Raven’s RV
The ongoing education and adventures of two rank newbie RVers

Dec 21, 2007

The saga of the leaking hot water pipe

Filed in Blog

Some while ago, you may recall that we became aware of a leak from under the bathroom. It turned out that one of the valves for the hot water tank was broken, and that simple part turned out to be a pain to locate. Reaching the fittings was an obnoxious process that involved, in the end, both of us needing to take Ibuprofen for muscles bent into positions they were not designed for.

Our bathroom is tiny–about the size of a typical shower stall. RVers will understand how that goes. Now, down on our hands and knees, we could just about stick our heads into the closet that the plumbing is in. With me so far? It would be okay if the pipes and such had been directly ahead, but the joker who designed this system decided to shove them so far to the right that the only option to reach them was to make a human zig-zag.

I offered to do what I could, and soon found myself uttering slights to the designer’s parentage as I twisted myself around in the cramped space. I managed to get the old fitting 90% off and Don finished it. The new fitting was great, but we still had the problem of the pipes not being flush, i.e one was set higher than the other. It was this that had caused the breakage in the first place, and Don decided that he needed to saw a piece off the pipe to make it, well, flush.

It took a long time.

There was a lot of running outside and turning taps on and off. I learned something about releasing pressure by turning on the hot water taps, though I still don’t understand why. Don discovered that another piece had cracked, so had to work around that, too. After some while there was a loud declaration that was not “Poot!” and I made a late-night run to the store for some more hose clamps, since every single one in our possession had now contrived to break.

Eventually, the leak went away and we left the heater running to try and dry up the swamp that had been the result of days of leaking and partial work-arounds which, while not good to the structure of our RV, had certainly made us smell sweeter. We are not quite done yet, but we both got to take long, hot showers last night without worrying about recreating the Niagara Falls in our closet. ;)