Thought I’d post here about our issue that we solved in the shower of our Open Range Roamer 376FBH. Our current fix isn’t exactly pretty but it is effective until we can redo a bit of plumbing.

A few weeks ago we left sub freezing temps of eastern Washington and went down to Oregon. We spent a week defrosting ourselves and the rig. The following weekend we had to drive to the state park dump station and I noticed the underbelly wrap insulation seemed droopier and strained more than I remembered. I pushed on it and it kind of rocked like a water bed. Yeah, not good. Popped a hole at the lowest point and out slowly drains at least 20 gallons of fresh water. We were actually unsure where it all came from but we were certain it wasn’t grey. At one point we were concerned it came from our black tank rinse system because we had difficulty hearing much of any water drain when using it. We considered the water heater but it wasn’t leaking. Careful watching the next few weeks combined with being in the MUCH drier environment of Phoenix we found the hole dripping again. Pulled everything out of the basement and located the point of origin. The freaking shower drain.

Seems that Open Range thought that plumbers putty was all that was necessary in seating and sealing our shower drain in the bottom of the pan. I noticed a few months ago that the putty was coming out and mentioned I was worried that water would get out into the void. My husband was sure it would be fine on the underside. Turns out I was right. All that water we drained off in Oregon came from showers.

All the pipes were PVC and glued together. As I’ve been told, not the way to do it properly. We got a fan set up in the basement for a few days to thoroughly dry it all out. We applied a nice amount of Dicor sealant around under the drain flange in the shower pan and put a few weighty items in the shower pan to keep everything solid until it could cure for 36 hours.