That's One Huge Icicle

For almost the entire two years we've been in the Airstream we thought that we had a slow leak in one of the pipes near the shower.  We kept saying we'd get to it later and we didn't think much of it.  We noticed the leak during the first winter when there was this massive icicle hanging off of the side of the trailer and attached to the ground.  It would drip on occasion when it was warm out also.  Our first assumption was that the cold made the leak worse and we'd deal with it later.  It was clear clean water so it wasn't the black water take leaking so there wasn't any human waste on the ground.  Awesome, so we just ignored it.  It was strange though it even built up when the pipes were frozen.  Yes pipes freeze but they don't always burst, thankfully.

It was a leak but not in the traditional sense.  There is no gray water tank on the older Airstreams so everything goes into the black water tank.  This was easily remedied you would just open a valve and your gray water would run onto the ground.  This worked fine unless your plumbing in the bumper had been rerouted, you guessed it, ours had.  Unfortunately we had no idea where the valve would now be.  So every time we did dishes or ran the sink for too long tank water would back up in the shower, eww.  We got accustomed to running out and dumping the tank before it got too high.  It was annoying but it was also something we could live with.

I'm skipping ahead a bit now but it's to explain the leak.  So about three months ago I happened to actually look at the plumbing and discovered just how the changes had been made.  There is the Thetford valve that keeps the black water tank closed and a new valve on the bumper where the hose attaches to drain the sewer.  I had just assumed that since the Thetford was old it was leaky and hence the new valve.  I was wrong.  The valve on the bumper bypasses the Thetford and is only for gray water and the Thetford seals nice and tight on it's own.  Suffice it to say the big icicle and the two years we spent dealing with back water were solved once we started keeping the bumper valve open full time.