yours.
Bathroom Faucet
Brass Bathroom Faucet

Until next time.

Severe Weather!! — It Happens

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When you are asleep do you worry about this,
or maybe this
or even this?
 Well I did!!
At the beginning of camping season and at the end of camping season are the most dangerous times for storms expected, or not.  And if predictions are correct and this is an El Niño year then things could get really bad or not.
What  is an El Niño?  El Niño is an ocean-atmosphere climate phenomenon that is linked to the periodic warming of waters across the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean. This warming is part of the natural climate system. On average, an El Niño event occurs every 2 to 7 years and typically lasts about 9 to 18 months.
So why should you worry or even be concerned about an El Niño ?  During periods of El Niño  warm water builds up off the South American coast and this sends more than the normal waves of moisture into the US.  These waves of moisture can, and do cause more storms, some of which are more severe than storms in a non El Niño year.  This translates into more severe thunderstorms and more than normal tornado’s
While you can use your phone most of the time for weather alerts and weather radar, when you are out camping your phone may not get a signal or changing weather conditions may suddenly make your phone not work.  And the basement of a 5er is not a safe place to be.  So what is a person to do?
During the check-in process to get your RV site, you should ask, where do we go in case of severe weather and do you have a method of alerting the campground of approaching bad weather?
In most cases the park will have a severe weather location, like a cement block bath house or  underground facilities.  But most will not have a warning system.  It is left up to you to know when bad weather is approaching and it is time to take cover.
So now your phone has no bars and the park has no way to tell you that a large thunderstorm is approaching your RV site.  Now what are you going to do to keep you and your family safe?  Buy a weather radio with built-in weather alert.  Our government built, many years ago, a National Alert System to let citizens know about disasters before they happen.  That was the old weather radio that went off (with its built-in siren) all the time for just about any reason (some good, mostly bad).  After a lot of citizen complaints over many years a new system of alerting people was developed by the government that had a better built-in method of stopping false alerts and added text messages to each alerts displayed on a screen on the new generation of weather radios.
Midland WR120EZ NOAA Weather Alert All Hazard Public Alert Certified Radio with SAME

RadioShack SAME Weather Radio 12-991

I could go into detail on how this type of radio works but this is not a DIY Blog. This type of radio can be programed simply, thanks to SAME(Specific Area Message Encoding) technology you will only receive alerts for the locations that you have entered into the radio and you won’t have to worry about false triggers or deal with an event that has nothing to do with your area. Also some weather radios like the ones pictured (above and below) you can customize some of the alert types, so it only alerts you to the alert types that you have selected.  For example, if the National Weather Service issues a thunderstorm watch and you have only thunderstorm warning selected. The radio wont alert you unless a  thunderstorm warning alert is sent. Most of these radios have battery back-up and you can attach your HDTV antenna to them to extend the pick-up range of this type of weather radio. You should never leave home to go camping with out one of these special SAME radios.

RadioShack 7-Channel Handheld Weather Radio with SAME
La Crosse 810-805 NOAA/AM/FM Weather RED Alert Super Sport Radio with Flashlight

Here are two that operate on just batteries and can be carried on the hiking trail or just outside around the campground.

No matter which one you choose like a smoke detector or gas detector your RV is not complete and you are not fully protected nor safe until you have at least one WEATHER RADIO.

Until Next Time