Comments:dougalbutler@yahoo.com

I have finally overcome the curse and have finally taken possession of my new home.  It is a 34' trailer.  You can view a brochure of it by following this link Mobile Suites.  I'm pulling it with a 2003 GMC 2500HD diesel crew cab truck and so far she doesn't like pulling it at all.  Hopefully she'll get used it soon.  (Note:  She did get used to it and is doing an admirable job)

After all of the hassle getting the Trailer and hitch you can imagine my surprise when I turned on the kitchen faucet for the first time and water started to pool on the floor around the sink.  After a couple of hours applying my plumbing skills to the situation (I received 1st degree burns during my last plumbing experience), I finally isolated the problem and fixed it. 

As I directed my attention to the bathroom, I could not believe the pathetic shower pressure and made one of my many visits to Home Depot. (My second home for the last few days) I tried a couple of different shower heads that slightly improved the pressure but they weren't up to my standards.  After some research on the internet from other RV owners, I found out that the pressure would improve if I replaced the water pressure regulator everyone told me to buy with one designed for a house.  I made yet another trip to Home Depot, picked up the parts, and assembled my new water pressure regulator with an incorrect fitting that required another Home Depot visit to obtain the correct fitting.  YES!!! Now I have a decent shower.

The trailer has a 100 gallon (A HUGE amount of water) holding tank that needed to be sanitized and the procedure requires that the tank be filled and drained several times.  Unfortunately the waste-water holding tank is only 75 gallons so I needed to hook up the sewer hose.  I was very proud of myself for purchasing a fancy all-in-one sewer hose kit to eliminate all of the hassle during my first hook-up...or so I thought.  It turns out the piece that connects the hose to the trailer was missing so I made yet another trip to Camping World (My third home) to pick up the piece I needed.  I tried to connect the piece to the trailer only to discover a lip inside the sewer hose that prevents me from hooking it up.  Do these f#*king people test anything before they send them out.  I drill out the lip and get the part connected but it leaks, which I figure is something you don't want when dealing with a sewer hose, so I'm headed back to Camping World to make another attempt which finally works. I bought an additional length of sewer hose as recommended but now discover that the built in storage is too small.  This would be no problem on a cheaper trailer because the hoses are usually stored in the bumper, but my trailer is too fancy to have something as mundane as a bumper.  So I'm off to Camping World again to buy a storage container which, I find out as I'm trying to install it, is damaged.  So tomorrow I'm off to Camping World again!!!  But hopefully my plumbing days are over.

Before I moved in my furniture, I spent a great deal of time measuring to make sure everything would fit before I had the original furniture removed.  My measurements were perfect unless the slide-outs are retracted for transport as the couch is too deep and the bedroom mattress is too thick.   Thank god I only have to flip the couch on its side and lift the mattress during slide-in for transit.

One of my biggest concerns was breaking dishes during transport and I thought I had the problem licked.  I drilled a bunch of supports in the drawer, stacked the dishes with a washcloth between each dish, then tied the dished down.  The system worked beautifully until I tried to open the drawer after the first drive.  Apparently the dishes are heavier than the drawer can handle and now I have to relocate and re-drill all of the holes again.  Good times!!!

I am in Denver, CO in the middle of May and I had spent so much time in Las Vegas, NV that I did not even consider that it might rain, let alone drop below freezing while I was trying to set all this up.  I do know that the trailer has excellent insulation because I ran out of propane for the furnace at some point during the night when the temperature plunged below freezing.  I woke up to a slightly chilly room that was probably the perfect temperature for my mom, the Eskimo (I know "Inuit" for all the PC's out there).  It took me 20 minutes or so to figure out that I had run out of propane while I swore at the non-functioning furnace controls in a failed attempt to coerce it out of some heat.

Well those are my experiences to date and I haven't even started on the many plans I have for the electrical system yet. 

Well here are the pictures: