Friday morning, we got the trailer ready to go. I had waited until the last minute to fill the water system, because it was still freezing at night and I didn't want to risk any burst pipes. When the time came to fill the water heater, I opened the valves, only instead of being greeted by a healthy rushing of water, I heard only a hiss and trickle. Water issued from the hot water taps in a slow drizzle, rather than the rush I was expecting.
I'd run into this problem last year, and I thought I'd fixed it. Something was wrong with the bypass valves. Since I wouldn't need the valves until this fall, I figured I'd just take them out and deal with the problem when we got home. So I removed the valves and tossed them into the garage.
That evening, we're all set up at my sister-in-law's, and the kids are getting ready for bed. I turn on the pump so they can use the toilet. The pump starts running. And doesn't stop. My wife calls from outside, "there's water running out the side of the trailer!"
Crap. I quickly kill the pump and start investigating. The water heater has given me trouble in the past; judging by the soft floor around the heater I'm not the first victim, either. Unfortunately, since I'd removed the bypass valves, I had no way of shutting off the water supply to the tank. So, we couldn't use the water, and I had a wet floor. Again.
The next morning, after everyone got motivated, I took a closer look. Thankfully, my dad was more than willing to pop out and give me a hand. He brought with him an air compressor, and after blowing out the water lines, we started looking for the source of the leak. After ruling out the pipes, we pulled the tank itself. Hooking up the air compressor to the water tank made the pinholes in the bottom stand out really well. A quick trip to a local RV shop, and I had the fittings I needed to close the water system, without the tank. Now, we had cold and cold running water.
After returning home, I started exploring my options. While my wife would be perfectly happy losing the hot water tank and gaining some more storage, I liked the idea of having hot running water for things like washing dishes or brushing my teeth. So I looked into the cost of repairing or replacing the tank.
At this point I had no idea if the tank was repairable. Pinholes usually indicate corrosion; the material around the pinhole might be so thin that attempting to weld the hole shut may very well make the hole bigger. A skilled welder might be able to give me decent odds on the success of a repair, but before I had a chance to talk to one, I looked into the possibility of replacing the tank altogether.
Surprisingly, the design of RV water heaters hasn't changed much in 30 years. While features have been added (like automatic ignition and gas-electric units,) the dimensions have remained the same, and I was in fact able to find a brand-new unit that looked and operated exactly like my old one. However, it cost several hundred dollars, which was way out of my price range. A new heater was worth about half of what I'd paid for the trailer in the first place, which meant that if my current heater couldn't be fixed, I'd be going without hot running water.
And then I had a chance to talk to a welder at a local machine shop. Our conversation gave me confidence that a fix might be possible after all, so I left the heater with him for a couple of days. I got it back with a large patch welded over the entire bottom of the tank, which allayed any fears of corrosion-related failures in the future.
While the tank was out getting repaired, I examined the water damage. It was extensive, but I managed to repair it well enough. That's covered in another entry.
The tank had originally been wrapped in fiberglass wool insulation with a cardboard outer coating. Needless to say, this didn't survive the leak; the wool held the water like a sponge and the cardboard disintegrated. I'd pulled off the soaking, rotting insulation before repairing the tank, and before I installed it, I wrapped it in the foil-coated bubble wrap you can buy in a hardware store. Two layers made the tank too large to fit into the hole, but one layer doesn't seem to be adequate; the tank feels pretty warm to the touch, which means that a lot of heat is being lost through the tank walls. However, now that the tank is installed, I can reinstall the second layer and hold some more heat in the tank (instead of letting it out into the trailer, which is not the most desirable thing in the middle of the summer.)I got the tank reinstalled, and then figured out what was wrong with the bypass valves. The handle of one of the valves was not properly lined up, which meant the valve never opened or closed properly. I realigned the handle, and the valves work properly.
So now I've got hot and cold running water again.
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