March, 2022
Yes, I know I’m almost a year behind, sigh. I get so carried away with things! This year, I will not post so many blog posts in between camping trips, and then I’ll get close to caught up. Online folks tell me never to get caught up, never to post about a camping trip while I’m on the trip … while I’m away from my home … or nefarious folk can do dastardly things to my home while I’m away. But I’m a year behind on these blog posts and that’s going to change! 🙂
So let’s go back to the beginning of 2022 and I’ll show you my year.
Oh, my it was cold this past 2021-2022 winter!! But I needed to be thinking about spring and camping.
So I picked a couple of nice sunny days very late in March, 2022, and brought the trailer to the house from the storage lot so I could clean the trailer, do some maintenance, and get her all spiffed up for spring camping.
It was a bit grey and cool on the day I hitched up Towhee the Trailer in the storage lot. But I trusted the weather forecast for the next few days and so I brought her to my home, trusting and hoping.
After I got her home, and the next day dawned, what a gorgeous day!
With such good weather, I happily started with exterior maintenance. The work began.
Jack up the wheels (each axle separately, off the ground, blocking the other axle so the trailer would not roll forward or backward), add grease to wheel bearings, check brake adjustment, check everything underneath the trailer to make sure everything is secure … all tanks, wiring, dump valves, and the axles, etc.
Then with the trailer back on the ground … check wheel lug nut torque, clean/polish/wax the metal wheels, check tire pressure (including the spare tire on the back). Then lube the corner jacks and the tongue jack, check propane tank levels, and check all propane line fittings for leaks, check all four exterior lights, check the water heater zinc, check/clean exterior fridge access, check/clean exterior furnace access and the sail switch, lube all the window hinges and seals as well as the door hinges and lock. Drain the winter’s anti-freeze fluid from the fresh water tank. Put 1/4 cup bleach and three gallons of water into the fresh water tank, pump that through all the pipes and faucets, let it sit for three hours, then drain the remaining gallon or so from fresh water tank. Then pour 1 gallon of vinegar into the fresh water tank and then completely fill the tank with fresh water (mixing the water and the vinegar), pump that through the pipes and faucets, let that sit overnight, then drain the fresh water tank completely (all of it can legally go down through the street drains), and then finally fill the fresh water tank with fresh water, pump that through the pipes and faucets, then empty the grey water tank (it too can go down the city sewer drains), and that’s done for the year!
This year, the smaller of the two locks on the tongue was getting pretty rusty, so I swapped that one out for a new one. And the two padlocks on the front storage unit were getting rusty and difficult to open, so I replaced them as well.
Wash the whole trailer! Clean the solar panels on the roof. Then, after the trailer dries, wax the whole trailer. I apply two coats of wax to the front of the trailer since it gets most of the air and rain and debris as I’m driving.
Little Towhee wasn’t too sure about my wash/wax job on the outside of the trailer. Until, that is, she saw her own reflection! Then she was happy. 🙂
Other things were inspected, cleaned, adjusted, lubed, etc, on the exterior of the trailer, but that list above hits the highlights.
Then Little Towhee met me on the step to the door of the trailer and said, “Ok, Ann, let’s get to work on the inside!” She is such a stickler for tidiness, that bird. 🙂
Inside chores: Check the fluid level of the house batteries, lube the table leg (it raises/lowers the table for an extra bed or just for proper height for eating vs. computer work, etc), lube the wooden bed frame (it squeaks when I walk past if I don’t lube it), lube the inner toilet seal and add the additive to the tank (through the toilet), defrost/clean freezer/fridge, shake fire extinguisher and check the date, check/charge my three portable solid state batteries (150amp, 1000amp, 1000amp), check the black tank outlet for leaks (it’s inside the trailer, not underneath the trailer), clean water pump filter, replace small batteries in all things (clocks, flashlights, electronics, wrist watch, smoke detectors), clean cupboards and drawers, clean the floor, etc.
Both of the “house” batteries are in that plastic grey box under one of the dinette seats.
Then I loaded everything back into the trailer that I’d taken out last fall, except for the bedding. I’ll add the bedding just before my first camping trip. Of course, I’ve had “Dri-Z-Air” buckets inside the trailer all winter and I empty the fluid and add more crystals regularly, but still I take everything out of the trailer in the fall, store all of it in the house, and then put everything back in the spring.
Whew! That’s a lot of work! But I enjoy the work. The trailer looks good. I know first-hand that all systems are good to go and that the trailer is clean. I can relax for the coming camping season. Can stuff still go wrong? Sure. But I’ve minimized that possibility. And I continue to familiarize myself with the trailer so much that I could fix most anything that did go wrong … or at least I could intelligently explain something to an RV technician.
Maintenance work on the big white truck was also completed by me this weekend, but that’s another whole long list. By the end of the day on Sunday, I was done with all my chores.
Little Towhee double-checked all of my work and gave it the green light.
First thing Monday morning, I hitched up the trailer to the truck and took Towhee the Trailer back to the storage yard. We’ll be heading out in just a few weeks for our first camping trip. Hooray!