My Neighbors New Cyclone Flooded Today.

DW_Gray · Oct 14, 2010

After opening my Cyclone's door to go outside, I immediately saw water flowing from several locations in the front of their Cyclone. I then turned off the water supply. After few phone calls, the owners arrived within minutes. Fortunately, they both work on the Air Force base where we are staying.

Their hearts sunk when they went inside find water had flooded from the bathroom shower and flowed forward throughout the bedroom.

The cause: A basket with suction cups in the shower fell from the wall and knocked the shower's hot water handle to the on position as it went down. From there I think you know the rest of the story.

So my next project is to secure the basket in my shower so that won't happen.

Maybe the shower handles should be redesigned to turn up to turn on instead of down.

dieselsweetheart · Oct 14, 2010

That is a freak accident.... wow, who would have thought that??? Good advice to be careful. Geez, what do you do in a flood situation like that? Is everything able to dry out or do you need to replace flooring/carpeting??? I would be sick!

Ray LeTourneau · Oct 14, 2010

I learned a long time ago to not put any faith in those suction cup thingys. Maybe on glass but never any other surface. Fortunately my lesson didn't end in a flooded floor. I hope they get everything dried out and have no damage. Luckily they have good neighbors.

Ray LeTourneau · Oct 14, 2010

This thread was somehow closed in error. It's open again. Sorry for any inconvenience.

SJH · Oct 14, 2010

When I first started RVing I was told to always shut the main supply off when you leave the rig for any amount of time e.g. the afternoon sight-seeing trip etc. just in case something breaks or comes loose. Not sure if it is the appropriate thing to do or not but it became a habit. This seems to be a good time to ask...is turning the main supply off when you are gone a safe practice? I don't want to create other problems (water heater etc) either!

robnmo · Oct 14, 2010

We always shut off the main water supply when we leave, we do the same when we leave the house for more than a day, we also shut off the gas or electric to the water heater. Hope everything gets dried out for them and it was a good thing you saw what was happening and shut the water down. As for the shower holder, we ended up buying a chrome wire type basket that suctions at the bottom but has the over the glass hangers on the top, about eight dollars at Wal mart.

WRIGHT ll · Oct 14, 2010

Twice in our RVing lives we have seen somebody's RV that was flooded while they were absent from the area. Now I make it a practice to turn off the water when we are away from the rig. Just one of my idiosyncracies, I guess.

2010augusta · Oct 14, 2010

Maybe the shower handles should be redesigned to turn up to turn on instead of down.

we just flipped the shower faucet up-side-down, to get a better angle on the out-put hose. and now the handles turn up too.

mrcomer · Oct 14, 2010

This helps reinforce my thoughts on shutting off the water at the outside spigot when we leave our coach for an extended period of time. I started doing this when Midastouch had a similar situation with here Landmark. I am sure your neighbors are just sick about this and I hope things work out for them.

Mark

dewwood · Oct 14, 2010

That is terrible news for your neighbors. I hope they have insurance to cover the cost of clean up. I have often wondered why the handles turn down to turn on the water. I think it would a good improvement for Heartland to switch them around so that they move upwards to turn on.

DW_Gray · Oct 14, 2010

I've read before here on this forum and others about turning off the supply water before leaving for the day. I've done that few times but haven't yet made it a habit. I guess I still have in my mind that for the price we pay for our RVs we should expect a better product. A product that would not fail any more than the land based house we may own on or the vehicle we drive down the road. Yet I know that we don't tow our land based house down the road at 55 to 75 mph. There are some things in our RV that should rarely fail as often as they do.

Another idea: Change the shower handles to knobs.

Note: As a father of a physically disabled daughter, I understand the reason of handles over knobs. On the other hand, if an RVer is unable to turn a knob, should they be RVing? I hope I'm not barking up the wrong tree on this comment. I have emphatically <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves/> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w

unctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w

oNotPromoteQF/> <w:LidThemeOther>EN-US</w:LidThemeOther> <w:LidThemeAsian>X-NONE</w:LidThemeAsian> <w:LidThemeComplexScript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <w

ontGrowAutofit/> <w:SplitPgBreakAndParaMark/> <w

ontVertAlignCellWithSp/> <w

ontBreakConstrainedForcedTables/> <w

ontVertAlignInTxbx/> <w:Word11KerningPairs/> <w:CachedColBalance/> </w:Compatibility> <w:BrowserLevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> <m:mathPr> <m:mathFont m:val="Cambria Math"/> <m:brkBin m:val="before"/> <m:brkBinSub m:val="--"/> <m:smallFrac m:val="off"/> <m:dispDef/> <m:lMargin m:val="0"/> <m:rMargin m:val="0"/> <m:defJc m:val="centerGroup"/> <m:wrapIndent m:val="1440"/> <m:intLim m:val="subSup"/> <m:naryLim m:val="undOvr"/> </m:mathPr></w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--> told my kids when they realize I should not be driving, to take away my keys.

newbie · Oct 14, 2010

2010augusta said:
we just flipped the shower faucet up-side-down, to get a better angle on the out-put hose. and now the handles turn up too.

I considered doing the same because our shower hose is starting to kink but realized the hot would then be on the right and cold on the left and figured I would confuse myself

I guess you could swap the supply lines and then all would be right again.

John

squire · Jan 2, 2011

I didn't realize Dave had posted about this. This was us. We actually came out just fine. We had ready access to our carpet scrubber, a bunch of ShamWows, and DampRid. We were lucky that Dave caught it early (Thanks again, Dave). The carpet scrubber dealt with floor and and the ShamWows dealt with the storage and utility bay. We fired up the furnace, space heaters, and A/C to help. It took about 6 hours but it was 95% dry by bedtime. I pulled the utility bay panels out for a couple of days to make sure everything dried out and placed DampRid in several places. We haven't seen any issues with mold or wood damage.

What happened was the adhesive attaching the shower soap dispenser failed and it fell on the hot shower handle. We'd gone down to the Post office and ran a couple errands and it must have happened right after we left. Fortunately we were only about half a mile away. Unfortunately the gray tank was mostly full. Because the shower and the washer are both on that tank, I now leave that valve open until I need to dump the others.

kakampers · Jan 2, 2011

Glad you were able to clean up the mess...we have a friend who had a similiar situation and there have been no long term effects. And theirs was NOT grey water, if you get my drift.

We have ALWAYS left the dump valves open on both grey tanks whenever we are hooked to sewer...just makes life easier and less stressful...and now I'm really glad it's a practice we started years ago! I figure that's why we have a tank flush...don't really need the water that's held in the grey tanks for rinsing...Good Luck!

kakampers · Jan 2, 2011

SJH said:
When I first started RVing I was told to always shut the main supply off when you leave the rig for any amount of time e.g. the afternoon sight-seeing trip etc. just in case something breaks or comes loose. Not sure if it is the appropriate thing to do or not but it became a habit. This seems to be a good time to ask...is turning the main supply off when you are gone a safe practice? I don't want to create other problems (water heater etc) either!

It's perfectly safe to turn the water off when away...we try to do it when we're gone all day..just haven't got in the habit yet. The system is a "closed" system and water does not drain away from things like the water heater, nor will it evaporate.

Probably a good habit to get into...we were in SPI a few years ago, I came out of the coach to see water pouring out of the MH next door, turned off water and waited for neighbors to get back...would you believe, she had flushed the commode just before leaving several hours earlier and the flush valve STUCK!!! Commode just kept on running...can you imagine the mess!!!

JohnDar · Jan 2, 2011

I haven't taken a close look at the shower faucet assembly, but it might be possible to reverse the valves so that they swing up instead of down. I don't mean turning the whole assembly upside down, just switching the valve bodies from side to side. Hot and cold would still be on the same side as before, only the on/off directions would change.

sdrubrecht · Jan 2, 2011

Turning valves over sounds like a good idea. I'm always turning water on accidentely with the towel while drying off. Glad you were able to dry it out allight. We try to always turn off pump when not using the water. I still remember a trip in our last tt. We went to a remote spot in Az about 30 miles up a dirt road. Got there and found a valve had giggled on and dumped all our water into the grey tank!

My Neighbors New Cyclone Flooded Today.

DW_Gray

Well-known member

dieselsweetheart

Well-known member

Ray LeTourneau

Senior Member - Past Moderator

Ray LeTourneau

Senior Member - Past Moderator

SJH

Past Washington Chapter Leaders

robnmo

Well-known member

WRIGHT ll

retired Oklahoma Chapter Leaders

2010augusta

Well-known member

mrcomer

Past Ohio Chapter Leaders (Founding)

dewwood

Well-known member

DW_Gray

Well-known member

newbie

Northern Virginia

squire

Member

kakampers

Past Heartland Ambassador

kakampers

Past Heartland Ambassador

JohnDar

Prolifically Gabby Member

sdrubrecht

Active Member

Similar threads