RVs are notorious for having things break down in them. Imagine that you put your home on wheels and haul it down the road at 65mph over potholed roads and worse. As you can imagine you will have some breakage doing this for your house. RVs aren't that much different except they are built to withstand some punishment. Given that, there is always something that breaks or is in the process of breaking. Thankfully, the following wasn't anything that serious.
The hand sprayer for our toilet developed a leak about a month or two ago and I didn't have time to repair it. We just put a small plastic tray under the sprayer and that worked for a while. I finally got down to it on the job list a couple days ago. Simple job, well not really.
We went to Lazydays first to find the part. It is a simple part on the Dometic toilet but they didn't have it. They could order it if they could find the part number. They said it was "only" 59.95 for the hand sprayer. WHAT!!! It's only a 3ft long plastic tube with a sprayer on the end of it. No thanks!
Next was Camping World and they didn't stock it either and could order it for a higher price than Lazydays. No thanks!
I then called Tiffin (motorhome manufacturer) and got their message to call during regular working hours. Oh, oh, time difference. I called again the next day and got a young lady on the line who didn't have any idea what I was talking about. Yes, she worked in the parts department. After going back and forth with her for way too long, I gave up, thanked her and hung up.
Then I called the Dometic number on the sheet that came with the toilet. Well, that didn't work since the number was not in working order. So I then googled Dometic, found another number for them and managed to actually get to talk to a live person after a wait. When I explained what I needed, he knew right off what it was and asked if I wanted a plastic spray or a chrome spray. Chrome is what we had in there and asked about it and he said I should call a dealer in my area to buy the spray. He explained if he sold it to me, it would be much higher than a dealer and they could get it in a couple weeks. No thanks!
I did call another dealer in Tucson and got nowhere with them. They didn't have any idea what I was talking about and didn't really want to deal with it.
Did I give up now? Nope. I remembered a tv add I've heard many times and it went like this: Ace is the place. Right, Ace Hardware. So I went to an older Ace Hardware nearby and found exactly what I wanted for $16.00. All I had to do was cut off the end with the copper connector on it.
Then it was a battle to install it on the toilet, but Gerry and I twisted and cursed long enough to actually hook it back up. It was in a very tight space and neither of us could get our hands in there to unscrew the clamp holding the old one on. From that point on it went well.
In the end I paid 1/4 of what it cost to purchase the part from a dealer by using Ace Hardware. Yes, Ace is the place.
If you are still reading this blog after all the verbage above you must be a very patient person. Thank you for listening to my rant.
That was our day, how was yours?
Yes Larry I still read your bog, it will take lots more than a rant to discourage me from it.
ReplyDeleteI still read because we have similar problems. Our 10 gal rv water heater started leaking. Had to first shut off water and our daughter was coming. She had to use the park shower facilities as we did, too. Glad the facilities were pretty nice. 3 wks later and 1000 dollars later, we are back to living civilized again. Yes, I enjoy reading your rv problems, too.
ReplyDeleteIt just shouldn't be that difficult to get the right part. We have a great little RV supply store here in AJ and we've had really good luck with them. But if we don't have any luck there - Jim is off to Ace.
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