Sunday June 5th to Saturday June 11th 2022

As much as we were starting to get use to our new work schedule as being normal, it was turned around without us even knowing, that is what happened today, as usual on Sunday morning we were enjoying a quiet morning watching our regular television shows and there is a knock at the coach door. It was Larry wondering if I knew that I was suppose to be on shift today, well the quick answer to that, was obviously no, or I would have been there, and my only copy of the schedule showed me still on the afternoon shift. Apparently there had been a revision made to the schedule, but no one had sent me a revised copy, so I said I would be out to work shortly after lunch.

Oh boy an unexpected work shift, what could be more fun you might ask? Well how about a major water line repair, the first thing that comes to my mind is that it could be hard finding a water leak when there has been so much rain, everything is wet, pot holes and puddles everywhere. But when you have a leak in a 3″ watermain with 125 psi, i guess it becomes much easier, especially when there was a bubbling of clear water on the side of one of the park roads.

As we dig down to the water main with the backhoe we find the leak is at a 45 elbow in which we find a split, this will require us cutting out a chunk of the water line and replacing it with new line. This is actually the easy part, because of the size of this line the most likely cause of the split was the force of the water itself. When moving this much water at this kind of pressure any elbow becomes an automatic weak point, just because when you are changing the direction of a large volume moving at high pressure there is a lot of force that comes into play. The main water line is referred to as schedule 40 pipe, which can withstand pressures near 225 psi while a schedule 80 water line it can withstand pressure a hundred pound higher, and the main reason is because of the pipe thickness is just simply greater, the neat thing about the plastic pipe is that schedule 40 and 80, all the fitting fit both pipes, so we could replace the schedule 40 elbow (white in colour) with a schedule 80 elbow (grey in colour), the other thing we did was to place a cement block at the elbow to help support the elbow when the water line was charged.

Turning the water back on is a slow process, a water line this large usually has a drain to allow it to be repaired, when you need to glue these pipes together, water is not a good thing when trying to glue pipes together. So after the repair the main water line valve is just cracked open to start a slow flow of water, then a high point valve is opened to release air as the drain valve is closed to allow pressure to start to rebuild till most of the air is released and then main valve can be fully opened. Another inspection of the repaired area and then it is time to start the process of refilling the excavated hole, first sand is used to surround the water line as both support and protection from any rocks in the backfill process. Four hours later and the water is back on and the road reopened.

Now onto the lock-up / security part of my shift, because it is Sunday evening the park is not busy, so a quick trip around the park to check for any areas of concern, nothing sticks out as a problem area. I have a couple little tasks in the workshop, before taking my dinner break. After that the evening was very uneventful, with no issues in the park as I close the pool, clubhouse and confirm everything is locked up.

Back to the coach at nine o’clock, to enjoy a few YouTube videos, and review my new work schedule, with day shifts on Monday & Tuesday, the change is for this week and next, kind of like the manager realized what I was thinking about getting the backlog of work caught up.

My Monday shift and my task for today is working with the tractor, trying to get a number of campsites finished and back into the mix. Last fall the park was offered a number of loads of fill, and the plan last fall was to add the fill to a number of the lower tenting sites enlarging them and eliminating some water collection areas. But the rainy season came along and so far has not left for a long enough period to get them leveled and ready for occupancy, so now the big push is on to get them ready for the July 1st weekend, so today was the first day of moving many truckloads of fill, this is how I spent most of my Monday shift.

Tuesday was a day filled with different jobs with the tractor, repairing pot holes on the hill to the office, some site repairs, and starting to address some of the pot holes in the park roads all of this happening while another crew is trimming trees around the park and cleaning up as we have all five of the maintenance crew on shift today.

Wednesday and I just have an hours worth of work to finish up a project from yesterday then I’m off for a couple of days. So I had ordered that new radiator for the toad from a local jobber (an aftermarket automotive parts supplier) and now I’m heading to Duncan now to pick it up, I also have a short shopping list from Laurie, I need to buy some fuel for the toad (the first fuel since Washington), and I’m going to make my first visit to a B.C. liquor store. Laurie is working today so I’m on my own in the town of Duncan, so as I checked off all my items on my list, I was feeling pretty good having accomplished everything, at least till I got back to the coach.

I got the groceries put away, and as I pulled the radiator box out of the truck I took a look in the box and was horrified to see a huge cut through the top radiator support, so I packaged it back up and returned it to the jobber, to get a credit and a new one ordered. I was not happy but at least I checked it before I had removed the original one. Then on my return I decided to sit in the Clam with Mr. Sam, and while I was looking at my iPad he decided to escape, and I capture him at the end of our site, just as Miss Laurie is coming home from work shift. What else can possibly happen?

Well that question got answered almost immediately, the internet police seem to have caught up with our American streaming service so now with no television I need to find a streaming service here in Canada. For our American friends up here in the great white north we have four main broadcasters CBC, CTV, Global & CITY. But unlike in America there is no streaming service that carries all four so it is a case of using a number of different apps and picking the ones that work best for us, a year ago we tried “Stack TV” but this year we are going to try “River TV” as it carries CBC & Global, and we have the CITY-TV app which allows us to stream it live as well, I will let you know how it all comes together.

It’s Friday which is my Monday, just a little eight hour day, I started the day at the swimming pool, Bruce vacuuming the pool as I cleaned skimmer socks, and then I helped where I could. Today it’s just Bruce and myself on shift, and I’m hearing about another water leak on the main water line, the same one that Larry and I had worked on Sunday but this leak was at the other end of the park.

Now just to put everything into perspective this repair was caused by the removal of a tree by the tree removal guy, apparently it fell as he had planned but then it rolled, and when it rolled it broke the water line to one of our fire hydrants. The park is fed with municipal water, and to keep insurance rates as low as possible the park added a number of fire hydrants, but cheaped out, and instead of buying real fire hydrants like you are all are picturing, but these are what I would call standpipes a 2-1/2” but to meet codes it has to be steel pipe. Here is where it get interesting, when you take plastic pipe that is glued together, and introduce big steel pipe that threads together and add the leverage of a six foot long stand pipe, I mean what could possibly go wrong.

So this repair started on Thursday, but the repair failed, and in my opinion it failed because they tried to reuse some parts, so one of the glued connections let go because it was cut too short so the glue surface was only 3/4” instead of the designed 1-1/2”, so as good as the glue was it only took a little nudge of that six foot standpipe to break it loose, so it was left over night leaking. This line feeds the clubhouse which houses our main washrooms, laundry, and showers, that was why it was left leaking until today to be repaired.

So the plan was at 11am we would shut down the water line down and try to correct the failed repair, the problem with plastic and glue, is if it comes apart it can’t be reused, so we had to get new plastic fittings, so at eleven o’clock we started digging to confirm where the failure was, it only took a couple of scoops to tell where the failure was, water at 125 psi makes itself real easy to spot. So we shut the valve to the line, and very near the break was the drain for this line, so the drain was opened to allow the water to escape, then back to digging in a hole full of water (rubber boot time again), this time we had to dig a trench to drain this hole so I could dig the pipe out. Upon inspection the failure was at the plastic joint that that had the short collar, but I suspect the failure was caused when refilling the hole after the repair.

So a new plastic fitting, 2-1/2” threaded end to a 2-1/2” glued end, cut the plastic pipe to get a clean new end, the two stage gluing process, primer (the purple) and the actual glue on both ends of the pieces to be glued, the slide them together, as simple as that, we let the glue set up, then proceeded to turn the water back on slowly just to get water flowing, and only after water was flowing from the drain do we close the drain, then we turn the water line on fully, and proceed to bled off air at the high points. All was good so we install the standpipe, all was going well as we added sand to the hole to act as a cushion and support to the pipe. Then I think we just got too rambunctious and added enough fill to cause the standpipe to move, and then it was all over, the freshly glued joint failed and we have another failure. This failure is leaking worse than before so we will have to start all over again.

Hopefully the third time is a charm, water off, line drained, standpipe removed, line dug out and we are back to where we were two hours earlier. Another new fitting, another fresh cut on the pipe, fresh primer and glue and we are back connected. But this time we are going to move much slower, giving the glue more time to cure and setup, no standpipe this time, but we support the standpipe with cement blocks on both sides, also little sand to support the pipe but just enough to cover it. We placed a plug in the fitting where the stand pipe should go, just to keep the sand out of the pipe as we place sand around the concrete blocks supporting the line. Water on, drain closed, air bled off, and now we let it sit till tomorrow before we fill the hole.

Back to the coach by 4:30 half an our late, for a beverage, and some burgers for dinner, followed by the local news, and some mindless television. I’m still learning how to get the best out of our new streaming service, the biggest issue I see so far is that the stations all seem to be out of Toronto so the news is from Ontario, while the City-TV app is giving us Vancouver news. I am missing the Golf channel, but not enough to pay to stream the TSN channels, which just seem too expensive, and are a stand alone, a couple of ice cream bar for desert and we call it a night

Saturday morning, and I’m on lock-up / security tonight but, I’m going to help finish this water line repair, I devised a way to hold the stand pipe through the backfilling process, and we will gently fill the hole with sand until we are within a few inches of the top, then add the fill until we have reached the top. Now we are just going to rake the area and let the soil settle and solidify before removing the standpipe support, and all this in just an hour and a half later, I have made it back to the coach, where Mr. Sam and I spent some time on the Clam, enjoying a few sunny intervals in between the sprinkles.

Saturday lock-up and security made for a quiet and peaceful evening, there was a group in the tenting section along Arizona row that I had been warned about being a little rowdy, but by shortly after ten they were quiet just enjoying a campfire. It was a strange evening, on my firewood run I only sold one bag of firewood, unusual to say the least, but the woodshed at the store was empty so there was lots of wood sold, just not by me. As we are closing in on the middle of June, we are still quite cool, and a sweatshirt has been necessary most days, but when the sun does peek through it is warm, so bring on the sunshine!

Be well, stay strong, and brave!

Blog 423

Day 1712

Sunday May 29th to Saturday June 4th 2022

Well it is another Sunday morning, it is after seven o’clock by the time I roll out of bed, I think I’m starting to get used to the afternoon shift. Today is our regular Sunday morning television routine as we catch up on the world news and of course the latest school shooting in Texas, it is time that my American friends actually do something to stop this, and arming every teacher with an assault rifle doesn’t seem like the correct answer to me.

I have an extra project for today, the lawn mower started leaking hydraulic oil on Thursday while cutting the lawn by the office, and they just towed it to the storage yard and left it. So I suggested that I could look at it, to see where it was actually leaking, because some of the suggestions didn’t make much sense to me. So after a little checking I found it was just a hydraulic hose that feed the steering valve, which made sense as that was one of the first things to fail, according to the operator. An hour later and all three hydraulic hoses were off and I was able to verify the cause and it was determined that we should replace all three, so they will order new hoses on Monday.

It is another cold wet dreary day here on Vancouver Island, so not a lot on my list of outside projects today, so I settle in to watch the golf tournament out of Fort Worth Texas, always a good watch and this year was no exception. I’m on the afternoon shift again today, but just five hours long it still involves the evening lock-up process, as well as the closing of the pool, so there will be less things getting checked off of the “Book of Joy” oh well. Now as I look ahead to the June work schedule my hours are cut down to 25 per week, which is not a concern to me, but if your behind on all these tasks why cutback the hours the staff is working?

My shift tonight is 4 pm till 9 pm, I still have to lock-up followed by a night of being on call, so my actual work time is from four o’clock till six thirty, then I take a half hour dinner break. After dinner I normally make my first security run, which is simply a ride around the campground to see what is happening, this gives me a pretty good idea where any issue spots may be later. By seven thirty I make my way to the pool area, Bruce has told me that the health board is coming to check the pool tomorrow, again the new guy is prepping the chemical levels for the inspection. either very trusting or just plain crazy

Tonight there is no one in the pool, so I double check all the levels and decide to add one chemical to help the hardness level, it may effect the Ph level but I decide to add only add 6 cups of product, clean the skimmers, I didn’t even have to backwash the filters tonight so I locked up the pool at a few moments to eight.

From here I head up the hill to the office, where I check all the doors and windows to ensure everything is locked, next I lock the woodlot, take a drive around the entrance to confirm everything is ok. Now down the hill to lock up the storage yard, before making my way to the camp-store to do a lock check at the store and the mini-putt, next the clubhouse to check windows and doors and lock up the laundry for the night. Before my final security round of the park, tonight is quiet, not a lot of campers and really no areas of concern this evening, and after last Sundays antics I’m good with a quiet night.

I head to the coach to catch up on some YouTube videos and enjoy some rhubarb crisp with Miss Laurie before heading to bed around ten with my phone nearby as I am my on-call evening.

Monday morning and just another wet day on the island, and if one more person tells me that it isn’t normally like this, I may just totally loose my little mind. Part of Miss Laurie’s task is getting the irrigation set up for the gardens, and I keep thinking why! It rains almost every day, it is kind of like Florida that way, the sun can be shinning and there will still be rain for a few moments, and I do understand a lot of Vancouver Island is a rain forest, but we are struggling to get temperatures above 21C (70F), and with the first of June just a couple of day away, it would be nice.

Tuesday my first day off this week and I’m up and ready to head out to get the toad serviced, I have an 8:30 appointment time, not a time that I would have picked but I understand scheduling shop load and in early should mean I’m out early so a quick breakfast and I’m off on my adventure. My intent is to drop the toad at the repair shop and wonder into the village of Chemainus to check out some of the murals that it is famous for, and wait for a phone call telling me that the toad is ready.

Well that call never came so is noon came and went I decide to wonder back to the repair shop, that is when I discovered the toad still sitting where I had parked it, to say I was annoyed would be an understatement. I got up and rushed to be there at 8:30 and now four hours later it had not turned a tire, I knew then that this was not what I had hoped for. And after expressing my displeasure I sat in the waiting area and started to write a blog.

Let’s talk car service

When I got back to the coach, I explained to Laurie just how disappointed I was with the “service” that I had received, she suggested calling them to complain, but I could not see anything to be gained by that, so I pulled the toad over to our shop and adjusted the tire pressures, and shut off the “Oil Service” lamp, and we headed to Walmart in Duncan for this weeks supplies.

Wednesday also my day off, but because I had pulled the hoses off of the lawnmower I offered to go and reinstall them as they told me that the new hoses had been made up, that way Larry could cut the lawns on Thursday. So after breakfast I head out around ten o’clock to install the hoses and get the mower refilled with hydraulic fluid and at this point I’m thinking I will be back by noon at the latest.

And here is where I start to realize that getting things done on the island may be a little more difficult that I had realized. I had sent three hydraulic hoses into the shop to have them made up two were done correctly, but one was not. And not to bore everyone with a lot of numbers and sizes, lets just say I needed three metric sized hoses and who ever made them up did two metric and one standard. And of course the only hose that was actually leaking was the one that they made up incorrectly.

Unlike our previous position, here I just report to a supervisor, and then wait, so after lunch Bruce comes back from the hose shop with the same hose and a bunch of plumbing fittings, to change the fitting to metric, my first thought was that this is just a cheap way for the hose shop to avoid making up another hose, but I find out that they didn’t have the correct fittings, so they couldn’t make up the correct hose. The problem was that where the hose attached to the hydraulic pump there was not enough space to install the fittings that they sent so now we needed to wait for more fittings to arrive, I also suggested getting more fluid as the unit held 12+ liters and we only had five or six. So at this point I’m thinking I will head to the coach to enjoy my day off. Wrong I was as they had received the parts for the drain in the rental house that I had ordered a week earlier, so they would like me to repair that today if I could.

This was a major task as the previous repairs were patch upon patch so I was going to replace everything under the sink, and as I started to remove the old plumbing I now realized that I would need a new strainer basket, that is the piece at the bottom of your kitchen sink that has the little basket that acts as a strainer and a stopper, it is also the piece that seals the bottom of the sink to the plumbing under it, and this one was rotten so now because the sink is inoperable now, someone is going to town. After designing and fabricating a new sink drain I’m done for the day, the fluid and fitting had not got here yet so at 4:30 I called it a day.

Thursday, my last day off this week now because of the lack of golf carts Laurie and I share one when she need to work on the irrigation system which is today so at nine thirty we headed back to the shop to see if my fluid and new fittings had made it yet, they had so I gathered up my tools and we load the cart with Laurie’s irrigation supplies so she can drop me off at the lawnmower before heading off on her tasks of the day. After some attempts I get the hose attached to get the mower operable. But now the mower won’t start, nothing to do with the hoses but not something we have time to diagnose right now, booster cables and we get it running, and check the hoses for leaks, confirm the steering, and Larry is off to cut the lawns, and I’m heading back to the coach to spent the afternoon in the Clam with Mr. Sam and write a blog about poor service.

Friday my only day shift, 8am to 4pm and today I’m the guy on the cleaning of departure sites, only five guests checked out today so this task only used up about hour of the day. Today we have limited staff on with just two people from the maintenance staff on shift. today is preparation for the weekend, like making sure the woodshed at the store is full of bags of firewood, the price of fire wood took a jump in price from $10 per bag to $12 per bag, a bundle of kindling stayed the same at $9. The park purchases the fire wood by the truck load, and then has an outside service comes in and bags and stacks the bags of firewood, and with the minimum wage rising here on June 1st it is effecting many of these menial labour intense jobs, like bagging firewood.

Part of my day was spent finding a bad connection on the electrical system of the Kubota lawn mover, the same one that I was repairing earlier for a failed hydraulic hose, now it won’t start without a boost. I found that there was a dirty connection on the ground cable at the battery, the battery itself when checked passed a load test, but was not fully charged most likely because of the resistance at that dirty connection. Now it starts every time as designed, so I move the mower back to the maintenance yard, ready for its next required usage. The rest of the day was spent finishing off little projects that I had started earlier in the week, like the security box that I built to enclose some of the internet connections used in the park, I will try and get it mounted tomorrow night on my night shift.

So I’m back at the coach shortly after four o’clock after what has turned into a much busier week that was on my schedule, and we are back to burgers on Friday for dinner, Laurie and I have been on opposite schedules so far, as she has been learning the operation at the store, the office, as well as spending time in the gardens, but tonight we are enjoying an evening together, but with the noise from the mini-golf has causes us to close the window on one of the very few lovely evenings since our arrival.

Saturday my first security shift of the weekend but it all starts with the wood run, my first night since the change in the price of the wood, but it was much less of an issue than I had suspected. I guess the the transient guests have accepted the price increase, possible because other parks were higher than us before. The park doesn’t seem that busy this weekend, possible the wet forecast has dampened some camping plans. I top off the wood in the woodshed and return the wood truck to the wood lot up the hill near the office. Now I refill the truck for the next wood run and return to make my first security round of the night, just a quiet round to check the playgrounds, the swimming pool, and mental note of areas with groups gathering, and now we have the clubhouse open, with a TV viewing area, a pool table and a shuffleboard, and is open from 9am till 9pm, then its off to the coach for some dinner.

After dinner, I make my way to the swimming pool, and go through the process of closing the pool for the night, because of the over night rain the pump filter needed to be cleaned, but the readings did not indicate any issues. Just routine cleaning and filter maintenance, then locking the gate at eight o’clock, now another check of the playgrounds before heading to the workshop.

This evening I also have to shuttle Laurie to the managers office at the top of the hill with the end of day from the store, Laurie has worked the last shift today and part of her task is taking the day end receipts to the manager, and for security reasons I will accompany her to the office and back. After this I’m installing the lock box for the internet that I built earlier, and as I finish that little task it is time to lockup the clubhouse for the evening, by now we are getting some rain sprinkles again, as the last outdoor task I have tonight is replacing the basketball nets, I had been hopping for a dry period to happen it didn’t so here I’m in the rain installing the nets. Now up the hill to check the office and close the woodlot gate, a check of all the night lighting, and then back down the hill for the next security round, ensuring the playgrounds are empty, and looking for “hot” spots, and it all looks quiet, the rain is damping most groups so I suspect a very quiet evening. Some clean-up time in the workshop followed by one last security round and this week is in the books.

Rain Rain go away … please

Blog 421

Day 1705