By Nanci Dixon
Recently, as I was casually sifting through my emails, I almost deleted one from Geico Insurance. Good thing I didn’t. What caught my eye in it was the list of things that could cause a water disaster. As we all know, water is an archenemy of RVs.
I already know to turn the outside water faucet off when leaving the RV for a few days (or during freeze warnings). But this was different. It was a warning about not running appliances that use water when away from home. That home could be a sticks-and-bricks or an RV.
We are lucky enough to have both a washer/dryer and a dishwasher in our RV. Both take an abysmal amount of time to cycle through, so I routinely start one or the other when we will be gone for a couple of hours in hopes that it will be done and silenced when we get back.
Now, after reading the warnings, I could well envision water cascading down our steps as we open the RV door. A few simple things can prevent those water disasters:
1. Don’t run appliances that use water when gone.
2. Turn off the water pump when leaving.
3. Turn off the main outside faucet when leaving when hooked up. While we didn’t have an internal flood, a pesky animal once bit the fresh water hose and the water ran all day, creating a small pond around our tires.
4. Install a water leak detector. There is a huge variety of them on Amazon. You can get ones that are stand-alone, ones with sound alerts, ones that send alerts up to 1/4 mile away, ones with and without Wi-Fi…
These simple steps can prevent water damage in a home or RV.
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Also turn your homes water off when away a couple days. Especially in the winter. My neighbors furnace broke and all the water pipes burst. Water was running out of the bilevels 2 second story out side the house. Temperature was below freezing. Another house the water supply for the toilet burst in the summer. They sell a setup on Amazon with a thermostat that lights a bulb on a lamp by the window to notify one of your neighbors. Just let them know to contact you if it lights up.
We always shut our home water off when leaving for more than a day or so. We also have water valves on our clothes washer that are off when not in use. Those rubber hoses can burst without warning.
As far as the RV (TT), it’s off every time we leave unless we are just going for a walk.
We always turn off the water to the RV when not there. In 2002 we learned our lesson when a brass quick connect failed. Fortunately, the water spray was confined to the water bay that had a drain. In addition, a nice camping neighbor saw water gushing out the drain and turned the spigot off.
This is a hot item for me! We have had two rural neighbors as well as my own, with water problems. 1. A two story home had a water fall ice berg coming from the 2nd floor – noticed by the mailman-a pipe had separated in the 2nd floor bedroom. 2. A bi-level brick home – folks went to FLA for 2 wks. Home heated by hot water; lower level pipe froze, boiler continued to heat. Required 100% rebuild from insulation to sheetrock to paint! 3. I had a flex pipe separate from the kitchen faucet, we were home and heard the water running and raining down in my shop! 4. Last Dec.my water heater had a pinhole leak, a mess for 4 wks to get it replaced; a lot of mold and mildew on wet windows at -10 to -15f
… It has always been my bug to insure the main water valve is shutoff if leaving for more than 24 hrs.. Stuff happens! I also do not leave a running toilet even at nite – I and I am sure nearly everyone has had a stuck toilet valve. My folks did many years ago when they went to the lake for a weekend to come home to a flooded yard as their septic tank filled and overflowed the drain field as well from a still running toilet when they got home on Sunday nite! Better to be diligent than sorry.
My January 2025 water bill was double because of the water heater leak noted in my lst post here!
If I leave my rig for a few hours I just turn it off at the faucet with the little lever on my pressure fixture. If water runs rampant for even a few minutes it can make a mess for sure.
Thank you for the warning, Nanci! Good advice that I frequently flaunt. I will try to do better; I promise. 🙂 Have a great week and safe travels!