GarageLand
We’re sitting in bay number 99 at the Lazydays Service Center in Seffner.
The scenery is pretty industrial, but it is cool they will let us stay in the RV while they service it.
We came in for an 8:45 AM appointment after spending the night at their adjacent campground, called RallyPark.
The major reason for the service is to repair our water heater, which is leaking like a sieve. There is also a laundry list of minor things I had them look at too:
+ a small hydraulic leak (which turned out to be from our rear slide, and not our rear leveling jack like I thought),
+ a weird quirk where our generator will sometimes shuts off randomly (they think it is a problem with letting the gas tank get too low, introducing air into the line, as everything else on the generator looks normal),
+ a nick in the windshield,
+ stiff gray and black water valves (they need greasing), and
+ a stuck driver’s side door.
In the process, they discovered our air conditioner filters and evaporator coils were packed with dust. The worst he’d ever seen, I believe is the way the mechanic described it.
Everything is done except the water heater because they had to order a new one from the distributor in Tampa. They couldn’t get it here and installed before the shift ended, hence our reason for spending the night in the service bay.
Apparently spending the night in the garage is a pretty common occurrence. In fact, there are several fellow RVers in the bays behind us also spending the night.
We have everything we need, as Lazydays provides full hookups. If you couldn’t see outside, you’d never know you were in a garage.
And the wifi signal is excellent, much better than their RV park. I suspect it is because we are piggybacking on a wireless network they use for internal stuff. So coverage is great everywhere in the service bays.
We can’t be in the RV while they are servicing it. But there are plenty of diversions here. We started off the day at Cracker Barrel with breakfast (there is one on-site). Then we spent a few hours with Rhett Pennington, a sales guy, looking at RVs.
Rhett was very helpful, but in the end we couldn’t justify trading up. However, we did learn some important things from Rhett. Many RVers trade in every few years. The reason is that an RV’s depreciation rate increases sharply when the RV reaches 45,000 miles. So if we wait and try to do a trade-in after we hit the 45,000 mile mark (which we are only 6000 miles shy of now), we will have a ton of negative equity versus just a little. Rhett said that once you pass the 45,000 mile mark, you are better off just keeping it for 8 more years - which is when the depreciation rate starts to level off again.
After we left Rhett, we headed over to Camping World (also on-site) to browse the selection of “must have” RV gadgets. Then it was on to lunch at Macaroni Grill and some book browsing at the Barnes and Noble next door.
Tonight we are working to make up for all the time we blew today.
We have to be out of the RV by 8:00 AM so they can finish the work. So tomorrow will probably be another Cracker Barrel breakfast, then off to the LazyDays service lounge, which is really well-thought out, to wait out our time and get some business done. It is a massive lounge with tons of tables, desks, couches, comfy chairs, two large, flat-screen TVs, toys for the kids, and a bar in the center that serves free Starbucks coffee. They split the lounge into two halves - one for people with pets and one for people without pets.
And there is, of course, free wifi.