I mentioned another project that needed attention in my last post. Our 10-gallon Suburban water heater isn’t working right. This unit operates on 120-volts AC or propane. When we’re on a 50-amp electrical service, we keep the water heater on electric power.

Apparently, the electric heating element is going bad. It won’t heat the water adequately – we only get lukewarm water – I doubt if it’s much over 100 degrees. We have to turn on the propane gas burner to get hot enough water to shower or wash dishes.

I found a tune-up kit for the Suburban SW10DE water heater that included the heating element online at PDX RV. It also had a replacement thermostat set at 130 degrees. The kit was only $33, but shipping was $15!

I found a heating element wrench at Ace Hardware for $10. This is a thin wall, stamped sheet socket, 1-1/2 inches in diameter. The heating element has a thin 1-1/2 inch hex on top of the threaded portion of the element.

With the proper tool and parts in hand, I got to work. I made a “curtain” out of a plastic grocery bag to keep any sediment that might come out of the tank off of the coach. The heating element had a plastic cover over it and it was behind the gas tube, so I had to remove the gas tube and cover for access.

I had turned the circuit breaker for the water heater off, then I removed the two wires from the element. I used the socket tool, but I found the element threads were stuck in place. I worked on it for about 45 minutes before I decided I needed to try something different. I found a 1-1/2″ standard socket at the auto parts store. I figured I could use my 1/2-inch drive electric impact driver to break the element loose.

The thin hex on the element didn’t allow the socket to fully engage the hex and the impact driver just rounded the tops of the hex corners. Next I soaked it in penetrating oil and let it stand overnight. I found a bar about two feet long that I could use as a breaker bar on the heating element tool for leverage.

I huffed and puffed and gave a mighty pull on the cheater bar and promptly bent the heating element tool without budging the element. The threads remained frozen in place. At that point, I threw in the towel and put it all back together. I’ll have to hire an RV service that either has a better tool or a better idea to get the old element out. I hate to give up, but sometimes you have to admit defeat.

Donna has been busy getting the park model home ready for us to move in. Last Saturday Viewpoint Golf and RV Resort had a community patio sale. Many of the homes here in the park put out items for sale. Donna had a lot of stuff she wanted to get out of the house before we move in. She sold quite a few items. The things that didn’t sell we took to Goodwill.

She’s been working on replacing window coverings with help from our friends, Roxy and Dick Zarowny. They also did some paint touch up. Roxy repainted a cabinet, changing the white finish to gray.

The RV park is slowly emptying out as snowbirds return home. Our friends Chuck and Sue Lines left last week to head back to Illinois. We have about a dozen empty sites in front of our coach and only three RVs in sight.

I ordered set of coarse (400 grit) and medium (1000 grit) diamond sharpening stones and had another go at Roxy’s LC Germain kitchen knives. These stones were aggressive and worked better on this steel than the fine synthetic Japanese water stones I used before. They left a toothy finish that I refined a bit on a medium Spyderco Sharpmaker stick. The result was an acceptable level of sharpness that remained on the toothy side. A toothy edge is good for cutting most proteins or things like thick-skinned tomatoes. A more refined edge is needed to make clean cuts of fish. I think her knives will work better now.

By Wednesday, I had almost everything out of the trailer and needed to advertise it for sale. I was a little worried as I had to have it out of here on the 30th of March – only six days away. Donna wrote up an ad and posted it on Facebook Marketplace Wednesday evening. She had immediate responses! I had searched online to find comparable trailers to set a price and had a hard time finding anything. The closest I could find were either beat-up and selling for cheap or they were really high-end models – I only found a few examples and nothing really matched our trailer.

I told Donna what I expected to get for the trailer and soon found out I under-priced it. We had people lining up to buy it and a bidding war broke out. I sold it for $700 over my asking price and the guy came Thursday morning from Casa Grande to buy it. He paid cash and left with a smile on his face. I thought the lack of trailers this size online indicated a lack of interest – most of the trailers were around the 12-foot length. It turns out there’s low supply and much demand for larger trailers. I probably could have sold for a higher price, but I’m satisfied with how things turned out.

We’ll be moving into our new place over the weekend. On Tuesday, I’ll take the motorhome to a new storage facility that opened on Main Street near the Loop 202. I’ll have it under a covered space there. I think we’ll hang around here until mid-May unless it gets too hot earlier. We don’t have a real plan for the summer yet – we just know we want to leave before the temperatures are in triple digits.

The weather for the past week had been fickle. We’ve had warm, sunny days with the high temperature ranging from the mid-70s to mid-80s broken up by a few cooler days with wind and rain showers in the 60s. It’s cool today with a predicted high of 62 degrees, but we’ll warm up to the 80s over the weekend and may hit the 90s by the end of the week.

*Just so you know, if you use this link to shop on Amazon and decide to purchase anything, you pay the same price as usual and  I’ll earn a few pennies for the referral. It’ll go into the beer fund. Thanks!