Day 40 - Needles, CA

The project of the day was replacing the lavatory faucet. A couple of days ago it started to drip. Instead of figuring out what particular faucet parts were needed, I just replaced the fixture. The new one looks better in my opinion. Oh, the joys of an old RV. Kind of like a house only simpler. The Route 66 logo was painted on the road going through downtown Needles. This was taken at the hardware store where I picked up the faucet.

Yesterday, the propane ran out again much sooner than expected. Through Oregon and northern California, one 30# tank was lasting about a week with the furnace being the major consumer of propane. Now that we were in much warmer temperatures, the furnace doesn't come on that often so running out after only 5 days was a little baffling. Yesterday, Bridget thought that she smelled propane when sitting near the refrigerator. All of the appliances that consumed propane were in that area. The refrigerator, furnace, stove/oven, and hot water heater. The connections for the refrigerator and water heater were outside of the living space of the RV but the stove/oven and furnace connections were inside. There was a slight smell after opening the cool air return vent on the furnace.

The connections were tight but the soft copper gas line had two small wear points where it was rubbing against the steel vent. Soap water didn't show any leak but I taped over the wear marks on the gas line with self-fusing silicone tape aka rescue tape. No more smell. I'll need to cut the line and redo the fitting at the end. It looks like a ⅜" flare and I don't have those tools with me. That tape will hold just fine and I moved the line to eliminate the contact with the sharp edge of the vent cover. Rescue tape is wonderful stuff.

We drove across the river this afternoon for groceries and diesel. In Needles, CA, $4.959/gal. In Mohave Valley, AZ, $3.08/gal. I'm not sure how the stations manage to stay open on the CA side of the river. The second picture is the campground pool. 92°F this afternoon. It was a perfect day to sit in the unheated pool.

BTW, iOS now allows Blogger access to the photo library and the camera within the website. No more messing with Google Photo to add pictures to albums to post on the blog. This change really does make the computer “optional”.