agesilaus

I spent 30+ years in the environmental chemistry lab and water softerner salesmen are regarded as being 10 steps lower than used car salesmen or even politicians. They prey of the ignorant. But I would not stand in the way of anyone to throw his money down a rat hole, just as long as I'm not contributing, as much as they want to. Benjamin Franklin said it all.

An obvious industry pack of lies. 'No we don't put salt into your water, well yes we do but you can't taste it'...geez.

Who the heck uses 'grains' anymore, that's right out of the 1940's. PPM is an old measure for that matter, modern use is mg/L. I suppose there are water plants that do not operate a water treatment system. May only filter the water. You get what you pay for. I'm not even sure if the USEPA permits that they do require extensive testing for 126 priority pollutants plus another 20 or so items on municipal drinking water plants that provide water to a certain population of people. Elko NV was said to have notoriously bad drinking water BTW, they may have fixed that.

OK a quick water 101 lecture I spent 30 years running industrial demineralizers as part of my job as a plant chemist. These were four 80 cu/ft tanks of resin and produced water that makes your so called distilled water at the supermarket look like ditch water. They also had 2 50 cu/ft carbon filters. The feed water to these units came from another plant that produced water quality about what you would get at the supermarket about 5-10 parts per millon. The water you get in bottles runs around 5-10 part per million of dissolved minerals, mostly sodium chloride. The water out of these units was 1000 times purer, a few parts per billion. And we took that water and made part per trillion water in the lab for use there. Now water produced by a municipal water plant runs around 100 mg/L or ppm of hardness which is a measure mainly of Calcium and Magnesium. That level of hardness protects city and home water piping by depositing a thin layer of calcium/magnesium carbonates on the inside of the piping. Much higher levels of hardness will produce thick deposits called scale and and can eventually plug the pipes. In your water heater this 'scale' can build up and destroy the heater eventually thus we use sacrificial electrodes and flush the tanks out the combat this. This happens because calcium carbonate unlike just about every other chemical salt gets less soluble as it gets hotter. You on the other hand benefit from high hardness since calcium and magnesium are required by your body. Most women end up taking calcium/magnesium tablets to protect their bones and those are big pills. Too soft water, hardness too low corrodes iron piping. So water plants carefuly control the hardness leval at just the right level. They have a chemical index they use called the Langlier Index to measure this. Sodium on the other hand is controversial. Back in the 1920's or 30's IIRC some doctor noticed that people exotic rice diet had low incidence of atherosclerosis and since rice has a low sodium content he decided that this was because of their low sodium diet. Ignoring the many other factors involved in a rice diet. And so doctors ever since then have determined to drive down the sodium content of their patients diets despite there being no real evidence of low sodium being beneficial. People in general unconsciously try to control their sodium intake to about 3 grams a day IIRCfrom a paper that I read. Doctors stick with what they are taught in med school based on a 1920 poorly designed study.

Scientific American When Ca and Mg are removed they MUST be replaced by another cation, which is sodiumin this case.It is possible to exchange a cation for hydrogen using a water DEIONIZER but that is technology beyond your household system and requires very dangerous chemicals, Sulfuric Acid and Sodium Hydroxide to regenerate the resin. Far too dangerous for your untrained homeowner.

They are a lot of trouble and exchange healthy calcium and magnesium for unhealthy sodium in your water. You know people take Calcium pills and their doctors are always ordering them to cut back on sodium...right? They can make the water too soft and soap will not wash off very easily. Why do you think you need one?

Toulomne Meadows was drive in only in the sense of car campers or maybe vans. We did get a small popup in years ago but it took some maneuvering. All those bolders Those closures will make camping in Yosemite even harder to do. We won a week at Coarsegold at the Escapade tho and are hopefully all set if they can keep from burning the state down again next year.

Just finished replacing the fabric on our Carefree Powered awning. Fabric $174 on Amazon, only complaint is that we ordered burgundy stripes but the burgundy is walnut brown. A minor irritation. The length of the fabric does not seem to affect the price ours, 16 ft, is the same price as 19 ft fabrics. The process went went well, as per a great YT video, except that the spline was frozen into the channel and had to be manually dug out. Once that was done it went smoothly, probably took 90 minutes or less once my SIL arrived to help feed the new fabric in. The old was patched with some clear awning repair tape that lasted for 18 months but that was clearly about to fail and we are parked in a resort for 2 months. That gave us plenty of time to do the swap out. I have one of those shade cloths that hangs from the valance edge by running a spline into the third slot but after one three AM rush awning retraction which required pulling the shade out of the slot, I decided there has to be an easier way and put grommets in the spline and the shade and hooked the shade on with'S" hooks. I can take it down in less than a minute and it goes up easy too. Does not make a tight connection with the bottom of the awning but the small amount of light leakage is not an issue.

19 ft Blue awning

I just ordered awning replacement fabric yesterday, it was shipped by the end of the day but won't get here until next week. From Amazon.

Don't quote me on this, but I think I saw a number on a blog of 700 new parks nationally. Planned anyway

There is another new large, multi hundred spot RV park in Chiefland, I don't recall the name but it is much pricier than Strawberry Fields and seems to be run by the rule nazi type managers. Doesn't have any more amenities than the other place tho. We liked another spot called Suwanee River Bend, an older park right on the river in Fanning and very nice. But there was a storm that knocked down the local cell tower and they have no signal and the residents say weak WIFI. Not all the amenities either tho that is of lesser importance to us. There was a newspaper report about a big park being built near High Springs a year or so ago but nothing shows up on a search so I guess that did not get built. This area has many springs but no good beaches on the Gulf coast until you get down near Tampa. You have to cross the state to get a beach on the Atlantic coast, a two hour drive. Only visitors go swimming in the winter tho, too cold for residents.

Anyone else staying at Strawberry Fields RV in Chiefland FL? We are checking in Monday for Nov/Dec leaving the first week in Jan if all goes as planned. We reserved a spot based on several folks telling us how great it is. Drove thru a couple of days ago and checked it out. It's new so no trees, price is good, they are still adding stuff and they seem to have just installed pickleball courst and shuffleboard/horseshoes ect. They show a pool on their map but it is vapor ware so far. And they have a big clubhouse and laundry tho the machines did not meet my wifes standards. So we are looking forward to two months of stationary life, this is our home area so we are familiar with it already. Lots to do with 3 springs and lots of other outdoor activity. Geez I sound like I own stock in the place...heh.

Well we drove thru Atlanta yester day, Friday Afternoon starting aroun 1 PM. It was horrific. Added 90 minutes to Garmin RV890 ETA. Traffic stop and go from I85/285 intersections to past the 285/airport south of the city. North bound was much worse with stop, full stop and very slow go from I85 north to the Letchwood exits 25 miles south of Atlanta, maybe 30 miles. I believe that the state road dept has created traffic problems by taking 2 lanes off the normal I75 route and giving them to a for-pay express lane. The traffic slow ups ceased after that ended south of town. I didn't take that express route since historically traffic flowed freely south of Atlanta. Not yesterday. We have not been thru Atlanta in 3 or 4 years maybe, just because our routing carried us down I-10 and I have been turning north at Mobile. I will be doing that when ever possible from now on. We did pass thru from the north to south a year or two ago and went tright thru with the inevitable short slowdown for 5 minutes of so. But nother worth diverting for. RVTW routed us down the I585 bypass, I'be never been down it and did not try it yeasterday since the Garmin ran us right thru on 75. Might have been a mistake but having experience with I285 I did not change the routing.

That is called a knife valve for obvious reasons

Most common is some trash stuck in the valve seat. We had it happen. Did a extra intense tank flushing, including a 24 hour soak with a bottle of Dawn and Calgon,followed by another full tank waterflush. Took the valve apart and cleaned it up. it was more or less clean after the flushes. Lubed the stem with some silicone grease. Put back together and it's worked well ever since. Only four long bolts holding the valve in/and together. Not count flush time maybe a 2 hour job.

We have a real four season camper so we jst continue on as before.

I avoided it like the plague that it is in the first place, never joined.

That's news to me, if true and if it is true it isn't enforced. "According to Florida Statute 320.01(26), a 'commercial motor vehicle’ is a vehicle not owned by the government, with a gross vehicle weight (GVW) of 26,001 lbs. or more, or has three or more axles regardless of weight, or is used in combination (vehicle plus trailer) when the weight of such combination exceeds 26,001 pounds gross vehicle weight." But it does not seem to enforced by anyone. Has nothing to do with the hitch according to the above from St Lucie tax Collector. But a lot of Class A's might fall under it along with big fivers. Looking at that section mentioned above and one that is referenced in that section I 'think' commercial vehicles are those for hire and not privately owned. BUT both of those sections are very long and written in legalese so I'm not sure. I used to read that stuff at work when I was a Lab Tech Director but I prefer not to anymore.

Happily Florida where we are residents, has no such requirements. One has to wonder if these laws contain a large dose of revenue extraction from the public. I recall having a CDL license years ago, at the time the test was just on a few rules and the meaning of all those extra lights on commercial trucks. I never had cause to use it and I let it lapse years ago. Should have paid the extra fee and kept it.

Does that 26K include the truck?

That was last year during the panic, they closed most of the campgrounds in the park. I think they opened most of them back up now but I didn't check when we were there last month.

Exacerbated in that case by the park service closing 70% of the camps inside the park. There were almost no places to camp. There are reposrts that the expected great sell off of RV's by the new buyers is beginning. RVTravels is claiming that dealers are getting calls from people trying to sell back their barely used camper. One can hope that is true anyway.

Yeah the BLM may be improving some sites too much. But I'll give them this one since it was a mess a couple years ago. We ended up in the open field that is now blocked off and it wasn't idealbutitwas free camping outside YNP.

GM warns their electric car owners not to park withing 50 feet of anything flammable and not to park in a building that could catch on fire. news article