Preparing for Camp Holder

It seems customary to call camping in your camper at home "Camp Driveway" so I'm bucking the tradition by calling mine "Camp Holder."

I had a great test run of this since I did pack Frostbite all the way up Saturday morning so that I could more easily paint the frame with the bunkends pushed in.  Another reason for doing this is that I've spent the last several months setting up and taking down the camper when she is completely empty.  No matresses on the bunkends and no boxes inside.  This makes is very easy to take the thing down.  I wanted to be sure that she went down ok with everything back in her.

With the matresses in the bunkends, you have to be more careful to fold the tent properly as the roof is lowered otherwise it could bunch up in the corners and make the roof hard to latch once the roof is down.  Fortunately, it went fine for me and I had no problems.

Once the paint dried and I took off the tape, it was time to set her back up.  I waited until the evening since I couldn't turn on the air until then anyway.  Once she was up, I got the AC on and vented out the side.  This time I attached the "turtleneck" insulation sleeve that fits over the AC vent hose.

I started with the gas.  When I bought Frostbite, there was a gas tank on her.  She has a tank holder on the tounge that is capable of holding 2 tanks but she only came with the one.  It seemed to be about half full.

When I hooked it all up I went inside (alone!) to try to light the stove.  I turned a burner all the way up and tried to light it.  A thin barely burning flame circled the burner.  I made sure that the gas was all the way on for the burner and tried all three of them with the same effect.  The flame was so low that the slighest breeze would blow it out.  I turned off the burners and went outside to think about it.

I decided to try the gas tank for my grill.  It was about half full as well but I knew that it worked and I could at least rule out the old tank as the source of the problem.  I hooked up the new tank and turned it on.  I went back inside the camper and thought "Man, it stinks in here!"  No, I didn't make the connection right away. 

I tried to light one of the burners and Poof! I had a nice strong pretty flame going.  Not on the burner but on the joint where the gas line connects to the gizmo that controls the burners.  I quickly blew the flame out and only then did the bad smell make sense.

Looking closer I realized that the connection between the gas lines inside the stove was screwed in crooked.  Once I corrected this and turned the gas back on the smell magically disappeared.  I lit the burners and all three burned fine with a nice strong frame.  The leak appeared to be fixed.  Don't worry, I plan to only turn on the tank outside when we are going to be cooking and will turn it off afterward.  I have no intention of waking up dead in the camper one morning.

Reconnecting the old gas tank resulted in the same problem.  Very small flame that barely stayed lit.  I decided to eventually return this to the Blue Rhino thing at our local grocery store and get a new one.

With the gas working fine I turned my attention to the water.  I reconnected a small hose that runs from the water intake valve to the water storage tank.  I then connected my new white fresh water hose to the outside water.  I went inside to watch all the hose connections under the galley side bench in case water started spewing and had my daughter slowly turn on the water.

No leaks!  I tested the sink faucet and got a nice stream of clear water running in the sink.  I did notice that it wasn't draining.  I goofed with the drain hose figuring it was kinked somewhere but was unable to get a drain going.  As it turned out the drain was fine.  I didn't realize this until Sunday when I was taking the camper down but there was a drain stopper in the sink and the water drained once I removed it.  In my defense, it wasn't an obvious stopper since I thought it was a drain filter.  It did have holes at the bottom.

For some reason, the ceiling lights didn't work.  All the 110 plugs inside worked fine.  I thought it might be because I have yet to reconnect the wire that runs from the floor to the ceiling in one of the canvas corners.  Hopefully this will fix that problem and it's not because I haven't hooked up a 12v battery.  I should have fixed that wire by now but I keep forgetting.

The camper by all appearances seemed ready for Camp Holder.  My wife was not feeling well so she chickened out of the affair but we asked my daughter's friend who lives next door to camp out with us and we proceeded to collect the food, laptops, and sleeping gear and pile into Frostbite for the evening.

More on that next post.