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Wednesday, April 2, 2014

A Drying Line in the Roadtrek

Sooner or later on a trip in the Roadtrek you will wash an article of clothing in the sink, go to the campground swimming pool, or take a shower either in the Roadtrek shower or in the campground shower room and dry off with a towel. The result of any of these actions is that you are left with something that will be very wet and has to be dried. For small towels or anything that is wet and small there are a number of drying and hanging rods on cabinet doors. We have one on the kitchen cabinet door and one on the bathroom door. With limited space inside the Roadtrek, there is not a lot of room to hang anything of any larger size up to dry.

We came up with a simple solution and created a "portable" clothes drying line for inside the Roadtrek that is out of the way - at least once you have gone to bed or are spending time in the rear of the coach.

Here it is in use.



It is simply two hooks made to be hung over the top edge of a kitchen cabinet in a home and a length of polypropylene rope with a loop tied on each end. Simple. The hooks are found in many home stores in the kitchen department. They are meant to add temporary exterior hooks to a kitchen cabinet. They are shaped like an "S" with the top shaped like an upside down "U" and the bottom shaped like a "J". They are made of aluminum or other metal that will not rust.

The rope is polypropylene because it will not absorb water and is easy to wipe off if wet and be completely dry before being put away. Any rope can be used but this is strong and waterproof. Measure the distance across the Roadtrek and add enough rope to make the loops. Tie one loop, put it on a hook, hang the hook, bring the rope across to the other side, hand the other hook, and tie that side's loop so that the rope will stretch with very little slack across from hook to hook. That is all you need to do in advance of using this drying line for the first time.





The hooks are placed on the top of the front of the storage area that runs on both sides of the front of the coach above the driving area to the start of the Roadtrek's cabinets.  Place the loops around each hook and you are ready to hang whatever you need to dry.

Once all are dry, the drying line is placed in a small snack-sized ziplock bag along with the hooks and placed in the Roadtrek's kitchen draw out of the way until it is needed again.

The towels that you see in the photos are the wonderful fast dry towels that USED to be sold in J.C. Penny (see article on this site). These towels were discontinued with the major merchandise change over that Penny's went through a year or so back. We have tried other so-called "fast dry" or "quick dry" towels but none dry as fast as these. On this line these shower towels were completely dry in about five hours inside the Roadtrek.

Simple and easy! Make yourself a drying line for a few dollars!





6 comments:

  1. Great idea on the towel rack and the towels. Thanks for taking the time to post for us newbies to Road Trekking. We will start in the fall of 2014 hitting the road once we are fully retired.

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  2. I use tension rods and have a 'clothes hanging rod' too. Not only good for drying towels, but a way to 'close off' the RT interior from prying eyes when you don't use a sunshade or such.

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    1. We use tension rods in cabinets to hold hard items in place from moving as well as in the rear aisle under the bed to keep stored items in place when moving. Our front privacy curtain is held on with small hooks that we installed permanently. The benefit of the rope drying line is how easy it is to store away and it takes up no real space at all in the draw.

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  3. Thanks so much for your helpful articles. I appreciated you putting sanitation in a checklist format. I have one clarification question, however. You stated "USE CITY WATER LINE TO FILL HOT WATER TANK BY RUNNING CITY WATER INTO THAT TANK. (NOT CITY WATER FILL - REGULAR USE OF CITY WATER)" By this I assume you meant use the city water setting that fills the tanks, not the one that you sued when hooked up to city water in a campground. Is that correct?

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    1. No, not correct To fill the hot water tank you must have your Roadtrek either connected to CITY WATER - meaning city water hose running water into all of the plumbing and not city water filling the fresh water tank(s) OR by filling the fresh water tanks and using that water to run into the hot water tanks. Once any water is going through the water pump or pipes it will go into the hot water tank as soon as you turn on any hot water side of a faucet or shower. The water then will start to fill the six gallons of the hot water tank. You will not see water coming out of the hot side of the faucet for a short while because it takes time for six gallons to fill and then the water to start to flow out. The hot water tank is on the sink side for lack of a better description of the water pump and not on the "supply" side or fresh tank side of the water pump where the fresh water tanks are located.

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  4. What a clever and simple idea! I'm relatively new to your site and already have gotten excellent information from it. I have a 2004 190P and am just trying to figure everything out yet - since March! Thank you again for your blog- it's wonderful!!!

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