Finally...

A low stress week.  Well minus the blizzard and now freezing rain.  But for us that's like a walk on the beach.  We have managed to keep our water flowing and our heat on which is a major win.  Most of the week has been filled with preparing for our upcoming cross country trip.  That's right, we leave on Friday for our first trek out of state! I'm excited as usual, Ralph is on the verge of a nervous breakdown.  Molly, with her Xanax and tranquilizers in tow is taking it in stride.  I'm thinking I might be crushing up some of those for Ralph's coffee soon.  On an off note, I've discovered that out here they carry GREEN BAY PACKERS ice cream! Ralph refuses to eat it, however I find it quiet good and plan to continue enjoying it.  Wish us luck, our next post will be after the 2 day, 17 hour ride, with 4 people 2 cats and a neurotic dog. ( Smiley)

My blonde is showing

3 phone calls and several plumbing and ducting diagrams later we have water! Turns out that a heated basement only works when you turn on the heat.  Wow, I felt super stupid about that.  At least we now know how to encourage our pipes to produce when they freeze up in the future.  Thank you Valerie from Fleetwood!

I've decided...

Next winter I'm going to be a snow bird.  Our pipes are yet again frozen.  We have tried every suggestion on every blog site we can find and still no avail.  At the moment we have all the drawers and cabinet doors open, heaters in our basement storage compartments, 100w light bulbs hooked up to temperature sensors to turn them on, our slide out pulled in and all the faucets open.  For those of you that have seen our rig this image should have you just about rolling on the floor.  For those that haven't, imagine a shoe box then cram it full of stuff and add 2 people, 2 cats and a dog.  Woohoo, we're camping now!  My only saving thought is that in 9 days we leave for North Carolina and we had darn well better thaw out there, it's near 70 degrees.

Another educational week

Well, after our flood cleanup we thought we should be on an easy path.  We were wrong.  Our next trick was to figure out A) why our toilet had no power and B) why our furnace was randomly shutting itself off at the most inconvenient times.  The first issue took several phone calls, a wiring diagram, 2 days and finally removing a wall panel.  Turns out our toilet has a circuit breaker that flips when it senses there is no water.  Just one more fall out from our frozen water filter (sad face).  The second issue turns out to be another "safety feature".  I'm finding that I'm not liking any of these so called "safety features".  When we hooked up our propane, apparently air got into the line, and to save us from blowing up, the furnace auto shuts off whenever it senses an air bubble.  Funny how that's not in the 3 1/2 inch binder of owners manuals.  On the upside we have made friends with several people at the Fleetwood support line, which is great as I'm sensing these will not be the end of our "safety feature" issues.

WATER!!

Thanks to all those warm thoughts I arrived home today to a beautiful waterfall cascading out of our rig. The good news is the flood was confined to a single basement storage compartment and all we lost was Molly's food. The other good news is that we also found the frozen pipe or should I say inline water filter that didn't get bypassed correctly. Guess that's lesson 2 or maybe 22 I've lost track already. Water issue solved, Ralph just bundled up and headed out to brave the cold only to discover that a 100lb propane tank doesn't last as long as you'd think. Guess that's tomorrows project.

The adventure has begun

We are on day 2 without water, thank goodness there is a nicely heated shower house available. Funny thing, when we picked our spot they asked which was more important cable or showers, silly me thought cable, we have a shower in our rig...oops. Outside of the frozen pipes we are settling in quite well, Molly hasn't killed the cats yet and Ralph hasn't killed Molly. I chalk that up to a win. Now everyone think warm weather so we can thaw out please :-)