Homes on wheels

MOSES LAKE — Some people travel in them. Some people keep them parked. Either way, a home on wheels is still a home, and needs to be kept up.

“Most customers can do their own stuff if they watch what they're doing and think about it,” Dave Quade, a technician at Basin RV Repair in Moses Lake said. “It's not rocket science.”

Maintaining a recreational vehicle is mostly a matter of common sense and keeping up, he added.

Much of the work of keeping up an RV is seasonal. Water heaters and toilets can develop leaks if they’re not maintained.

“In the spring, there were a lot of freeze-ups (brought to the shop), because people didn’t drain their (water) heaters right,” said John Meier, a Basin RV Repair technician.

Quade said being familiar with the vehicle or trailer in question helps mitigate such issues.

“Most RVs have low point drains,” said Quade. “You just open the low-point drain and all the faucets and pull the plug in the hot water tank and pour antifreeze down the P-traps, and you’ve pretty much got it covered.”

P-traps are the curved bit of piping under a sink that prevent unpleasant odors from coming up out of the plumbing.

If an RV is going to be used during the winter, it’s important to put heat tape on your hoses and good skirting around the bottom to keep out the cold, Quade said.

Roofs are another vulnerable point in an RV. They can come in contact with tree branches and other items that scrape them up, and when you’re on the highway they’re exposed to what amounts to a 60-mile-per-hour wind. Unlike the roof on a house, they’re usually made of some kind of plastic or rubber. Skylights in particular are prone to go bad, said Meier.

So what should a customer look for when buying an RV, used or new? Again, leaks, Quade said.

“Open all the cupboards. look inside the cupboards and the back corners and make sure there's no water stains, that's where they'll leak first,” he said.

“Fire everything up, make sure it runs,” he added. “The problem with that is the refrigerator takes 12 hours to cool down, before it gets cold. So sometimes that's kind of rough unless you tell the guy you're buying it from to turn it on before you get there. If they won't, that's normally a pretty good sign that you're (going to be) buying a refrigerator. And a cooling unit's $1,250. So it's a little spendy.”

Both Quade and Meier agreed that motorhomes are more of a hassle than trailers, both for the owner and the repair professional.

“Motor homes are kind of a pain in the … um … rear end,” said Meier.

Quade agreed, and said electrical concerns can be costly.

“They're just electrical nightmares,” said Quade. “They bring them in because they have an electrical issue and you can spend days trying to figure it out. Most customers don't want to pay for 24 hours of diagnosis at $110 an hour.”

Joel Martin can be reached via email at jmartin@columbiabasinherald.com.