Sharing My Errors

As usual, one error comes because I didn’t do what is recommended on the RV forums. Another comes because I believed what was written on an RV forum. So, what is one to do?? I would say common sense is in order, even though it costs me money.

We got up Friday for work at 5:30am and while Jo showers and does her bathroom duties, I usually sit and finish off what Dr. Pepper is in my mug from overnight. But, Friday morning I stepped into some water on the linoleum in front of the kitchen counter in the middle of the floor.

After looking around under the sink, we determined that the hot water line was leaking. So, after we both finished our needs for hot water, I went out to the basement of the Mobile Suites and shut off all of the hot water valves at the manifold. I did that because the way they labeled the valves left me wondering just what valve should be shut off, and I didn’t want to have to “trial and error” each valve before going to work.

In the afternoon at work, I got to thinking about what it was that I was going to need to do to fix the water leak, as I have never worked with PEX fittings and line. And then things started to “click” in my head. We had a water leak in the wall behind the shower valves a while back and had to take the coach in to get that fixed. In that case, it was a fitting that was loose.

Then, the other day, while sitting on the commode, I reached down to flush it. After it flushed, I heard a “drip…..drip…..drip” sound for just a little bit and then it stopped. So, I flushed it again and got the same result. My first thought was that I had a leak in the plumbing of the commode. But, when I kneeled down to try to find the leak, I had to flush it again to get it to drip. That is when I found out it was dripping under the sink, and not at the commode.

Looking around underneath, I found the cold water line leaking just a wee bit. I was able to tighten it some with my hand, and after trying the commode flush again, it had stopped.

Of course, this led me to wonder whether the three leaks that we had might be related to our water pressure in the mobile home park being too high. After all, it is on a well and not city water. The obvious clue that should have made me think before is that when we water our yard with the oscillating sprinkler, it puts out a high stream of water even though we only open the water valve about ½ to ¾ turn. (Well……DUH!!!!!)

So, when we got off from work on Friday, we first went down to our RV dealer and looked into water pressure regulators. Remembering that Howard at RV Dreams had written recently about the one they had, I went looking for a similar, adjustable regulator. Of course, the dealer didn’t have any adjustable ones, so we bought one that was regulated at 45psi of water pressure.

We got back to the coach and I immediately shut off the water and installed the regulator just before the filter on our water line. Then, I got a wrench and some pliers and tightened up the fittings on the hot water line. It took a bit to snug it up, so I was pretty sure that we simply had a loose connection. I snugged the cold water line, and it didn’t take as much turning to snug up.

Since then, our water pressure has dropped a lot in the coach and our leak is stopped. I believe that the leaks we were having is because our water pressure was too high. I’m not really happy with the non-adjustable regulator set at 45psi because it doesn’t let the commode flush very well and the little spray line at the side for cleaning the commode bowl has really lost pressure.

I imagine that we will buy one of the adjustable regulators and employ it right at the supply water valve that is underground. That way, the pressure on our supply hose from the valve to the coach will be reduced as well. I just need to determine what the best pressure setting would be once I get one of those.

Now, that was the mistake I made even though the posters on the forums always say to have a regulator. Now, for the mistake made when I believed what one said.

With our Mobile Suites, they recommend that the wheel lug nuts be at a certain “torque setting” by checking them with a torque wrench. Towards that end, I bought my first ever torque wrench this last couple of weeks and checked the torque on the wheels. When I posted about that on one of the forums, I was reminded to also check the torque on the axle nuts that hold the hubs on.

In the past, that has been discussed a lot on the forums and questions had been raised as to what size of socket one would need to tighten the axle nuts. In those discussions, it was mentioned ONE TIME that the socket size was 36mm. Others said that since 36mm might be hard to find, that a standard 1 1/16 inch socket would work as well.

So today, I went to Lowe’s to check on water regulators and see if I could find a socket. To my surprise, they did have a 36mm socket for a ½ inch drive wrench. Plus, it was priced at only $9.00, where the standard 1 1/16 inch sockets that I had seen online were all higher, some of them being $20. I thought I had me a good deal.

Then, we got home after grocery shopping and I crawled under the slides with all my tools and finally got the hub cap off and then the axle hub cap off. Guess what??? The 36mm didn’t fit the axle nut. So, tomorrow I get to take the 36mm back and see if I can find a standard 1 1/16 inch and pay more for it, plus I get to spend for the extra fuel it takes to get the extra running around done.

In my defense, for those that don’t know a lot about wrench and socket sizes, a lot of times there is only a very minute difference between the width of a metric wrench and a standard. So, my thought was that the 36mm would fit EXACTLY and the 1 1/16 would be just ever so slightly bigger, but still useable. It would have been especially so, if one gets a 6-point socket instead of a 12-point one. After that little experience today, I posted on that RV forum that a 36mm would not work, so don’t even try, even if it is cheaper.

So, with all my errors, I deserve a “face palm.”