Man In The Maze

by Rich Luhr, Editor of Airstream Life magazine

Plumbing on the snow day

Yesterday my iPhone emitted a terrible sound from my pocket, one I’d never heard before.  It turned out to be warning me of an impending “blizzard” coming to Arizona.

A what?

Yep, this morning the snow level, which usually stays well above 4000 feet, dipped down low enough that we have gotten considerable snow here at 2,500 feet.  This is a rare event for Tucson, one which brings everyone out to look at the strange white stuff, take pictures, and slide around on the roadways.  Having seen my share of snow from life in the northeast, I was not impressed until  I saw it decorating the Caravel, and then I succumbed to the temptation to take a few pictures myself.  I really don’t know why.  I have lots of pictures of the Caravel buried in deep snow from Vermont, but I took a few more anyway.

There’s a little electric heater in the Caravel to keep it from freezing at night, and that makes the interior cozy enough for me to keep working on the plumbing project.  I had run out of Teflon plumber’s tape yesterday, and I needed to ponder the complexities of the next major phase, so I paused the project overnight.

Today, with large, wet snowflakes pattering on the aluminum skin, I got back inside to figure out what I’ve been mentally calling “the dreaded closet manifold.”  One of the narrow bathroom closets had housed a strange collection of plumbing intersections, and it was all wedged into a space only about 1 foot wide and three feet deep.  This made just reaching the plumbing a difficult task, since I don’t fit into spaces that small and my arms aren’t that long.

In rebuilding this rat’s nest of plumbing I wanted to design something that would be much easier to access and service in the future.  There was a shutoff valve that could only be reached if the gaucho cushions were removed, for example.  The city water fill lacked a check valve and a pressure regulator, so it needed wholesale replacement but couldn’t be accessed without disassembling half the bathroom.  Much of my time was spent figuring out ways to remove the whole mess before I could even get started on building a new system.

Eventually, with lots of struggling, cutting, use of extension tools, and even duct tape, I got the plumbing out. A neat new plumbing manifold was designed after lots of headscratching.  You can see it below.

Although it doesn’t look like much, this little bit solves several problems:

  1. It connects the water pump, city water fill, toilet, and main cold water line to the rest of the trailer.
  2. It fits in the exact center of the available closet space, on the floor, with room to swing the shut-off valve if needed.
  3. Nearly all of it can be easy accessed from the door without requiring the help of a small person.

It took Eleanor and I about 10 minutes to crimp all the fittings once I had the basic layout measured and cut.  In this type of job, it’s definitely a “measure twice, cut once” situation.  Actually, being a newbie to this, I measured about four times for each piece.  So although you may scoff, I regard this little bit of plumbing as a work of art.

Getting it into place was another matter.  I could easily make one of the connections, but for the two low elbows I needed four hands to hold everything in the right position when crimping.  Eleanor was recruited.  At one point she had to wedge herself into the closet, because she’s thinner than me.  And I’m not particularly big, so you can get an idea of how tight it was.

Or maybe this picture will help.

And now that part is done.  I won’t rest easy until we pressurize the system and verify there are no leaks, but I’ve done everything I can to ensure that it will be perfect.

So now onto the next phase.  Believe it or not, the plumbing project is almost half done.  We have gone from the fresh water tank  to the bathroom, which means the water pump, winterization valve, and toilet are connected.  I still have to rig up the new city water fill, water heater, and both sinks.  (The Caravel doesn’t have a separate shower connection, since it uses a takeoff from the bathroom sink.)

Time elapsed so far is probably about eight hours, not counting trips to the hardware store or pre-planning.  I think that’s not bad for a first effort.  I’m actually looking forward to tackling the under-sink areas and the water heater, as (again) they are a mess of stressed connections, all of which are in the wrong place.

I discovered today the real danger of doing this and blogging it: my Airstream friends might ask me for help with their trailers.  Well, let me say this:

  1. I’m still definitely not an expert.
  2. You can borrow my tools.

Farewell to Billybob plumbing

With Alumafiesta behind me and some Airstream travel coming up, it’s time to get serious about maintenance again.  I’m starting with the Caravel, because it sprang a few leaks recently and I really want to get those under control soon.

The big job is the fresh water plumbing.  This is the only major system of the trailer that didn’t get refurbished over the past several years.  It’s a horrible hodge-podge of “home handyman” work, with at least four different types of hose (PEX, braided stainless steel, PVC, and clear) and many different connectors.  The hose clamps in particular are a problem because they work loose during travel and are a constant source of leaks, but the braided stainless faucet connectors haven’t been very reliable either.

When it became apparent that repeated patches to the system would only result in repeated frustration and new leaks sprang up, I decided to just completely replace the fresh water plumbing—every piece of it except the faucets and water pump.  I rationalized this as an opportunity to learn something new.  More importantly, a complete refurbishment of the system would allow me to rectify all the little dysfunctional annoyances caused by the prior hack jobs.

For example, the water shutoff valves for the kitchen sink are nearly inaccessible behind the cabinetry.  A few inches to the left and they’d right where you’d want them; easily reached without removing all the contents of the cabinet and turned off in a flash if need be.

Somebody who worked on this system apparently had a phobia of 90-degree elbows.  Rather than plumb elbows in where they were needed, he just bent the plastic pipe around corners.  This works—sort of—but it puts huge stress on the connections and fittings.  This is probably the reason a line near the water heater sprang a pinhole leak just before Alumafiesta. Studying the system, I began to see all those stressed connections as leaks waiting to happen.

And then there was the shut-off valve installed where there should be a check valve (a one-way valve).  And the frequent use of screw-on plastic compression fittings that weep randomly, mostly when you’re 500 or more miles from home.  And the lack of a pressure regulator.  It’s all a fine example of what my friend Colin calls “Billybob plumbing.”

So out it goes.  I did some research and decided to go with a professional grade system.  I read a few restoration blogs, then looked inside a new Airstream to see what the factory is using these days.  They’re using PEX with copper crimp fittings.  It’s the same system we have in our 2005 Safari, and it has been utterly reliable.  The PEX is tough stuff and should be a “lifetime” installation.  This is the same stuff used in houses, rated for use in inaccessible locations.  That’s the quality I want.

Left:  “Before” in Hose Clamp Hell.    Right:  “After” PEX with crimp rings (except one pair of legacy clamp rings).

This system is really simple.  You cut the PEX pipe to length, slip a copper ring on the outside, slip a the fitting inside (elbow, coupling, whatever), and crimp the copper ring with a big hand tool.  It’s easy and the connection is permanent.  It won’t leak, and just to be sure there’s a gauge provided that you can use to check each crimp as you go.

RJ Dial’s website tipped me off to PEXSupply.com, where I bought about $380 worth of parts and tools to do this job.  I bought rolls of blue and red PEX-A (the good stuff, more flexible than the hardware-story-variety PEX-B and more resistant to freezing), about 50 various brass fittings, a bag of copper crimps, and a pipe cutter.  There was no need to get color-coded PEX for the hot and cold water, but I figured if I was going to do this I would make it a work of art.

The big expense was a pro-grade crimping tool at $119.  My friend the sword-swallower Alex confirmed this choice, saying that the off-patent ones for $30-40 really weren’t worth using in his experience.  I don’t know about that personally but I can say that this tool is really sweet, easy to use, and does a great job.

My plan is to go out to the Caravel every day and work for a few hours or until I realize I need to get something at the hardware store.  Today that point came after about four hours of work, which was more than I had planned, but I was having fun with it. It’s great to disassemble and toss out the crummy old plumbing and zillions of hose clamps, and replace it with a carefully structured system that will hopefully never give me trouble.

The job will take a long time because I am being very methodical.  Every pipe thread fitting will have Teflon tape and be carefully torqued, every crimp will be gauged, lines are being re-routed to avoid stress and clutter, etc.  I’m only planning to do this once, so I want to do it right.  Much of today I spent relocating the water pump & winterization valve, and rigging up a system to reduce water pump noise.  The old plumbing made such a loud noise when the water pump was run (rattling the rigid plastic lines) that it would wake the dead and scare small children.

Now, as recommended by the manufacturer, the water pump output goes to an 18″ clear flexible hose in a loose loop to reduce vibration transmission down the line.  I also installed some foam pipe insulation and a clamp to try to dampen vibrations, and I moved the water pump to where it’s (a) no longer in the way of storage, and (b) easily accessed if it needs to be replaced.  It feels good to finally get these things right in the Caravel.

Besides having a leak-free fresh water system in the future, an incidental benefit is that I’m learning how to repair or modify the plumbing in the Safari, and I have all the tools to do it.  We’ve discussed changing the kitchen sink and countertop, but I’ve shied away from it because of the need to re-do the kitchen plumbing.  Now, it’s a completely non-threatening job. So despite the fact that I’m once again putting time and money in the trailer we barely use, it’s a good project.  I’ll update later when things get a little further along.

 

 

Alumaflamingo!

This has been an interesting week, and I mean that with every definition implied by the word interesting.

There is an Airstream rally that has been going on for decades in Sarasota, FL called the “Florida State Rally.”  It is in some ways a piece of what the locals call “old Florida,” with sandy roots that reach down to the historical pinnacle of Airstreaming in 1960s.  The rally, run by the Wally Byam Caravan Club International (WBCCI), has been a long-standing tradition for many Airstreamers.  They migrate annually from points north, to park together for five or six days at the Sarasota County Fairgrounds and share the social niceties that have defined the club.

We started going to the FSR in 2004, with our then-four year-old child and our recently acquired 36-year-old Airstream trailer.  Back then it was a remarkable event with over 700 trailers in attendance, making it the second largest Airstream rally of the year.  We pulled in and marveled at the rows and rows of Airstreams, and found that nearly every one of them held inside a pair of grandparents who were generally delighted to see little Emma and give her some toy.  We were younger than the average attendee by a solid 30 years but we still felt very at home.

We also met some good friends at that first rally, several of whom are still close friends today.  (Have I mentioned before that we owe a lot to Airstreaming?)  We loved the vintage Airstream community, and the good times spent with friends around the campfire.  So we went again, and again, and I went by myself once too.  It was always a nice time.  I love visiting Sarasota in February.

But in recent years, attendance at FSR declined dramatically, hitting a low of about 316 trailers last year. There were many reasons for this, including a stagnant event program and the changing interests of Airstreamers, but the final blow was simply a matter of age.  I’ll quote Vic Smith (the Director of the rally for the past two years):

“The population we draw our volunteers from averages around 78 years old … Even with all the advertising and out of the box changes we made, we only increased participation by 17 Airstreams … With the rapid loss of the volunteer population and the unwillingness of QUALIFIED leadership to step up to the challenge, it was felt that if there was to be an Airstream based rally in February, in Florida next year and in the years following, it was going to have done by someone else. As much as it pained all of us, the only solution was the obvious one.”

So they called Brett and me and asked us if we’d do something to fill the gap.

This was a thrilling opportunity, but also a terrifying one.  Imagine being asked to replace something with a fifty-year history, with all the expectations that implies.  Imagine facing the economic and operational challenges of hosting 300+ Airstreams.  The FSR had over 60 separate organizational committees.  We have a staff of two, plus a handful of volunteers.  Even though we’ve done Alumapalooza with 200 trailers, this is a whole new level of complexity and expectation.

Plus, the final vote by the FSR Board of Governors happened on Wednesday.  They told the members on Thursday.  We were asked to make a presentation about our new event by Saturday.  Talk about pressure.  We didn’t even know if we could even pull off the event, much less announce pricing, dates, and any hints about what the event might include.  Brett was on-site in Florida trying to rapidly gather information and I was in Tucson trying to build a quickie spreadsheet and website, and we were both flat-out trying to make it all come together in 72 hours.

We’ve managed to get fairly far since then, by working day and night and flinging text messages & emails at each other.  Here’s what we know today:

  1. We’re going to do it! 
  2. The event will be called Alumaflamingo.  (Brad Cornelius is at work on the new logo and website design right now. Can’t wait.)
  3. Dates will be Feb 18-23, 2014, at the Sarasota County Fairgrounds, same location as it has been for many years.  (This is probably the only thing that will be the same as FSR.)
  4. It will be sponsored by Bates RV, the Airstream dealer in Tampa FL.
  5. Airstream will be there with parts & service.
  6. There will be a 30-amp power option for those who want it.
  7. Alumaflamingo will be open to any brand of RV, just like all our other events.
  8. It will be seriously fun, and we are going to be proud to host it.

The rest of the details … I don’t know.  But as of today, a mere three days after being told that we were stepping in, 29 Airstreams have signed up and paid to come to our future Alumaflamingo.  Some large caravans have committed to coming, too.  It’s a real vote of confidence that all those people have plunked down for our event, even though we can’t tell them much about it yet.  The Internet buzz has been good, too.

So it’s time to rise to the challenge.  “In for a penny, in for a pound,” as the saying goes, and it feels like we are in for a metric ton.  We will spend the next twelve months working on this event, knowing the entire time that the show that we produce in 2014 is standing in a 50-year-tall shadow.  It’s not about replacing the Florida State Rally, because that can’t be replaced.  It’s about picking up the torch and carrying it forward to something all new, and worthy of another 50 years.  Sounds like fun!

The 9 mile shakedown cruise

We’re back from Alumafiesta … and a bit worn out.

It was great to make so many people happy.  We essentially held a five day party for 150 guests, and managed to keep them occupied the entire time.  The feedback was good, we had a little time to visit with our friends, the weather was fantastic on four days, and nothing went terribly wrong.  All in all, it was a big success.  We’ve already picked out the dates for 2014 (Feb 4-9) and opened up registration for next year.  I can tell already that it will be even bigger.

So all’s good, the Airstreamers are smiling, and everyone on the team (me & Eleanor, Brett & Lisa) feel like we’ve done a good thing.  But it does take a lot out of all of us to run these things.  People kept asking if we’d “take over” certain other rallies, or if we’d bring an Aluma-event to their area, and we had to keep saying that we just didn’t have the energy to do this more than three or four times a year.  Right now I feel like I need a vacation.

I’m not going to get it, at least this week.  Beside the work I need to do for Airstream Life, the two Airstreams have spoken up about what they need.  Our little nine mile camping trip to the west side of Tucson was sufficient to blow the dust off the trailers, metaphorically at least, and reveal the little issues that must be resolved before we go on our next real expedition.

As I mentioned before, the Caravel has suffered from sitting, and we discovered several plumbing leaks and a bad propane regulator right before the event.  Since then we’ve found that one of the two Optima batteries has begun to leak from the negative terminal.  This leakage damaged the Marmoleum floor (fortunately a place you can’t normally see).  So I yanked out the battery today and we neutralized the remaining acid with baking soda.

After looking at the mongrel plumbing in the Caravel, I’ve decided that the best approach will be to totally replace the plumbing system with all new PEX lines and fittings.  I really don’t like the system we’ve got (which was installed by a prior owner; the only major system we haven’t already replaced).  It has too many types of fittings, too many bits scabbed together with hose clamps, a lot of lines that are stressed going around corners where they should have neat elbows, and definitely not enough Teflon tape. Plus, this will give me the opportunity to quiet the vibrating water line that comes from the pump, add insulation, and install a real city water fill with check valve & pressure regulator. Today I placed an order for $287 worth of parts and tools to get this job done.  I still need to order the city water fill, so the total will exceed $300 for this particular project.

I also ordered a new propane regulator, two pigtails, a new main supply hose, and an adapter to connect the modern regulator to the original gas plumbing.  That’s another eighty bucks or so.  I’m going to skip replacing the failed battery, since the trailer now has all LED lighting and we really don’t need more than one battery for it.

A while back we tallied up the total “investment” in the Caravel.  Let’s just say it far exceeds the trailer’s current market value (are you surprised?) so it really isn’t a good investment.  Still, it seemed time to insure it for something more realistic than the “book value” of about $2,000, so I bought an Agreed Value Policy from Progressive with a $25,000 valuation and this week got a professional (IRS certified) appraiser to write up an appraisal.  I haven’t seen the appraisal yet, so I don’t really know how well the insurance valuation matches reality.  In any case, insuring for approximately true value tripled the insurance cost.  At least if there’s a total loss we’ll get some of our investment back.

You might wonder why we keep this antique Airstream that we hardly ever use.  The reasons are:  (1) We want to give it to Emma someday; (2) We can’t bear to part with it; (3) The current market probably won’t give us a price we can accept.  So we keep it ready to go for an average of one trip per year, and wait for Emma to learn to drive.  I’d hope for that day to come sooner, but I know that even when Emma inherits it I’ll still be the guy fixing it and paying for it …

For its part, the Safari is mostly fine.  We already knew that it needs a fresh floor covering, and I’ve already got the materials for that.  (That project starts soon.)  The problems I discovered on this trip were with the accessories. My laptop battery has died again ($95), and for some reason the Cradlepoint router is no longer happy with the Verizon Wireless Internet card (a Pantech UML-290).  The replacement battery is on order but I’m going to have to do some digging to figure out the router problem.  Both of these issues have to be resolved before we can go on the road again.

I also discovered that the new tire pressure monitor system I bought last August is really junk.  It’s a cheap system sold under a variety of names (and it’s not the Doran system I was using earlier).  It has managed to give terribly inaccurate readings ever since I got it, and also caused one of the tires to loose quite a bit of air.  I filled up the tires last week, and re-seated all the sensors, but I think this system is going to get returned.

I do like the security of having tire pressure monitoring on the trailer, but on the other hand we have enjoyed 100% reliability since we switched to the Michelins.  No flats, no punctures, no belt separations, no problems whatsoever.  I know that no tire is bulletproof, and yet we’ve been doing so well that I may skip tire pressure monitoring for a while.

It’s debatable whether we are more worn out by Alumafiesta, or the trailers are.  They are getting the post-event TLC, however.  In this case it’s better to be the horse than the rider.

I’ve got about six weeks to get everything buttoned up.  We are considering a three or four week trip in late March/early April up the California coast, and all systems need to be 100% for that.  Even if we end up not going (or being out for a shorter time), it will be good to know everything is ready for the big summer trip to Alumapalooza and beyond, which starts in mid-May.

A change of perspective

Holding an Airstream event is always fun for us even when the workload is heavy, which it usually is.  This one is going to be particularly fun because the workload is light.

When Brett and I first started producing Airstream events, we had no idea of what we were doing.  So we just made choices based on what we’d like if we were attending, much like the choices you’d make if you were holding a party.  In those first few events, we made a lot of choices that were based more on perception than reality, and one of them nearly killed us.

See, the first event was the Vintage Trailer Jam in 2008.  We were up in the Saratoga Spa State Park (Saratoga Springs, NY), camped on the grass across from the Saratoga Automobile Museum.  This location was selected by one of our partners (it was a four-way partnership at the time), because historically nobody had been allowed to camp inside the park before, and so it was an exotic spot to park 80 or 90 vintage trailers.  We all heartily agreed: scoring this location would make our event unique.

We did the Vintage Trailer Jam again in 2009, and then in 2010 Brett & I launched Alumapalooza at the Airstream factory in Ohio.  At this point we were believers: having unique locations that nobody else could camp in was our major differentiator.  I suppose we were in part rebelling against the many lookalike rallies we had attended at boring campgrounds and fairgrounds all over the country.  We believed in our “unique setting” doctrine so much that we began looking only for non-campground locations, and we’d even tell people that it was a critical element for any future event we might do.

People who liked our events started passing on tips of “great” spots where we might hold another, including a wildlife sanctuary in Arkansas, a field near Austin, and a barren patch of desert in the southwest.  We eventually settled on an amusement park in Colorado, but even as we were planning that event it began to seep in that perhaps our perception was dead wrong.

That was because we were getting feedback from past attendees that suggested what they really valued was the opportunity to meet other people in a fun setting.  The setting wasn’t fun because it was a patch of grass in a “different” spot, it was fun because we kept the participants entertained and gave them plenty of chances to meet other like-minded people.

In other words, we were selling ourselves short.  The effort that went into programming the event to make sure it was a good time was the real differentiator. People came to our events not because of where they were, but because of what we offered them to do.  The setting was secondary. It was a revelation, and actually a little bit of an embarrassment because for the previous three years we’d been spouting utter nonsense about why our events were good.  It is true that even successful ventures sometimes aren’t fully understood by the people who run them.

Not only had we been missing the point, but we were killing ourselves in the process.  Running a big Airstream event at a location which is not set up for camping means lots of advance work.  We’d hassle with various authorities for permits, scour the Internet for vendors to supply all the services, beg for volunteer help for months, build multiple contingency plans for the zillions of things that can go wrong, make multiple (expensive) site visits, and then worry for months that we might not get enough participants to cover costs.  During the event, we and our immediate family would spend days sweating out every minute, getting little sleep and occasionally (because of the stress) causing painful interpersonal rifts.  For all of this, Brett & I could easily end up earning less than minimum wage, while neglecting the day jobs that actually keep us fed.  It wasn’t much of a way to make a living, and I seriously contemplated the point at which it would have to end.

The final confirmation came at that amusement park.  Through a series of misadventures and unfortunate occurrences, we ended up parking 200 attendees on a patch of dirt (we had planned for grass), crammed in far too tightly, lacking reliable water or electricity, and occasionally gave them serious fear that their Airstreams might at any moment be electrically disabled by a power spike.

And yet, most people had a good time.

I really had to go think about that for a while.  Was it possible that the bar was just set so low for Airstream rallies that even an event that fell short of our expectations would still be a success?  Are Airstreamers just very forgiving people?  I’m sure there is some truth to both of those, but when we went back and talked to people it became clear that the real value was, and always has been, the opportunity to see, do and experience fun things with other Airstreamers.  Wally had it right all those years ago:  See More, Do More, Live More.  It didn’t matter where we did it, because for many people the journey was enough for them to see new places.  Our job was to give them a setting where they could share it all.

That was why we began to look at holding our Tucson event at a campground.  It was a complete reversal of our earlier stylings, with full hookups and swimming pools, and restaurants, but I wanted to test the idea that we could still bring people in even without a unique setting.  We eventually picked Lazydays and now, 12 months later, we are on the cusp of proving it.  About 80 Airstreams are due to arrive by Tuesday (many of them have already arrived), and nobody seems to be the least bit bothered that we are in a place anyone could book into.

I’ve been over the Lazydays every day since Thursday to arrange final details.  Our two trailers are now parked there (one for us, one for Brett & Lisa), and nearly everything is set for our Tuesday opening day.  I’m actually looking forward to the first day with no trepidation because the staff of Lazydays are doing all the heavy lifting.  Unlike those events held in grassy fields, we don’t have to direct all the trailers to parking.  We don’t have to string electrical wire or water lines.  We don’t have to set up a registration tent, or deal with a dozen vendors.  We’re concentrating on what we do best:  putting on a fun program.

It’s a real “DUH” moment for me.  I can’t believe I didn’t see the obvious value we’ve been adding all this time.  Instead, for years I’ve been hassling with pump-out trucks, hauling garbage bags, and worrying about a thousand details.  This is the end of the most encompassing case of tunnel vision that I can recall having. And all it took was a change of perspective, to realize that we were completely wrong about what we thought we needed.

Perhaps some of this applies to your own life or business too.  Even if you are succeeding at something, you could be unhappy because you’re trying too hard to be something you aren’t, or provide something that isn’t really needed.  I guess it pays to take a look at yourself, your business, or your profession once in a while and challenge the assumptions that you’ve held dear.  You never know how happy it might make you to ditch an old paradigm.