A short trip
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| Ten miles to Huntington Beach |
Monday September 5 2022
We’re only going about ten miles south so we didn’t leave home till noon. This is just a short working vacation to Huntington Beach State Park. I have fabricated a tank cleansing device and need a sewer hookup to test it.
Without going into detail, we don’t need our tanks cleaned, it just seemed like a simple thing to manufacture and well, why not. The idea is to snake a pressure cleaner hose thru a RV sewer hose adapter and then feed it up into the tank. The end of the hose has a special rotating nozzle that will clean the tanks interior. The affluent drains back through the adapter and then into the campground sewer system.
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| No sewer workers were harmed in the testing of this device! |
Sounds simple enough, what could go wrong? Well it went wrong, the hose once inside the tank would tie itself into a knot. This caused several problems, the obvious one being it is tricky getting the contraption back out thru the 4 inch sewer hose. Besides that, you don’t really know how far into the tank you have cleaned because you don’t have any linear control after it self knots in the tank.
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| You get the idea |
As for the grey tank (sink water), it drains thru a 2 inch pipe with several bends in it and I was not able to snake the hose into the tank. That was probably a very good thing; if it knotted up inside the tank I probably would not be able to extract it thru the smaller size pipe.
In summary, the concept is a good one, but snaking the hose into the tank while at the same time limiting its flexibility needs to be perfected. I’m called the experiment a failure and putting the blame on the cheap Chinese high pressure hose I was using.
Sorry I didn’t take any pictures of the procedure, didn’t want to handle my camera under the circumstances.
The 2nd maintenance item I had planned for our two day outing was cleaning the awning. I should mention first; I absolutely hate the power awning on the RV. It is so flimsy I’m afraid to leave it extended and unattended. I’m constantly hitting my head on the erector set extending arms. It’s like a Rube Goldberg design, lots of moving parts for very little result!
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| A daunting task! |
The design defect that causes me the most grief is the awning fabric, the white material on the underside is a fertile medium for mold growth. It is a chore that never ends, it’s like the movie Ground Hog Day! Clean the awning, let it dry thoroughly, roll it up, mold grows anyhow, repeat repeat repeat.
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| An original Rube Goldberg comic |
The physical cleaning method is at best, an effort in futility. The Rube Goldberg frame work won’t hold the fabric taunt and scrubbing the loose flopping fabric is near impossible. We’ll have to ask Millie which makes me curse more, hitting my head on the extension mechanism or trying to clean the d@## thing! It's not that I don't like an awning on the RV, but given my druthers, I would rather have a good old heavy duty framed manual awning.
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| Before |
After that rant you shouldn’t be surprised or critical of my decision to use 30 second house wash on the awning. This is a very strong bleach type chemical you spray on with a garden hose and then rinse off. It works well on brick, stucco and even vinyl siding, but what would it do to the cheap feeling fabric on the awning?
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| Scary stuff |
I applied the chemical as carefully as I could, trying not to get any on the side of the RV or the aluminum arms of the extension apparatus. I rinsed off the area’s I was concerned about as soon as possible and then waited.
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| After |
It was like a miracle, in about a minute or two the awning was white again. I scrubbed the few remaining stains with a long handle brush and those stains too were gone after a good rinsing.
Inspecting the fabric I found no damage or deterioration from the cleaning process, nor was there any staining on any of the surrounding surfaces. The Buda of RV maintenance shined on me today!
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| This is why we like Huntington Beach |
Fitted in and around our work schedule Millie and I enjoyed meals cooked outside on the grill, ice cream from the camp store and several walks on the beach. We didn’t see the campground resident alligator, but that’s ok, I don’t think he is a very friendly fellow!
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| He lives in a culvert under a road in the campground |
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