What to do when the Water Heater goes out?????
Yes, ours went out this week end. Long story short, I turned on the electric (and) the gas with no water in the tank. I'm 100% positive the electric element is fried, and it won't fire on gas any more.
I tried several ideas to get it working again, including an RV mobile tech, that never returned my call, a trip to Camping World in Richmond, Indiana for a new electric element, only to find out I could not find a socket anywhere to fit the electric heating element.
What's worse, we are camped right beside the bath house at Brookville State Recreation Area, South of Liberty Indiana, and 2 bath houses are down for remodeling.
We do have a full hook-up site, and are doing OK with cold water, including a cold shower until we return home. But my mind won't rest.
We even went into Liberty, Indiana today to see if we could find a camping shower (a bag you hang in the sun) and could fill it with hot water from the stove top. Couldn't even find that.
Well, a little bit ago I brainstorm idea was born.
Perhaps the title of this post should be:
HOW TO TAKE A HOT SHOWER WHEN YOUR WATER HEATER IS COMPLETELY DEAD!
Here's what we did, and now we can take as many hot water showers as we want.
Step 1: Put 2 pots of water on the stove top and get them boiling.
Step 2: Get the extra bucket out of the pass through that you've been dragging around for the last 15 years and only use for a storage container.
Step 3: Flip the valve on your fresh water on-board pump that is used for winterizing.
Step 4: Fill the bucket with that boiling water and add cool water to make it a slightly warmer than comfortable level.
Step 5: Put that winterizing hose into the bucket of warm water and flip on the water pump.
Step 6: Go to the shower and run the cold faucet only. (Otherwise you'll have to put 6 gallons of boiled water in your water heater tank.)
Step 7: Jump in shower and take a Navy Shower! If you are good at taking Navy Showers, you can do it with less than 1/2 that bucket of water.
FYI, both my wife and I were able to take a nice (almost hot) shower, finally, which felt really, really good!
Step 8: When done, simply flip the valve at the water pump for the winterizing kit and your back on regular fresh water.
We do have an appointment already with our dealer-repair shop for them to fix the water heater next week when we'll be back home. Meanwhile, this extended week-end trip was not ruined at all.
If the bath houses were open, we wouldn't have attempted doing anything, we just take showers there. But with them both down, well, that put us into a very peculiar situation.
So in the future (and I certainly hope no one ever finds themselves in this situation), here's a very easy, on the spot, alternative way to get around a very COLD situation!
I tried several ideas to get it working again, including an RV mobile tech, that never returned my call, a trip to Camping World in Richmond, Indiana for a new electric element, only to find out I could not find a socket anywhere to fit the electric heating element.
What's worse, we are camped right beside the bath house at Brookville State Recreation Area, South of Liberty Indiana, and 2 bath houses are down for remodeling.
We do have a full hook-up site, and are doing OK with cold water, including a cold shower until we return home. But my mind won't rest.
We even went into Liberty, Indiana today to see if we could find a camping shower (a bag you hang in the sun) and could fill it with hot water from the stove top. Couldn't even find that.
Well, a little bit ago I brainstorm idea was born.
Perhaps the title of this post should be:
HOW TO TAKE A HOT SHOWER WHEN YOUR WATER HEATER IS COMPLETELY DEAD!
Here's what we did, and now we can take as many hot water showers as we want.
Step 1: Put 2 pots of water on the stove top and get them boiling.
Step 2: Get the extra bucket out of the pass through that you've been dragging around for the last 15 years and only use for a storage container.
Step 3: Flip the valve on your fresh water on-board pump that is used for winterizing.
Step 4: Fill the bucket with that boiling water and add cool water to make it a slightly warmer than comfortable level.
Step 5: Put that winterizing hose into the bucket of warm water and flip on the water pump.
Step 6: Go to the shower and run the cold faucet only. (Otherwise you'll have to put 6 gallons of boiled water in your water heater tank.)
Step 7: Jump in shower and take a Navy Shower! If you are good at taking Navy Showers, you can do it with less than 1/2 that bucket of water.
FYI, both my wife and I were able to take a nice (almost hot) shower, finally, which felt really, really good!
Step 8: When done, simply flip the valve at the water pump for the winterizing kit and your back on regular fresh water.
We do have an appointment already with our dealer-repair shop for them to fix the water heater next week when we'll be back home. Meanwhile, this extended week-end trip was not ruined at all.
If the bath houses were open, we wouldn't have attempted doing anything, we just take showers there. But with them both down, well, that put us into a very peculiar situation.
So in the future (and I certainly hope no one ever finds themselves in this situation), here's a very easy, on the spot, alternative way to get around a very COLD situation!
