A Van Life Nightmare

Man, you're about to be so cold. Are you ready? Hey Christian. Yeah. I'm ready. Quinn getting the shot. Just modeling. So freaking beautiful. I wish I had a polarizer so you could see how blue the water is. But it's so clear. The mountains. So beautiful this morning. It's hard to film and paddle at the same time. I will say. I'm not sure I can do it. Stuff will go overboard, including myself. So I'm just going to float while we film. It's messy like the sea. That gives us a little more purpose too. It's getting a little harder than it is. It's so pretty up here. When I left Lake Tahoe for Idaho, I didn't know I'd be back to the Eastern Sierra again so soon. But under very different circumstances. This trip to the Sawtooth Mountains and the Tetons would be the very last trip with my home as I've always known it. Deep down, I knew something wasn't right. Because, well, there were signs. But I was reluctant to peel away the layers and see what was really going on. Because, you know, ignorance is bliss. It was easier to tell myself I was worrying for nothing. And to keep the adventure going. So, that's what I did. But eventually, the signs were yelling at me. The van smelled musty. It felt damp. And I could see that water was consistently pooling under the edge of my flooring. Something was very wrong. Okay, I have an issue where water is leaking out of this corner and pooling. And it's been going on for a little bit. And this subfloor is soaked. I lifted this up and looked back there with a headlamp. And it doesn't appear to be soaked much further back. But I just don't know where this is coming from. Like, what the heck? So, I began by first checking the pump, the plumbing lines, and then the space beneath the fridge. And what I found was nothing. Absolutely no sign of a leak. Okay, what a journey the last few days has been. I haven't actually been documenting it really because it's just been a lot to take in. But I ripped up my floor. I was noticing a really, like, musty, wet, mildewy smell. And so I ripped up one floorboard. And, yeah, my fears were confirmed. The subfloor underneath was absolutely soaked. And it was slimy. So I pulled up the next floorboard. Same thing. Pulled up the next one. And there was a baseball-sized patch of mold. So that was game over. I, like, started ripping literally everything up. I just decided to start ripping flooring up because I was smelling some really concerning smells. And, yeah, that's definitely mold. It's pretty bad, guys. I don't know what to do. Except for continue ripping it out. It just keeps getting worse. The further back I go. Luckily, this house that I'm staying at, they're so cool. The guy, Steve, was like, oh, my gosh, use my tools. Like, he came out to help me to show me how everything worked. And I just started hacking away at the van. And it's a really good thing I did because the subfloor, almost all the way to the back, was just soaked. All of the wood. Just soaked. I have no idea what's causing it. It's not coming from the door because it goes all the way back. So much water. Luckily, I didn't see any more patches of mold. But it smelt like it was beginning to get there. So, yeah, I've been ripping everything up and sawing around these cabinets and everything. But the cabinets are going to have to come out because it is wet going underneath. Like, the subfloor down here is still wet. My van is like a disaster. It's a freaking construction zone. I've been tearing my whole house apart. The good news is I've been able to pinpoint what the issue is. And it's the plumbing. So, at first I was like, oh crap. Like, when I replaced the pump I did it wrong. But that's not the case. I've been troubleshooting it by running the water without it going down the drain. And also running it with it going down the drain. When water goes down the drain, it then seeps out here. Like, a lot. A lot of water seeps out. And that's what was causing everything to get waterlogged. So, I now have no floor apart from what's underneath the cabinets. And I'm going to have to plan to rebuild everything. But I'm trying to at least fix the plumbing problem so that the leak stops. And I ordered some rugs to put down just as a band-aid until I can get somewhere and actually do a rebuild. So, yeah. That's been life lately. This needs to be ripped out.