Yesterday we discovered that we have a leak in our fresh water tank. I guess the good news is that it isn’t our black tank. The bad news is we rely on our fresh water tank since we’re usually dry camping.
Airstream Los Angeles will be able to take a look at the leak Friday after Christmas, but they don’t have any fresh water tanks in stock if ours needs to be replaced.
We’re not rushing for hookups quite yet. Hopefully we’ll work out some sort of system to tide us over until this is fixed.
Oh, and in case you’re curious, I made a timeline of our repairs. The upside to anything that goes wrong with the trailer is that it’s blog material.
Dinner Last Night:
Tomato Rosemary White Beans from The Great Vegan Bean Book
Baked Polenta:
Makes 4 servings.
1 C Polenta
2 T Nutritional Yeast
2 T Earth Balance
1 t Olive Oil
Bring 3 cups of water to a boil. Lower heat and slowly add 1 cup Organic Polenta. Stir frequently for 30 minutes. Stir in 2 tablespoons of nutritional yeast and 2 tablespoons of earth balance butter. Pour into an 9 inch pie plate, cover and refrigerate for 2 hours.
Pre-heat on oven to 450. Brush olive oil on top of polenta. Cook for 20 minutes, flip, cook for an additional 20 minutes.
2013 Cost of Camping:
117 nights paid camping
234 nights free camping
351 days this year
Total spent on camping this year: $3,201.29
Daily average cost of camping: $9.12
10 Comments
Well that really sucks! On the plus side though, that picture of the water drip is super cool.
why not just unscrew that plate/cover and see what’s leaking…??
That’s what I thought, but it’s connected with rivets and we don’t have a rivet gun anymore.
You can remove the plate for inspection just by drilling out the rivets, or cutting the heads off the rivets with a putty knife & hammer. No need to replace it right away, but when you do, a rivet tool is <$20 at hardware stores and something I recommend every full-timer have in their tool bag.
Get some aluminum pop rivets while you're at it. I can send you a list of useful sizes. Trust me, you'll need them for belly pan repairs in a year or two anyway…
Thanks for the tip Rich. We’re going to have the dealer do it for us. We’re currently camping in a mud bowl and don’t really want to get under the trailer!
We should pick up a rivet gun at some point. We included our old one with the sale of our old trailer not knowing we’d be back on the road 4 years later.
See you soon!
Hi Leigh,
I’m sorry you’re having tank problems. Not having access to see what’s going on is frustrating. As Rich suggested, drilling rivets is one way, but it’s hardly fun especially if you “oops” and run the drill bit into the water tank!
I hope the repair shop has answers soon…
Merry Christmas!
Thanks Russ. Yeah, we’re opting to have the Airstream dealer look at it for us. We’ve never been big DIY people, and even if we wanted to take it off we’d have to lay in a huge mud puddle to do it. No thanks!!
You are right….if you did it yourself, you could mess up something else….Airstream has a reputation….they need to fix it, if it is a congenital problem with your unit…..
Sorry to hear about the repair. Our Airstream is presently at Southwest Coaches in Corona (outside Los Angeles) for storage while we spend Christmas in Montreal with my mother. We are using this period to have warranty work done as well – water leak behind the toilet and possible leak at the rear curb side corner. We had a leak under the kitchen sink previously fixed under warranty in Vancouver. Good luck.
Good thing you’re catching all those leaks before they cause bigger problems. Safe travels!