You might remember in my ramblings over the summer that I had a problem with one of the locks on the gas-locker door of my Triton whilst in Portugal. As Blueyonder and I were away for 4 months a ‘mobile solution’ had to be found. The solution simplicity was for AL to post replacement part to the daughter who was joining us in the early part of August when were in the South West corner of France. The daughter manged to remember to bring the part with her and it was duly replaced. Good, everything back to normal, the universe rotating as it should and some might say there is a God in heaven.

Now this was all taking place in July and was fixed at the beginning of August. A couple of weeks ago while aimlessly walking past the van I notice that the front locker at the edge seal to the left of the replaced lock was showing a cream coloured bead, with a couple of black speckles. I quickly looked at it pulled the cream bead off and thought it must be some form of sealant that had oozed out as a result of my changing the lock (or rather disturbing the status-quo of the locker door). Made some cuss about sealants and thought nothing more off it.

As it happened, yesterday Blueyonder went into winter cleaning mode and decided that our hard standing in front of the garages need pressure washing, so I was called upon to man-handle the caravan out of here way (not I don’t have a motor mover – yet!). As I opened the gas-locker to extract the stay winding handle I notice the rear of my replaced lock was covered in what, on first glance looked like that expanding foam.

Again I though this must be some kind of sealant that had leaked out during my lock replacing efforts. Though I am at a loss as to why I thought it was sealant other than to my mind it was the only answer. Again a quick twist and the cream slightly spongy lump came clean away leaving no visible trace that it had been there. I examined the lump I was holding in my hand with some interest, as I was bemused now as to what it actually was. Logic now told me it could not be sealant or it would have gone everywhere when I actually took the lock out. In the course of all good scientific analysis I did the ‘Sniff Test’ and it smelt of mushrooms.. I concluded that as it looked like the flesh of a mushroom, it felt like a mushroom and it smelt like a mush room; it must in fact be a mushroom! I will admit that I refrained from the last test that would have been conclusive, ‘The Taste Test’!

Am I the first to grow mushrooms on an Eriba gas-locker door? Should I be applying for EU grants to carry on my research?

I know that you, my fellow Eriberists, will give me good advice!

Clippie

Spores your going to have to clean it with bleach!

Job for a real fun guy

Hope they were not magic mushrooms

Of course they're magic, it's an Eriba

Maybe you could sprout some garlic in the other lock?

We have the same problem on our 2012 Troll. I will get round to removing the gas locker door one day and strip it down.
I removed one of the locks to inspect the internal door structure and the wood inside was saturated. Presumably the sealing of the door has failed and the wood has rotted.