For some reason we have had a collision of problems that have kept us pinned down in Sanford FL, yes “Stand Your Ground” Sanford. We stayed one night at the Sanford Elks Lodge and met some delightful people in the bar. The next morning as we prepared to leave for our appointment at La Mesa RV to have the seal repaired I noticed that the gas cap from the Jeep was missing, presumably stolen as it had a been there the day before when we fueled and it is fastened to the Jeep by a strap which was still there.
We arrived at La Mesa and met with Nathan, our service adviser. He had the heater controller card for the water heater in hand and proceeded with that installation while examining the seal. It needs to be replaced and their parts department only had a 21 foot piece and we need 28 feet. I agreed to pay for expedited delivery since it was Friday and that should have it in hand on Monday, Tuesday latest. At that point we moved the coach to Wekiva River RV Resort about 6 miles away for the weekend. We drove back to St Petersburg in the Jeep to pick up the remaining part we needed for the water heater which Arthur had called to tell us was in. Whew now we have everything in place to be underway by Tuesday, Wednesday latest. So why am I writing this in the La Mesa RV Cafe on February 1? One could blame the supplier for incompetence, they decided NOT to ship it expedited. They put it on a truck which never made it out of Atlanta until Friday, January 31, because of the weather. The good news is that we have been stuck in the warmest place we could have been this past week. We have had an opportunity to explore an area of Florida we might never have thought about visiting. We like the RV park we are in, the price not so much.
Monday, Murphy tracked us down again. We had been having some reduced water flow issues and I had pulled the aerators off all the faucets and found fine gravel in them, especially the kitchen sink which gets the heaviest use. Finally removing the aerator on the kitchen sink did not restore the flow and I saw black fine sand in the toilet bowl. It dawned on me that the source of black fine sand had to be the whole house carbon filter. Clearly in the freeze at Covesville it had had a small internal rupture. When I pulled it Monday morning I found it leaking carbon. Great! but how do I restore the flow in the kitchen sink? Some basic troubleshooting pointed me to the diverter valve which switches between the sprayer and the tap. I was getting much more flow through the sprayer, ah a workaround. I called Pfister customer service and told them my tale of woe. Not the least being the video for how to remove the diverter was not working on their web site. I pulled the diverter and cleaned it according to the directions and flow was restored to 50%. Another call and the part was on order under warrantee, but I paid for 2nd day delivery. The part didn’t show at the campground office when expected or the next day, but I wasn’t going anyplace anyhow. By the third day I was getting upset, I finally got the UPS tracking number which showed it had been delivered and signed for two days before! It was not in the office, so at their suggestion, I went to the store and found it there addressed to Paul Gobderg, close! The replacement took 5 minutes and flow was fully restored.
Still waiting, the seal has not arrived and it is almost 3 PM on Saturday, back to the campground as soon as they finish with the water heater. Oh, I didn’t mention, the tech broke the new part while installing it 🙁 🙁 They have pulled a part off a coach in the lot to hold us over the weekend and will finish the job next week when we come back to have the seal installed, assuming it was ever actually shipped.
Still have a smile on my face, I don’t need to be anyplace else yet. I guess we will blow through the Florida Panhandle, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana in a couple of days on our way to Texas. Fortunately we have explored much of the territory and don’t feel we will be missing much. Of course this all assumes Mr Murphy has had enough fun with us. For the non RVers reading this none of this is more than irritating taken as individual happenings. Other than the seal, all of the problems stem from spending time in temperatures below 10 F which is really rare for us. The water heater initial failure was a switch that stuck in the on position and caused the plastic housing to distort from the heat, problems cascaded from there. Likewise the filter failure lead to a lesser cascade of failure.
Time to go enjoy.