We are parking in Tucson till the end of the month – then another nearly two weeks at another park in Tucson before we begin the trip home.  We’ve enjoyed this park (Rincon RV East).  We have spent time in the lapidary and the wood shop here working on a project (future reveal).  We’ve visited both Saguaro parks, zoo, aircraft museum and many more.  We’ve even done a bit of prospecting and metal detecting.  Just before we left Rincon East park, I also replaced the vinyl on the 32SA entrance door.  This is a common problem.  Partly poor glue, partly vinyl that shinks in the sun.  It is about a two hour job but was successful.

Having made several trips to the Rock shows in Tucson, Debbie got the idea to create new sconce lights for the living room area (we never liked the lights that the RV came with, nor the ones we replaced those with.

 

The pictures here are those lights in progress.  The stones are red and green agates and me building an LED backlight.  This last picture is the final installation along with our new shade picture.

I’ve also done a bit of refrigerator repair.  We have a residential refrig.  Last week we discovered a skating pond in the bottom of the freezer.  It was coming from the ice maker which was, strangely, making hollow ice cubes.  None of this made any sense.  I defrosted it and discovered the tube that dumps water into the ice cube tray was frozen solid.  Only the tube was just an extension and the part it connected to had a gap on top, so water ran down behind the plastic back of the freezer.  I cleaned it all up, put it back together – and made sure it was making the first batch of cubes fine.

Two days later – another ice-skating pond with everything in the bottom of the freezer frozen in place.  I turned it off – took a long look at the freezer and thought about it for a day.

So, I grabbed the step ladder and cleaned the freezer out, putting it all into a freezer bag and turned the refrigerator all the way down so I could work on it.  I removed the ice maker and found the fill tube frozen again.  There were also vents down below the ice maker that had ice coming out of the bottom of them.  That meant I had to pull the entire back panel out of the freezer.  8 screws behind little plastic covers held it in.  It was clear from minor damage to these plastic clips someone had previously taken this apart – and it wasn’t me.

Behind this panel was a fan and the evaporator coil that cooled the freezer (and probably the fridge too).  On the left side, under the ice maker fill tube was a waterfall of ice.  The fill tube turned out to be a plastic tube with the top cut open, then another flexible tube pushed over it. Thus, if the attached tube froze, water would spill out of the top of the first tube and run down onto the evaporator.

But why?  I could defrost all the ice, but I couldn’t put it all together unless I could figure out why.  Here is my thinking:  A few times in the past, the freezer door got left slightly open, the last time was just a couple of days before we noticed the first frozen puddle.  Also – the vents below the ice maker were a bit misshapen. They had been a bit melted; more open at the top than the other three sides.  Between that and the ice covering the bottom of those vents caused a higher velocity air flow up right were the fill tube was, freezing it.  It also directed air away from bottom of the ice maker – meaning it didn’t freeze the cubes all the way before it dumped.

At least that was all I could figure.  I used my heat gun to soften up the vents and straightened them out and went to put it all together.

I had removed the extension tube from the fill tube and I pushed it back on – and pop!  The fill tube pushed backward out of the refrigerator.  Now if this was at home – I’d just slide the refrigerator out and fix it.  This is an RV and the refrigerator is mounted 20 inches off the floor.  I went outside to look up in the small gap between he outside wall and refrigerator.  There is no way to get my head in there, so I shine a bright flashlight up there and take my phone at high zoom and found this.

Sigh…..  A discussion ensued.  Deb suggested hemostats, which worked.  I reached through the extension and grabbed a hold of the fill tube to hold it while I pushed the extension on.  Then I added silicon around the tube to hold it in place.

It is a couple of days later I write this and so far, all is well.

Of course, it never ends.  I saw a quote the other day on Facebook:  “The only thing that always works on an RV is the owner.”  For sure.  When we raised the jacks, water poured out of the bottom of the right water bay.  Looking around – I figured out the puddle was on top of the grey tank… what?  I got my inspection camera out and examined the top of the tank and determined the leak was coming in from above, right where the two sink drains came down.  I went upstairs and opened the inspection board in front of the toilet and searched and felt around – as far as I could see the drains were dry.  A lot of feeling around and I realized there was a bit of water sitting on top of some foam, which came from a fresh water line that was hardly even wet but hard water stains on it – which went up to the back of the toilet where I found a clamp that wasn’t quite clamping.  At the time, only a tiny weep of water was coming out so I presume some other factor caused it to leak more at other times.  I tightened the clamps and have rechecked it over 24 hours and it’s still dry.

Yesterday we awoke to over three inches of snow.  Yes, in Tucson.  We drove through Saguaro East and took a zillion pictures.  The snow was all gone by noon.