Archive for category Project Niagara (Camper)

Packed up the trailer this evening so that we can leave tomorrow for a bit of camping at Congaree National Park.

Congaree is home to “the largest remnant of old-growth floodplain forest remaining on the continent” … which is something I’m quite looking forward to seeing. Here’s a pic from Wikipedia:

Congaree Old Growth

Plus, with no grading to do, I might get to (1) relax and (2) write.

Because our new PUP comes equipped with a sink, shower, and flushing toilet (!), it has both gray-water and black-water tanks. This means, among other things, that when we’re done camping we need to stop by a dump station to dispose of all the waste.

To connect our holding tanks to the dump station we bought ourselves an RV sewage line and the requisite attachments. There were several everything-you-need kits available at our local Camping World to choose from, but we bought the one that was not only very highly recommended by the staff, but also happened to be on sale: The RhinoFLEX Swivel kit.

For very obvious reasons, once this lovely piece of equipment has been used once, you don’t want to store it where it might come in contact with, well, anything. As a result, these kinds of sewer lines are designed to fit in a 4” square bumper, which is essentially the standard size in the RV industry. Pop a little rubber cap on the end of the bumper, and you should be able to slip the sewer hose inside it, thus simultaneously storing the hose away from everything else and making efficient use of otherwise wasted space.

I say “should be able to slip” because, as it turns out, either our 4” bumper is no longer a 4” bumper — due to warping, rusting, or whatever — or the housings in the RhinoFLEX kit will not let it fit, as it advertises, in a 4” bumper. Regardless of the explanation, the fact of the matter was clear: our PUP’s sewer hose wasn’t going in the bumper.

Putting the hose inside the PUP was out of the question. But if not in the bumper, where?

In a vinyl fencepost, of course! It’s the first thing you thought of, right?

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A few days ago, when I introduced our new Niagara pop-up (the people in the “know” apparently like to call them simply PUPs), I concluded the post thus:

Being the kind of fellow I am, of course, I’m now looking to start modifying the trailer. Going to start small, I think, by just cutting apart a cabinet or two.

It’s possible that some people out there thought I was joking. Those people, it hardly needs to be said, don’t know me very well.

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