After another couple of days rummaging around in Harvey’s nether regions I think the pipework is all tight again. Judging by the way the floor dried out so quickly and didn’t show any sign of having being wet before, I think the leak was a result of winter storage and joints drying out rather than a long-time problem. In the end I had to replace the plastic drain valve as well, which decided it couldn’t really handle the pressure. So off for another mystery tour; first to the RV park shop, more out of habit than expectation, to find that they didn’t have one but they did know of a brilliant plumbing supply shop a mile down the road. They didn’t have one either but they sent me on to an Ace hardware another mile down the road, which had all the original plumbing fixings for a GMC! Quite remarkable. It was an ironmongers (does anyone call them that nowadays?) from my youth. Like Winslades in Winscombe in its heyday, it had rows and rows of dusty cardboard mini-boxes full of the most obscure bolts and widgets and washers and doodads. They had not only the plastic valve I needed ($7) but three variations of it. Wot joy. I scooted back to Harv put in the new valve, topped up the battery with distilled water from Giant Foods, plugged it all back in and turned on the water pump. Brrrp…and silence, and no drips. Perfect.

Of course with the mysterious pipework region now fully exposed I decided to do one or two other jobs, including properly mounting the generator socket, which involved endless poking about in Home Depot, and then  going back to pick up other fittings to make the gang box I’d bought actually fit the slightly too big hole. But it does now and works well, so I put all the cupboard liners back in and decided against covering them back up with carpet.

There are two original digital accessories by the doorway, a clock and a temperature gauge which have been looking at me blankly since I first picked up the GMC. The clock is so dim that it cannot be seen unaided by the human eye, and the thermometer occasionally bursts into life with a brief, but exciting reading of 99! Brother-in-law Richard has agreed to have a look at them, being that he knows about resistors, and circuit boards and all that good stuff that I am fairly clueless about. If anyone can get them going again, Richard can!