First World Problems

Well my biggest fear has been realized. Was it the result of all my negative energy worrying about the likelihood of this problem? Could be – it was certainly festering in the back of my mind ever since we first filled our water tank.

Shannon was the first to notice it a little over a week ago. A few little spots of mold on one of the plywood supports holding the water tank in place. Upon closer inspection, it was clear that the plywood was damp.

We scraped off the mold and dried it as best we could with a paper towel. “There, it’s fixed” I said. I didn’t want to believe it or have to deal with this.

But a couple days later Shannon saw that it was still wet. Was she actually looking for water??

It was apparently seeping out from the fill tube. So I took it apart and gooped up the threads on the filler tube with pipe sealant (it originally only had teflon tape). And it seemed to hold for a day or so. Well maybe only a day. OK, maybe it didn’t hold at all. That board was still wet.

So we decided to go all out on dealing with it. Wanting to be near a place where we could get parts if needed, we found a Lowe’s Hardware store and in their parking lot, we completely removed the tank (which required emptying our garage first).

Out came the skis, the totes, the boxes we still need to organize and everything else in there to make room for us to get in and disconnect all the fittings. Yes, including the hot water heater. I kept wanting to take short cuts and not fix anything that didn’t appear to be leaking (yet), but Shannon prevailed saying we’ve come this far – let’s just do it all and do it right.

We disconnected everything and gooped up all the fittings with sealant and put it all back together. We were in that parking lot for about 4 hours start to finish. We’re now crossing our fingers hoping for no leaks. We’re going to give it 24 hours before refilling the tank, just to make sure the goop can cure.

I want to say that knowing this was something about “real van life” that we could document and share on our blog, made the whole ordeal more enjoyable, but I would just be kidding myself… It really wasn’t enjoyable.

But in the future, when first world problems like this occur, I hope to look at them with a more grounded perspective and see the positives as well as the negatives.