Friends Don't Let Friends Buy Motorhomes

For all two of you who may have read last week's post from Lake Keowee, you will recall we sprung a leak in our water heater during our first ever on-grid camping experience with on-site electricity and water.  It would have been such a glorious experience on the lake were it not for the perfectly-orchestrated drip...drip...drip followed by the larger stream of water trickling through our coach.

While still at Lake Keowee I could determine that the source of the leak was somewhere near the electrode for the electric function of heating the water (we have a combination Gas/Electric water heater that allows us to select either method of heating the water, whichever is most advantageous at any given time.) However, as you can imagine in a coach of our size, space is limited and access to installed utilities is tight, if not nonexistent.

The only way to diagnose and remedy the problem was to fully uninstall the water heater from its "cubby" to find the source of the leak.  After a day or two to reflect upon how mad I was about the procedure I had to undertake, finally on Sunday, January 26th, I extracted the device.

Removal left a gaping hole in the side of our rig.


Peering out of the hole, there's the water heater in all of her aluminum glory.

You can see the water that had leaked from inside.

We nearly destroyed the styrofoam insulation surrounding the water heater in the process of removal.

Preparing for pressure testing to find the source of the leak.

After pressure testing with water, we could see a pinhole leak on a weld where the heater had been previously repaired.  If you look very closely, you can see a very faint but strongly pressurized stream of water spewing from the center of the blue highlighted circle.

With the source of the leak pinpointed, we needed to find someone to patch the pinhole with the ability to weld aluminum. After some calling around to neighborhood friends, we spoke with Tom who owns a performance radiator fabrication facility in north Georgia.  They work with aluminum all day, every day.  He merely had me drop the water heater off at his house about 100 yds away, and he took it to their facility for mending.  Three days later Tom brought the repaired water heater back and dropped it off at our door.  Many thanks to Tom and the staff at Griffin Thermal Products for taking care of us!

On Friday, January 31st, I was able to reinstall the mended water heater and perform the necessary tests to ensure proper function.  It took nearly a week, but we are now back in business with a dry water heater compartment and the ability to take hot showers!