During our visit to the Tulip Festival in April, one of our pastimes changed from looking to buying. We'd toyed with the idea of downsizing our home, and had fantasized about how cool it would be to live in Anacortes, but we figured it was just talk until Laura spied an open house ad. Needless to say, by the end of May we owned a second home. How this relates to RVing is what makes this experience worth noting.
Aside from the standard selection criteria like the neighborhood, square footage, and quality of the construction, all of my homes have had RV access. There was either an existing pad or sufficient space on the garage side of the home to create a parking place. My concrete pad in Boise, Idaho had been the narrowest at ten feet minus the width of a fence and an electrical meter, and my new Anacortes home was the most generous with its sixteen feet wide strip running from the front to the back of the lot.
The ToDo List
Not ready to move to Anacortes, we needed to prep the home so we could hand it over to a rental management company. The ToDo list for the project looked like this:
- Master Bath
- Caulk countertops
- Caulk tub
- Clean
- Replace grab bar
- Replace shower head
- Remove carpet and install vinyl flooring
- Master Bedroom
- Entry
- Miscellaneous
- Dust mini blinds
- Have carpets cleaned
- Touch up paint on walls and trim
- Family Room
- Paint fireplace mantel
- Install vertical blinds
- Paint over blue walls
- Garage
- Replace garage door opener light blubs
- Remove long shelf
- Remove unwanted nail hangers
- Replace non-functioning fluorescent tubes
- Dispose of trash
- Guest Bath
- Caulk toilet base
- Clean
- Remount loose faucet
- Repair toilet leak
- Repair vinyl flooring near the tub
- Replace sink stopper
- Replace toilet seat
- Guest Room & Office
- Kitchen
- Repair laminate
- Caulk countertops
- Clean cabinet insides
- Clean ceiling
- Clean Oven
- Clean stove top
- Install cabinet trim over refrigerator
- Paint backsplash
- Paint counter trim grey
- Paint trim
- Prep and repaint cabinets
- Prep and reseal floor under the refrigerator
- Paint window sill
- Install new refrigerator
- Nook
- Install mini blinds
- Paint ceiling
- Laundry
- Repair door trim
- Paint door trim
- Front Porch
- Windows
- Clean Screens
- Clean windows
- Yard
- Fix sagging gates
- Plant lavender
- Spray weeds
- Sump Pump (Installed by electricians and plumbers)
- Install new crawl space sump pump basin
- Install new pump
- Install dedicated electrical circuit
Despite the length of the list, the home was in very good shape, and the job was estimated to take about ten days with me working on it after my day job for HP.
Short Stop at Fidalgo Bay RV Resort
The day after I return from a business trip to Houston, we headed to Anacortes on Memorial Weekend. As long-time Sea Scouts from the SF Bay Area, Memorial Weekend carries a lot of memories for us because it has always been associated with the water. As Sea Scouts, we'd spent the long weekend in Alameda on Government Island, later renamed Coast Guard Island, in friendly competition against other Sea Scout Ships attending the Ancient Mariner Regatta (AMR). It was very fitting that on this Memorial Weekend we'd be involved in an activity that would someday bring us closer to the water.
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| Sea Scout vessels attending the Ancient Mariner Regatta at Government Island, 1977. |
With the Safari motorhome loaded with tools and painting supplies, we headed to Fidalgo Bay RV Resort in Anacortes and stayed in site #135 until we could officially take possession of the house on Tuesday, May 31 when we closed. As always, Fidalgo Bay RV Resort was great, and it made killing time until we could move over to the house easy.
Urban Camping Preparations
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| FloJet RV Macerator Pump |
The ability to stay onsite while we worked on the house was highly desirable. Power, water, and waste each needed a solution. Because of the length of the stay, we'd have to move the motorhome at least once to dump the holding tanks. After some investigation, we arrived at a solution that kept us onsite for the full length of the visit. Water was easy because there was a faucet on the side of the garage. Power came next, and that involved plugging into the 15 amp 120 VAC outlet on the back deck. Much to our surprise, our water heater and the battery charger/inverter never popped the circuit breaker. To dump the waste tanks, I utilized a FloJet RV Macerator pump connected to fifty feet of commercial grade garden hose. The hose was run from the motorhome to the home's sewer cleanout located at the back of the house.
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| Tank Pumping Setup |
As delivered, the FloJet requires some wiring since you have to decide how you want to provide it a source of 12 VDC power. I decided to go with an orange extension cord that could reach from the FloJet to my Safari's battery compartment. At the battery end of the extension cord, I removed the factory AC plug and attached positive and negative battery clips. On the FloJet end, I removed the cord's AC socket and wired the negative directly to the Macerator pump's negative, and routed the positive to the hand operated on/off switch provided with the FloJet. The on/off switch is actually a toggle, so you don't have to keep it depressed to operate the pump.
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| FloJet RV Macerator Pump wired to batteries. |
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| Orange extension cord running to the batteries |
The FloJet RV Macerator Pump works like a champ. While slower than the gravity dump method, it is still impressive considering it's pumping through fifty feet of 3/4 inch garden hose. I'd buy FloJet again, and wouldn't hesitate recommending this solution. The pump runs at high speed so it can be a little noisy.
Lessons Learned
Being on site for the home repairs was both more efficient and motivating. Several nights I was so in the groove that I didn't wrap it up until 2 am in the morning. The motorhome continued to serve as my home office during the day, and a wonderful sanctuary after working on the house. The work had been intense for ten days, but in the end, we finished on time and handed the home over to the property management company.
While perhaps one of our strangest RV trips to date, it reinforced what a wonderful platform our Safari motorhome is. Between the brief stay at Fidalgo Bay RV Resort, camping out at the house, and an overnight stay in Tacoma at the home of friends, we spent fifteen days in the Safari.
Live
well, Laugh
often, Love
much
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