Dang RV

Gate Guarding Utilities

By Katrina Kane, on May 30th, 2013

Part of gate guarding is living onsite in the middle of nowhere in your own RV 24/7. To make this possible, guard companies provide support trailers which hold a generator (be sure to tell them if your rig is 30 or 50 amp), a large tank of diesel fuel, a large tank of water, various pumps, and maybe a toolbox to hold spare oil, filters, and work lights. Some guard companies provide better equipment than others and some provide more support for it than others. The company I am with has both great equipment and staff. The staff in particular take very good care of me and the equipment. With the addition of a large sewage tank thrown on the ground and pumped out regularly, guards have full utilities just like in a campground. They do, however, recommend using bottled water or installing a more expensive full rig UV water filter for drinking or cooking.

This week I have been experiencing the downside of portable utilities which will happen with any guard company and has nothing to do with mine in particular. First issue has been the water pump. My previous support trailer water worked almost perfectly. I only had to hit the lever to prime the water pump once in 10 days. This time I have a newer support trailer that needs to be broken in. I have had to prime the water pump once a day here. I don’t mind that when the water stops flowing while doing the dishes but it is a real pain when you get in the middle of a shower and the water stops flowing as happened to me last night. Eek! It has gotten better since I exercised the pump for an hour while pumping the water out and back into the water tank. Hopefully, in time, it will loosen up and behave itself.

Today my generator stopped several times. A quick call to my support guy got me help within the hour. First thing to do was change the fuel filter which had turned black. With spares onboard the support trailer, I could have done it myself except I didn’t have the right tool, a pair of medium channel locks. Dang! I have a lot of tools onboard but not those though I meant to get some soon. Oh well. My support guy came quickly and showed me how to do it when I do have the tool. That seemed to resolve it for an hour until the generator stopped again. I am so lucky my support guy is staying right down the road from me so I called him again. It turned out the fuel pump had died. Happily, he had a spare in his truck and was able to change it out quickly. I’m up and humming again.

During all this, I had no air conditioning and it was hot today. I wisely have a DC fan in my RV which I plugged in and pointed at my dang cat to keep her cool enough during all this. Another DC fan would probably be a good idea but I have been planning to install 2 Fantastic Fans which will create the needed airflow from DC power to help in this situation. I do have a small 1000W portable generator which could have run AC fans if my support guy couldn’t have gotten to me so fast. It won’t run the air conditioner but any air flow would have helped. Things to think about.

Portable Washers For The Rest of Us

By Katrina Kane, on May 26th, 2013

For many years some upscale RVs have had the convenience of washing machines and dryers to do laundry in your rig rather than suffering the inconvenience and expense of campground laundry rooms or worse, in town Laundromats. While they don’t hold a lot of laundry at a time, don’t dry well, and they do take up space in the RV, nonetheless, many people wish they had those. Well, now they can! Sort of. Camping World and Amazon are now carrying a portable washer from Base Camp called the Ezywash. I bought one and am using it in my 5th wheel while gate guarding. Personally, I love it!

The Base Camp portable washing machine is lightweight, small, and sits on your kitchen counter next to the sink when needed. It holds a reasonable amount of clothes for a single person (4.5 lbs.). To wash, plug it in, add water half way to the line, pour in your detergent and bleach or other enhancer, add clothes, then continue to fill to the line, set the time on the rotary timer, and let it do its thing. Liquid concentrated detergent works best with it. Now we get to what some folks would not like. When done, you drop the side hose into the sink to drain it, pull the clothes out to hand wring them and set aside in a basket, then fill with just plain water again halfway, put the clothes back in, continue filling to the line, set the timer again, and let it go to rinse. After that, drain it again, wring the clothes again, and hang them to dry. Remember, this is only a washing machine. It does not spin the water out of the clothes for you or dry them. It only cleans them and that it does very well using the same action you see in a front loading machine. It agitates the clothes slowly in one direction, stops, then spins in the other direction and stops again to reverse. I was very pleased with the job it did on my dirty white socks. It seems to work fine without the first wringing out before rinsing too.

So here is my rundown of the pros and cons:

PRO:

1. No quarters needed or running to a Laundromat.
2. Cleans well.
3. Stores easily.
4. Inexpensive.
5. Lightweight.

CON:

1. No spinner (You can purchase a separate clothes spinner cheap on Amazon.).
2. No dryer (But less space is needed then and line dried clothes smell great!)
3. The hose provided to fill it is very odd. It does not directly connect to the faucet. You can either hold it to the faucet while filling or fill with a bucket or pan.
4. The drain hose must be plugged with something while washing or water comes out of it even while raised. I stuff a cloth in it. They should provide a plug/cap instead.

Another option which is probably better for couples though I have not seen it myself is one of the portable apartment sized washers you can find at Lowes, Home Depot, Walmart, and Amazon. Haiermakes several different models to wash different amounts of clothes. The HLP21N Pulsator 1-Cubic-Foot Portable Washeris popular. Apartment types roll on wheels and can be stored in an available closet or drape a nice cloth over it to hide it. They cost more and weigh a little more but do have spin cycles, digital controls, and the same pulsating action as the Ezywash which is much easier on clothes.

Panda makes some highly rated portable washer/spin dryer combos that fit well in RVs and are a bit more automated than my Base Camp.

What I use to hold the wet clothes to cart them to the line to dry is a rectangular collapsible bucket which doubles as a mop bucket and is also available at Camping World and Amazon. I clean it after using it to mop so it is always ready for clothes. Since saving space is the name of the game when living in a small home, I like things that take up as little of my precious space as possible and can be used for more than one thing. 😉

To dry, you can either use lines provided at some parks, a homemade or store-bought drying rack, or hang them in the shower. Since installing the Extend-A-Shower shower rod in my RV, I have used it numerous times to dry clothes in the shower without them dripping on my floor. Be aware that it takes much longer to dry inside rather than outside but when you are parked next to a busy dusty road, inside is all you can do.

Note: I am an affiliate of Camping World and Amazon, however, I am actually using the Ezywash and collapsible bucket reviewed above in this post.

For those of you who still like to crank homemade ice cream or like to boondock without power or a generator, there is an option for you as well called the “Wonderwash“. While I have not used it, it is inexpensive and rated well at Amazon. It operates very much like the “ezywash” but requires no electricity; only human power.

Another option to go even more basic like your great grandma did is the Mobile Washer (Hand Operated Washing Machine). Get yourself this and a 5-10 gallon bucket and you can wash with the best of them. It comes highly rated and even more inexpensive. You supply the time and muscle power. Great for off-the-grid or tenters.

If you are the DIY type who likes to make your own, you can make something similar to the above yourself. DIY Washer

If you decide hand wringing your laundry is not for you, you can combine any of the above washers with a laundry spinner or an old-fashioned laundry wringer.

UPDATE: I bought the Laundry Alternative spin dryer shown above to use myself. It is excellent! It dried not only clothes but also bed sheets (1 at a time) and beach towels. Everything came out nearly dry! The towels could be hung up right away on their holders to finish air drying while everything else took less than a day to dry over the shower rod in the bathroom compared to taking 3 days previously. Of course, you can hang them outside too if you have a rack or line to do so. The unit is well built, compact, and light weight. It reaches up to 1600 rpm to force water out of wet items. You do need to balance the load which isn’t hard and you can stop it by opening the lid if necessary to rebalance. It has a brake to stop the action. Remembering to put the safety disk back in on top was the hardest part for me. While it is small, it handled 2 polo shirts and a pair of shorts in one load, one beach sized towel or one bed sheet, a full load of misc smaller laundry items like socks, bandanas, etc. For a single person it is ideal. For a couple, you will need to wash and dry more often to keep the load size down. Despite that, it only takes 2-3 minutes for the average load and 5 minutes for towels. One caveat, don’t walk away from it and pay no attention to it. When starting or stopping, you should be close by to hold it as it ramps up or down.

One Gate Ends, Another Begins

By Katrina Kane, on May 14th, 2013

Things move pretty fast and are unpredictable in the oil fields. One minute you are happily working away making money and the next thing you know, the company man drives through and says, “Oh by the way, you are released.”. End of job. Sometimes you get a day or two of notice but not always. You pack up and move on to either a “yard” your guard company may run or to a campground to start calling for the next assignment. Some will get asked to follow a crew on to their next job and keep working steady. So ended my first stint as a gate guard after 10 days.

I stayed overnight on the gate with an out of service notice in my window since they were done needing a guard at that location and I was guarding our company equipment. The next morning, our support guys came to pick it up then I moved on to one of my membership campgrounds in New Waverly, TX. I highly recommend a stay at Timberlodge RV Park. They are outside of town where it is very quiet and peaceful. They have a clubhouse with kitchen, TV, laundry , pool table, satellite TV, and pool. The managers are wonderfully nice and easy to work with. From there, you can go see Lake Livingston to enjoy some fishing or boating, visit Escapees headquarters there and take a tour of their facilities as I did, or head on up to Huntsville to see the Sam Houston statue (largest statue of an American hero), the Texas Prison Museum with “Old Sparky”, and Hearts Veterans Museum. A little touristing in between gates makes a happy guard!

With some time on my hands, I also went grocery shopping and hit up Wal-Mart for some things. I visited several RV parts stores in the area. I also went to several thrift stores looking for a couch to replace my swivel chair. This 5th didn’t have a couch in it when I bought it and you really need either a sofa or a reclining chair, depending on your preference, to nap in and get your legs up when doing gate guarding. I lucked out and found one that fit the spot in my slideout perfectly, is in great condition, isn’t ugly, and only cost $75. Happily, it also came with two strong, handsome young men to deliver it right to my rig. 😀

I was off for 10 days and had started checking around with other companies for a new gate when I got the call from my company. A gate was opening on the other side of Texas (where I had come from for the first gate) and they needed me there by midnight as a favor to them. The race was on! I washed dishes and closed up the trailer as fast as I could. The ground was still wet making it interesting. I hitched up and drove for 8 hours through rush hour traffic, rain, and fog until finally I reached the new gate in Carrizo Springs in the dark. Thank goodness the crew hadn’t come in yet so I got to sleep through the night once I was setup.

This is a different kind of gate from my last one. It has a high fence all around and a real gate that must be kept locked and opened for each vehicle or group of vehicles. I had to improvise a rope system to keep one of the gates from being pushed out by the wind while unlocking them and to lessen the number of times I have to walk out on the cat walk over the cattle guard for safety. This time I have a bell dinger instead of a driveway monitor due to being too close to the busy highway which drives monitors crazy. To be sure I hear the bell and wake up, we had to drill a hole in my floor larger and run the ringer hose up through it. It’s a very busy gate but the guys are very nice and try to make it easier for me.

I have guarded my first gate in the rain now. Loads of fun… I grabbed a nearby board to use as a mud board then filled a plastic container next to it with water to wash my boots before stepping back into the RV. Sure could use a boot wiper too. At least I had rubber boots on board and ready for this.

Gate Guarding

By Katrina Kane, on April 20th, 2013

Popular among many RVers, particularly snowbirds, is working the Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and other oil fields as gate guards to make some money fast. Many work only during the cooler winters while sitting out the snow in northern states or to make enough money to travel the rest of the year. Some brave the hot, humid summers to work all year. I’ll be one of the latter this year. I just got a gate in East Texas to guard. Mostly, I just check vehicles in and out at the gate. The work itself is easy but also grueling at times when the site is especially busy and you are popping in and out your door or sitting outside in the heat or cold to avoid that. You have to deal with bugs, snakes, rain, high winds, hail, tornadoes, illegals and drug traffickers in some areas and sometimes uncooperative people while keeping your cool. It isn’t for the faint of heart. They prefer couples but there are gates for singles out there though nowhere near as many. One thing I have learned is don’t wait for the companies to contact you. They are notorious for not returning phone calls or emails both before and after you sign up with them and you can sign up with more than one company at a time. A free site is provided at the gate. Most companies provide all utilities, most hire as a contractor while a few will hire as an employee, most provide what you need to do the job while at least one I know requires you to provide much of it yourself. There are many blogs on the internet such as myoldrv.com to give you a great idea of what it takes to be a gate guard. There are also forums such as gateguards.org and many popular RVer forums discuss it under their workamping threads.

If you only want to do it during the winter, be aware that there are now too many people with that idea so gates have become much harder to come by in the winter. Keep in mind also the weather in these states. Whether you are just playing and seeing the sites or working, don’t get caught in them without a NOAA weather radio for your safety.