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Our New House

It was brought to my attention that we haven’t updated our Blog since 2013. Since we have become stagnant and haven’t really traveled for a while I didn’t have much of interest to post. Not that our life isn’t interesting, there just isn’t much RV Travel going on.

Well recently we have turned another page in our lives. We decided since we like our lifestyle so much that buying a house wasn’t in our plans. However we have pretty much outgrown the RV so…

We bought a Park Model home in the same resort where we have lived for the last 11 years in the motor home. If you are not familiar with a Park Model, it is a small 400 square foot manufactured home. Ours however is a bit more than a simple park model. First off ours is set in the ground so it is ground level, then a 200 square foot addition was added making it 600 square foot overall and the whole thing is stuccoed and the roof is tiled. There is also a 117 square foot building on the property, which serves as a laundry room and a shop. This building is attached to the house by a covered patio with outdoor kitchen. Along with the real residential appliances they topped it off with an air conditioner that can turn the house into a meat locker in the 120-degree Arizona summers. You can see more photos by clicking on the link in the left column.

I have added a link to the photos of our house HERE.

So, although we are keeping the motor home, it looks like we are not Fulltimers anymore.

Best wishes to all our readers and I hope your travels are as enjoyable as ours.

I will leave the Blog up because I know others enjoy reading about our travels.

Thursday, June 30, 2011

A cool day

Well if you can call 100 degrees cool. We woke this morning and actually turned off all the air conditioners. It was only about 79 degrees. I figured this was a good opportunity to pull the shrouds off the air conditioners and clean them out.

Since the rear air has been running non stop for a couple of days and we tend to use this one more, it was the worse. Everything went well and cleaned up real good. I used my shop-vac with a brush attachment and my air compressor and got all the dust out of the evaporators and condensers and cleaned the fans and filters too. We are good to go on the airs for about another year now.

I added some gas to the golf cart tank last night to see if it would hold over night. This morning it was nice and dry. Looks like the patch is holding so far although I just don’t have too much confidence in the glue I used. I installed the tank in the cart, mounted the body and took it out for a ride. I call it my convertible right now since I haven’t added the roof or seat backs yet.

Looks pretty cool.

After I got back from the test drive I looked under the cart for a gas drips. OH NO! No gas but battery acid was dripping on my drive. I did a real dumb thing and I should know better. I cleaned up the battery and topped it off while it was out of the cart. Well I added too much water and since the cart has a high output generator the water was boiling out of the battery. What a mess, and one that is not fun to clean up since it is acid. I got out the box of baking soda and made up a mixture with water and started washing everything down with a paintbrush. I dumped quite a bit of water out of the battery and cleaned that up too. I then took the convertible out for another test drive and everything was good. I found out one good thing though, Iron Out does a good job of cleaning battery acid off the concrete. I have used it for rust stains and it works pretty good. Well so far no gas leaks. I tested a piece of cured glue and the gas didn’t melt it but I think it might eventually break the bond with the tank.

Glue inside tank

Since I was able to draw some glue inside the tank with vacuum I might be OK. Time will tell.

Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Ugly

I tore into the cart this morning before it got too hot, however it didn’t take long before the temp climbed to 110 degrees. It actually doesn’t take long to pull the body. I think I had it done within 20 minutes. Landen helped me lift the body off once I got all the bolts our.

Before

After

After pulling the tank I cleaned it up and sure enough… there was the leak, a crack on the bottom about 8 inches long. Actually it was only leaking from about 2 inches of the crack. Last night I tested a dab of some Gorilla Glue I had on the tank and this morning it looked pretty good and seemed to stick to the tank well. So today I smeared Gorilla Glue down the whole length of the crack. Then I got the bright idea to stick my Shop-Vac in the filler hole and draw a vacuum on the tank in hopes to suck the glue into the crack. I know, Shop-Vac and gasoline doesn’t sound too safe but the tank was clean and dry. This actually worked out pretty well because when I vacuumed the tank it collapsed a bit and really opened up the crack so I was able to add more glue inside the crack.

It looks pretty ugly but, hey, if it works who cares. It’s not visible when installed anyway. After doing a little more research I wish I had used Seal-All instead of Gorilla Glue. Seal-All is more for sealing where as Gorilla Glue is for gluing parts together. Seal-All says it is impervious to gasoline and is good for sealing gas tanks. I have used Seal-All for plumbing leaks and it worked well. Well if the Gorilla Glue starts to leak I will give Seal-All a try next time. If that don’t do it I will get out my soldering iron and try my luck at plastic welding.

Monday, June 27, 2011

More things to fix

After going outside this morning I noticed a strong smell of gasoline. What now, I though. Looking under the gold cart I found the source, a puddle of gas. Apparently the gas tank sprung a leak. After finding out a new tank will cost over $200, I started researching a fix. Seems nothing sticks to Polypropylene, which is the material the tank is made of. I did some research online and found a number of people that successfully patched theirs by smearing different types of glues or epoxies on them. I guess you can’t really securely stick anything to polypropylene but maybe a leak can be fixed by adding a layer of glue, at least for a while. I think I will have to give it a try. In order to fix it I have to remove the tank. In order to remove the tank I have to remove the body. Fortunately it really isn’t a major job, but in 100+ degree heat it might be a bit uncomfortable.

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

And it just gets hotter

After the cool winter we had, and the month of May being just great, I was hoping for a mild summer. Unfortunately it is above average so far. Next time you are watching the news, pay attention to the weather map when they show the temperatures around the country. Arizona is the hottest. With both air conditioners running we manage to keep it comfortable inside the motorhome, except when Susan starts cooking, then it gets a bit warm. We have been trying to do most of the cooking outside.

Couple of new additions, after 7 years I finally had to have a new patio awning installed.

The original was just worn out. We do use it a lot. Also our front windshield cover finally had enough sun.

Before

After

It used to be bright white. I elected to go with gray this time. Next on the list is new upholstery and carpet.

No he really isn’t a big as he looks. There are a couple of these guys that hang around my patio. They are not afraid of us at all. They come running over to me and I can just reach down and pick them up. I guess they know I won’t do them any harm.

Monday, June 20, 2011

Jimmie sighting

I saw Jimmie Johnson (Susan’s favorite NASCAR driver) Fly over the resort here today. I didn’t know at the time who it was however but I heard a jet flying over and looked up to see what it was. This is not too uncommon but it always catches our attention when one goes over. Later this afternoon we heard the roar of a jet take off from the airport. A while later Susan was on the computer and found out that Jimmie was at the Lowe’s just around the corner from us. It must of just been a private appearance for the Lowe’s employees because there was no advertisement and a search on Google comes up with nothing. The way she found out is one of her friends saw his post on Facebook and emailed her about it. Susan and Landen were bummed that they missed him.

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

I know, it’s been a while

It has been a while since I have posted anything to our Blog. Since we are not traveling this summer, there is not much exciting going on. As you can see in these photos, it is starting to get hot.

Monday

Tuesday


Today

At about 10:00a this morning it was already 100 degrees. I still manage to do my morning walks before the heat climbs but I stopped my evening walks since it doesn’t drop below 100 until about 9:00p. I tried the treadmill in the gym but it aint the same. Last night we had to run the air all through the night, it’s getting to that point.

Landen has been having a good time.

We head for the pool every day to keep cool. Sure is nice having a pool right out our front yard. I bought Landen a project from Lowes the other day. He really enjoyed using Papa’s tools to build his Bug Box, especially the power ones.

Since we really don’t have many bugs here he has been using it for a house for his Legos.

He really has an imagination when playing with his legos.