RV Life: The WORST mistake I've ever made!

I did something terrible to my motorhome probably one of the worst things possible you don't ever want to make this mistake welcome to the channel I'm Liz I'm a full-time rver I've been on the road for four and a half years and in this video I'm going to talk about the terrible thing I did to my motorhome probably the worst mistake I've ever made and how the campground actually made it worse this is not an easy video for me to make but I feel like if I did this you could possibly do it too and I would not wish this on anyone now you might want to grab some popcorn and fasten your seat belts because it's quite the story and while I take a breath and get ready to tell this story first I want to thank you for getting me closer to my goal I really want that plaque that YouTube hands out when you hit a hundred thousand subscribers so thank you for subscribing and getting me closer each day okay so here we go I'm in Las Vegas in a very nice Campground I was going to pick my friend up from the airport Maryland and we were going to spend a week together and have a lot of fun her flight was to land at 7am the next day and here it was nine o'clock at night on Tuesday and I had this idea I thought well I should top my water up maybe when she gets in she'll want to take a shower so what I had been doing lately is instead of running off of city water in the campground I've been running off of my water tank by using the pump I get higher water pressure it's kind of a pro tip so I went outside to fill the water what I used to do is hook up to city water and just turn a valve and then that would fill my onboard water tank but that valve broke so now I have to fill it directly there are two doors on the outside of my rig that one key opens and that key doesn't open any other door and one door is the water tank and the other door is not so I opened the wrong door and I unscrewed the cap now remember this is dark and I inserted the hose and I turned on the water then I went inside and I pretty soon maybe five minutes later heard water splashing outside so I knew the tank was full I walked outside and I could smell Diesel and I immediately knew what I had done I'd opened the wrong door and I'd open the wrong cap and I had put water in my diesel fuel tank I was just beside myself have you ever made a mistake so big that you just want more than anything to get that five minutes back to rewind and get a do-over so the doors look alike they're next to each other and they feel like at night in daytime I never would have made this mistake if I had filled up this tank a lot of times that way I probably would not have made this mistake but it was just the perfect storm of having not done it that way very often hen being dark and tired so I googled this and I learned that I'm not the first person to do this it's actually pretty common and so the water is sitting in the diesel tank and it's heavier than diesel so it's sitting at the bottom of the tank I did some math because I had filled up on the way to this Campground and I had put 13 gallons of water in my diesel tank so I knew of course not to turn the key not to start it up because then the onboard fuel pump would suck that water in since it's sitting at the bottom of the fuel tank and really damage the engine it was hard to sleep that night but that's why they call them accidents and the story gets worse because the campground actually made the situation worse so I looked for who could repair this and I found a mobile diesel repair and they're called I-15 mobile repair I called them and you know what this was not the first time they'd heard of this either in fact I later learned they handle problems like this every week if not every other week this is pretty common water gets in diesel diesel gets in gas gas gets into diesel or def gets into diesel they see it a lot and I said well how would you fix this because I certainly couldn't move my RV and they said well we have a big tank it's 275 gallons my fuel tank by the way is 90 gallons and full 13 gallons of that are water and they said no problem we'll drain it we'll also bring 40 gallons of diesel with us we'll put a few gallons in drain that too just to kind of rinse it out then we'll fill it with the rest of that 40 gallons and you can drive over to a fuel station and fill up your tank so I was like okay come on out they said they'd be here in a couple hours so Marilyn and I ran a couple errands and as we came back in the gate I said hey I wanted to let you know that I've got this repair person coming and they said oh well are they An approved vendor and I said well they're I-15 diesel repair and they said oh they're not on the list they can't come here I was like okay so I went to the front desk and I asked how can we get this done how can we get these guys in here and the gal at the desk said I need to ask the manager but most likely they can get a waiver they would need to send in their business license and a copy of their insurance so I called Robert the owner of the company and he did that mean while the guys show up the gate won't let them in but says okay you can park here until we get approval and it turned out that the manager was in a class so I'm waiting in the lobby for a few minutes and the next thing you know there's a heated conversation and it turns out that an approved repair person saw these people here felt like they were Interlopers and complained to the head of security the head of security said they're not going to be in here and he threw them out he said you're not going to come in because we have people on site who are approved who can do the repair so that was more than a little upsetting so I talked to the guy standing there and I asked him for his rates turns out that it's going to be twice as much because they don't have one big tank they have one small tank and so they have to go empty it bring it back fill it empty it and bring it back I called the next people on the approved vendor list I've had a better feeling about them and we agreed for them to come out and then about an hour later they tacked on a 15 a gallon disposal fee for the contaminated fuel so that was what 1300 extra dollars so now I'm going to be paying triple the price of the first people and it's going to take a lot longer and they couldn't even do it that day so I called every approved vendor on the list and most people did not want to touch this problem there were three companies that did and all three told me the water was sitting on top of the diesel if you don't even know that water is heavier than diesel I'm not even sure that I want you to do the work I want someone who's experience and is on it so finally I talked to an approved vendor who did seem like he could handle it again he didn't have one big tank he had two 55 gallon tanks but he felt like he could bring both and then just a five gallon for fuel he says I will be there the next day which is now going to be third Thursday he said I will be there the next day between 11 and 1 and I will take care of it at 11 o'clock the next day I text him and I say let me know when you're on the way no response at 1 30 I called him and I said hey are you still coming and he said yes I'm finishing up my job I'll be there in about an hour and I have to say I was really getting ticked about this approved vendor policy I've been on the road for four and a half years I have never ever seen this policy I've been to over 100 campgrounds I started talking to my neighbors and I learned that they really don't like this policy either one of my neighbors wanted to get his rig washed and he can only use the approved vendor well they wanted about a hundred dollars more than the going rate and I think that's the thing if you're an approved vendor you can show up whenever you want you can keep people waiting and you can charge whatever you want because basically if you're in this Campground you're held hostage by the way I'm staying at Oasis RV Resort in Las Vegas and I just don't know about this policy I can't believe that they have it and it's very inconvenient and I don't think that it serves the campers to become an approved vendor you have to pay five thousand dollars a year to advertise and that's about it yes you need to show your license and insurance but it doesn't seem to be about good reviews good service good prices or taking care of the customer I-15 mobile repair the first guys the ones that got turned away talked to the owner he said yeah he'd been there before and same thing they want five thousand dollars to allow him to come into the campground so now I'm thinking maybe I should just get it towed if I can't get the people that I want here on the property I should just get it towed and get it taken care of it was like 700 to get it towed and I'm thinking I'm still going to be saving then having to have an expensive person do it here well I researched the towing and it's not so easy to tow a motorhome they have to remove the drive shaft and that's something that's a little complicated and I can't turn the key on my ignition I don't want to turn the key on my ignition so they would have to remotely air up the rig which can be done I could maybe turn the key on it to accessory and that supposedly will not turn on the pump for the fuel but that was just too big of a risk for me and I felt like just Towing the motor home could open a whole nother can of worms and lead to more problems so that left me waiting for this guy who finally showed up at three o'clock he had no tanks he said well I just want to ask assess the situation first and then I'll get the tanks so I'm thinking this isn't even going to happen today so he looked all around it and he said well I think I'll drop the tank and I'll get it cleaned and bring it back and I thought well that's going to be a couple more days and that could also cause problems having my rig exposed with no tank I'm like that opening needs to be covered I'm in Vegas there's wind storms there's sand so he looked at everything and he said well I'll call you back in an hour by the way he also thought that the water was sitting on top of the diesel he calls me back and he says I'm still having a hard time figuring out what to do with the 255 gallon tanks I have because there is stuff in them and I've got to find a place to put them and I can't find a place to take the contaminated fuel so I now had just about had it I had lost a couple days on this issue that could have been taken care of in a couple hours on Wednesday were now at the end of the day Thursday no progress made and by the way my friend Marilyn is here and we're supposed to be having fun I hadn't seen her for a while and we had all these plans and I'm completely distracted by this issue but something had to be done I called Robert at I 15 mobile repair again and I said if I can get you in are you still interested in doing the job and he said absolutely I can be there tomorrow morning I said great I went back to the office and I said look we need to let these guys in because your guys really can't handle it it's going to be triple the price they don't know what they're doing and they don't have a place to dispose of the contaminated fuel so fortunately the person at the desk talked to someone in management and we were able to get these guys approved thank goodness unfortunately the problems did not stop there they are arrive it's Augustine and Albert and these guys worked non-stop for three hours they were bright-eyed and bushy-tailed there's only 11 inch clearance under my rig because again I can't start it up and add air and raise it up Augustine slid under there and he opened the drain plug he had a tray that they would put about four gallons of fuel in and then he'd push the tray out to Albert Albert would bail the contaminated fuel out into a five gallon bucket when it got low enough to where he could lift it he'd lift the tray up and pour it into the five gallon bucket and then when the five gallon buckets got full he would pour them into the big tank and when I talked to these guys they said they do this all the time they've actually done this on the side of the road it is very easy to accidentally put the wrong thing in the wrong place so again it's easy to get water into your diesel diesel into gas gas into these and death into diesel if you're in the Vegas area these guys are the ones to take care of you they really knew what they were doing so what Augustine was having to do was reach up and close off the drain plug you know reinsert the drain plug every four gallons and do this over and over until the tank was empty this was not a short job it took easily over two hours just to drain the tank they worked the whole time they did not take a break I was very pleased anytime there was a little spill of diesel which hey diesel splashes they wiped it up they were great to work with can't say enough good things about them now with water being on the bottom each time that Augustine removed the drain plug you would see water for the first couple seconds and as we got closer and closer to the bottom probably the last eight gallons or so there wasn't any water coming out that Augustine could see he was fine with just filling it up with the the 40 gallons of diesel that they brought and I said Hey to be on the safe side just put in a couple gallons and then drain that out trash that too and then we know so that's what they did they put in a couple gallons and then drain that out and then put the plug back in the plug by this time was a little tired they had to put a little bit of sealant around it to make sure that it would go in there and stay in there and not leak and then the rest of that 40 gallons of diesel they brought with them they put in the tank now I needed to get over to the gas station as soon as possible and fill it up with fuel because the inside of my fuel tank was wet with a water combination water invites rust so I needed to get over to this truck stop which actually was across the road as soon as possible and fill that up to protect the tank but the first thing I needed to do was start up the engine it was such good news to have it start right away and now I had to pack up camp and head over and fill up I wish it was simple and easy because I'd been through all this but there were still a few more challenges that I had to get through number one the truck stop is only a half mile away but that's if I could turn left out of the campground there's a median there and so people with cars they'll turn right and then they'll make a U-turn but with my big rig I didn't want to make a U-turn both of my GPS trackers told me to go eight miles in this big circle and on two interstates to finally get to the truck stop I got there and I bought house this is special diesel additive and I put half of that a little bit more than half in my tank it was good for 160 gallons just to dry out any remnants that might still be in there and then I filled my tank so there was one more hurdle to get through and that is when I came back to my site I noticed that there were some maintenance people working on my site it turned out they were digging up the contaminated soil that had been contaminated of course from the diesel which is a great thing so I decided to record that because a I record everything and B I just wanted to show that the campground was doing a good job and doing the right thing by cleaning up the dirt is that yours no no that's fine for some reason he came over and turned off my camera don't know what's up with that so I do want to say that Oasis RV Resort here in Vegas is a good Campground it is a resort as soon as I got here I was like wow I love this place they have a beautiful pool a wonderful hot tub great amenities I went and used their gym it's a great well-run place I don't know that I would come back here I mean sure the chances of me needing repairs next time I come here are probably pretty slim but I'm just not sure that I would be comfortable having them tell me who gets to work on my rig if you want to get the scoop before everyone else and also learn more personal details that I would never put on YouTube I do have a patreon community the members of that Community heard about this before everyone else and I shared about it a couple times if you would like to join my patreon it's very reasonable it's like as low as five dollars a month it's a great way to get the inside scoop and also to connect with me on a more personal basis I've stayed in over 100 your campgrounds in my four and a half years on the road I have never seen this approved vendor policy I hope I never see it again if you've enjoyed this video please like subscribe and share and let me know if you would ever stay in a campground that has this kind of policy in place or if you have an epic mistake story where you have made a pretty bad mistake with your motorhome I would love to hear it it would make me feel better thanks for watching and as always these are exciting times to push past fear build confidence and live amazing

Channel: Liz Amazing

Views: 169,138

Keywords: RV life, Fulltime RV living, big mistake, motorhome, Oasis RV Resort

Id: 2EpwFl6Q090

Length: 18min 16sec (1096 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 28 2023