You know you’ve got a problem when you climb out of your RV’s bed in the morning and put your feet onto soaking wet carpet! Nope, it hadn’t rained during the night and besides, the roof has never leaked. Realizing that the water heater is located under the nightstand on my side of the bed, I figured that a water pipe or connection must have developed a leak. Sure enough, I found a small leak around the threads where the hot water exits the tank. Fortunately, there’s a winterizing bypass connected to the tank so I could shut off the water feed to the tank and still have cold water in the sinks and toilet.

So, here we were, in Gettysburg, PA, far from our New Hampshire home, with a soaked floor and a plumbing problem. Being something of a handyman, I figured I could fix the problem with a new fitting and some Teflon tape. I found a hardware store and picked up the fitting I needed and a Wal-Mart where I bought a neat little one gallon wet-dry vac. My wife, Debbie, set to work with the vac while I drained the water heater and started in on the repair. This all took up a good part of the day, but finally I got the leak stopped, so we cleaned up, changed clothes and visited a couple of Civil War battlefield sites and had dinner at Gettysburg’s historic Farnsworth House. It was all good…until I stepped out of bed the next morning. Soaked again! Well, I thought I’d gotten the leak stopped.

To make a long story short, we decided to go ahead and replace the water heater rather than waste any more of our vacation on repair attempts. Our hosts at Artillery Ridge Campground offered some recommendations and we soon found help at S & S RV Service Center right in Gettysburg. The good folks there were able to order a replacement Atwood water heater for delivery the next day. The next afternoon, one of their RV technicians showed up at the campground and within a couple of hours had removed the old water heater and installed and tested the new one.

Everyone connected with S & S was courteous, professional, and got us out of our “pickle” in short order and at a reasonable cost. If you’re ever in or near Gettysburg, PA and are in need of any sort of RV repair, we’re happy to recommend S & S.