Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
RV parks aren’t a necessity. I’ve been in my motorhome for about 13 months and have spent one night in an RV park at Whiskey Flats, Nevada. The rest of the time I’ve been living off-grid, Boondocking. Not always easy but it’s cheap. You have to find a source of water and a place with a dump station. You can find LP gas just about anywhere.
Almost an essential is solar power for recharging your batteries. I just got my solar up and running a few months ago and it was the best thing I’ve done yet. Clean, quiet battery recharging all day long.Anything is possible if you really want to do it. I would suggest boondocking with the hounds. No RV parks and rules to deal with but you gotta be prepared to boondock.
Post Offices now use “Unit” numbers instead of P.O.Box numbers. A lot of places have issues with sending to a PO Box but not with the new Unit numbers.
I have one of the sledges and they can be quite useful. I just stay away from it if I’m angry about something.
One of HF longer crow barsis also useful. My steps didn’t retract all the way not long ago and found a high spot of some sort. Did a hell of a job on the stairs and I’m not into paying $170 for a new set of stairs. Out comes the crow bar after the sledge didn’t get the job done all the way.
I’ve left the Tacoma area and now my Clear dongle doesn’t get anything. Picked up a unit from T-Mobile and it’s supposed to be 4G but much of the time I don’t think so. it’s about $70 for 9GB.
2000 watts is a lot of juice. Are you sure you really need that much? I’m running 1000 and am not at capacity. The most power I use at one time is my coffee pot and toaster in the mornings.
The paint thing is starting to look like a viable option for some of my renovations. I priced new wall panelling and it’s at least $80 per sheet plus $122 crating. Paint is a lot easier, cheaper, and probably will look better. Will need to prime to existing wall coverings first though.
I think the Pennys idea will look good for the inserts on a few of the cabinet doors. I need to order a few more cabinet doors for new found space and paint will allow me to use cheaper doors. The original cabinet doors are starting to fall apart. I thought about paint when I was sitting in Starbucks and thought the paint looked really nice.I guess you could use the event to check out what peeps are doing with their RVs. Things like getting ideas for mods inside and out. Peeps used to do that when I did a stint in real estate sales. You’d get peeps going through an open house just to get ideas on what to do in their house. Take your camera instead of relying on your memory. I guess camera phones are getting to be good enough quality that you don’t need a point and shoot camera.
Networking with others is also a great spin-off.As a guy, I was terrified of my Class A when I first bought it. It sure took up a lot of the lane. After a trip from Phoenix to Tacoma then to SAnta Maria, CA, all with my toad, it’s old hat.
Those K-rails on the side of the lane still terrorize me. They always put them on the rottenest roads and you’re ducking and diving from side to side in your lane. That’s a big deal in a Class A with about six inches on either side of you.I’ll look into that.
I left the alarm hooked up but there’s no auto gas shut-oI was within ff. The newer alarm units don’t have the gas shut-off incorporated into the alarm like this unit does.
The alarm tripped when the BB was within about a foot of the alarm. It may have also been the scented candle I was burning and this isn’t the first time it’s tripped like that. They are sensitive to a variety of household sprays and it looks like a scented candle falls into that now.I’ve thought about it but haven’t done it yet. I just washed the car for the first time in 5 months. I’m in Tacoma, WA and it’s constantly raining so why wash the car?
I see some of the images on Google show some truck wash places that are automated with the big roller type who-ya that goes over the top and down the sides. I’m wondering what those will do to my AC covers as they’re pretty well sun rotted. At $125 each I wouldn’t be too happy with them getting chewed up before I’m ready to replace them. And what about the little spinny black tank vent. I can see that getting ripped off. You might want to consider stuff like that or be really cruel and search out a kids Saturday School Car Wash. LOL.
I use a P.O. Box. This became a problem when I needed to change my address with my Credit Union. The banking software doesn’t like P.O. boxes so the CU help line told of a work around on that issue. Instead of using P.O. Box XXXX use POBox XXXX. Now it looks like a street address and all my CU mail gets to me.
I thought RV Parks had mail boxes for their tenants? You would use the address of the Park and add a space number. You would go to the office to get your mail. I’m a boondocker so that has it’s own special problems.Some great info here for cold weather camping. The one thing I find the most useful, as a boondocker, is my Big Buddy heater
.It’s propane so you MUST have a window cracked open to vent and I also keep one of my roof vents open a few inches. You don’t want to wake up dead some morning. RV heaters are very inefficient and unless yo plan on spending about $35 every week on propane, it’s worth looking into one of these. If you park in an RV Park then you can use an electric ceramic heater and not have to worry about fumes.
I looked at real down comforters but they cost about $600 for a good one and don’t warm your head or the air. they sure are comfy though. Maybe next year.The Trojans are supposed to be the better buy. I have the interstates for Costco and they require 15.3 volts at about 2-4 hours for an absorption charge
http://www.batteries-faq.com/activekb/questions.php?questionid=1.
The Trojans are 14.8 volts so if you don’t have the capability to vary the charge rate on your charger then you may want to get the Trojans.
My PowerMax Boondocker charger has a dial so I can pump in up to 15.3 volts constantly.
I think the next set of batteries will be Trojan T105s so I can reach an equalization charge rate.Here’s a link to a lot of great information,
http://solarhomestead.com/energy-independence/batteries/If you want to capture a lot of the information presented in links and other web pages I suggest a program called Snagit by Techsmith http://www.techsmith.com/snagit.html
I use it myself alot. What’s on a webpage today may not be there tomorrow so get it while you can.I was at war with my tranny a while back and you may have read about it in my blog. It would keep going into safe mode(second gear) for no particular reason. What I’ve come to find out is that it may be what’s called a Performance Control Module. Pippi and I share the same basic chassis, a GM P30, and the PCM is located at the steering column near the floor. This animal is all electronic and, I believe, it gets an attitude every now and then, at least mine does. When it does it puts the tranny into safe mode. When that happens I pull over, turn off the motor and count to ten. The PCM has a chance to reset itself and everything goes on as usual, until it gets an attitude again, maybe weeks from now.
This PCM is notorious for having a poor conformal coating on the printed circuit board, to protect it from moisture, and may be in need of replacement.I’ve had the tranny in the shop several times and they keep telling me they need(want) to pull the pan and see what’s going on with the seals. Sounds like a fishing expedition to me and then they start taking $3000 for a tranny rebuild. I can get a rebuilt from O’Reilly Auto for $1700 so what’s up with the $3000? I was even told to pull the tranny and take it to a local shop and they’ll rebuild it with guarantee for about $1700 also so again what’s up with this $3000? I talked to the counter tech at O’Reilly and he said he’d pull it and put it back in for $200.
Another counter tech told me that mechanical things don’t fix themselves but electronic ones will. I’ve worked in electronics and can vouch for that and have worked the wrenches before so I can attest to mechanical things not fixing themselves.
A rebuilt PCM(They’re very, very hard and expensive to find new)(from A1Cardone) from O’Reilly is about $130. The manufacturer takes old PCMs stripps the coating, makes sure all the boys are doing what they’re supposed to, then re-coats the board with an updated conformal coating.So the point of all this is that any problems had may be mechanical or electrical. If it seems to fix itself sometimes then it’s probably an electrical issue that a tranny rebuild usually won’t solve and a rebuild isn’t needed. A rebuild will be needed for things like fluid boiling up through the dipstick port, transmission slipping, smell of burnt tranny fluid on the dipstick etc…. I’ve never smelled burnt tranny fluid so I don’t know what it would smell like
Just because it may need a rebuild doesn’t mean that you have to cough up $3K on it.
It may be a PCM issue.
Just as you would with a surgery on yourself, get a second, and if necessary, a third opinion before you allow them to start cranking wrenches on your RV. If they want to pull the pan and check the seals, I can assure you they will find something that they are sure needs replacing.I understand the steel wool is the best solution. I was told that mice like to nibble on the spray foam as well.
I understand the steel wool is the best solution. I was told that mice like to nibble on the spray foam as well.
I have a Clear 4G dongle
and they no longer offer unlimited data that I know of. If you know where they do I’ll be very interested in knowing it. I got mine through NetZero and it costs me about $50 a month for 9GB.
I have an Oxy and found it to be much better than the available standard units, however, the balancing factor is that it’s also about 4 times the size of a standard unit. I won’t go to the trouble of posting a side-by-side pic unless it’s asked for.
My first impression was one of disappointment with the Oxy. With all the hoopla on the forums about it, I thought it would perform like a regular shower but it’s not so one shouldn’t really expect it to do so. It is an improvement and one that won’t run into three digits(about $40 vs $15 for a standard unit) or cause a massive amount of replumbing.
To get really better water pressure, I was thinking a heavier psi pump but my Thor is twenty years old and I’m not real sure of the condition of the piping. I do know that the piping is the older gray stuff that they don’t make anymore. Shure-Flo makes a pump that pushes water at 65 PSI. Standard pumps seem to be about 50 PSI. i really do think that my next not so minor project will be to replace the hot water tank with a tankless system. http://youtu.be/v_HArP1yXf8
I tried the LEDs from Camping World and have some reservations about them. First is that they are rated just for 12 volts. No biggie right? Wrong. When your convertor is converting either AC shore power or generator AC power DC it doesn’t produce 12 volts. It produces much more, at least 13.5 volts. When I charge my batteries with my genny(I’m a boondocker and live untethered to the grid) I push 15.2 volts into my batteries. This isn’t too much. Go to your battery manufactures website and see what they recommend for Absorption and Equalization charges as well as how long you’re to stay at that voltage. 15.2 volts is actually less that what Interstate recommends. Anyhow, batteries and charging them is a whole nuther thread but seriously check your battery manufacturer and look at the charging recommendations.
Back on track here, The lights are rated at 12V and I was pushing much more and started frying the lights with more voltage than they were designed to handle. I actually measured the voltage at the light socked and it was measuring over 15V. Try measuring your sockets with a multimeter. You may surprise yourself. Anyhow, I started looking into LED lights and some were rated for 12V and had a voltage limiter built into it so I knew it wasn’t just me. I was surprised that my motorhome wasn’t equipped with a DC-DC convertor to limit the amount of voltage/current going to the DC system. In all fairness, the lights from CW had diodes that should have kept that voltage in check but I guess it was too much voltage for them.
I looked at superbrightLED and didn’t really like the selection of bayonet mount lights. Those are the kind that a lot of RVs have and are like your taillight sockets(BA15s round base). I somehow ran across a site called M4 Products and they had what I wanted. It’s an 1156 in natural white so is’t not too blue and not too yellow, just white light. It’s also rated at 10-30V DC. O-O-O, I’m liking it so far. The calculated lumens are 565 so this thing is BRIGHT.
I bought just one bulb to test it. I wasn’t disappointed. That one LED light pumps out a huge amount of light at .28 amps. The voltage was the big concern. If you’re at the low end, 10 volts on a 12V system then your batteries are dead and I mean replacement time dead. A 12 volt battery is at 0% charge at 10.5 volts so if you’re at 10 volts then you have more expensive problems than an LED light bulb. On the upper end, I charge at 15.2 volts so I’m well under the 30 volt maximum. I should be good to go with these lights.
Caveat: I haven’t tested these lights for more that a few days but have been impressed enough to order 10 more to totally equip Thor, my motorhome. At $13 each this isn’t a huge sum of money when you consider how much money I just spent on something that doesn’t work(over $100 on the CW lights). A side not is that this light does get hot. Not as hot as an incandescent but it has a metal housing and WILL be hot to the touch so caveat emptor.So there it is. My experience to date with LED lights. I have no problem with answering questions about my experience and do hope you benefit from my experience.
I wonder if anyone has heard of, or tried, running a pipe from the bottom of the gray tank to the top of the black tank with a valve just like the ones for dumping your tanks?
You can hook up at the dump station, open the black tank and let it drain. Once the black tank has drained you would open the crossover valve and it would dump grey water into the black tank and drain out the hose as normal. That should add a good amount of turbulence in the black tank to clean the tank and sensors of any residuals.Scootertrash, have you actually tried what you mentioned? I’ve seen people say that the ice thing works(without any proof) and some say it’s bunk. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iH6acEmqvcw. Has anyone run a cam(snake camera) into the tank to prove that what they say is true? I would like to see a reference to it if someone has otherwise we don’t really know if it’s true or not because we don’t have a solid reference point to start from in determining true or false.
I do know that ice cubes get real slippery with just a little bit of melt to them so I don’t see how there can be any scrubbing action by them. They’ll just take the path of least resistance around any object. The only thing I can see with ice cubes is that when they melt, you have a bunch of water in the tank.
In adding Dawn down the drains, please be sure it’s not anti-bacterial.I’m trying a product for the black tank right now called Bio-Clean. It’s supposed to be beneficial bacteria that feasts on the “stuff” in the black tank. After one treatment my B tank still shows 2/3 full after a dump station run so I’m going to go under there and pull a sensor and see what’s really going on. Is it gunk or electrical. If it’s gunk, I’ll try cleaning it but I have a lot of projects going on right now that I need to finish.
The method you’re using is called the GEO Method and can be found here.
There’s a lot of chatter about using k-67 also as well as plain old dried yeast. It’s been said that RidX septic treatment is really nothing more than yeast.
I just went to the dump station yesterday and my black tank is showing as full the next day. Not bloody likely. I dumped a whole bottle of Calgon down its gullet along with a bunch of BIZ detergent. I’ll probably dump a bunch more water down there, let it stew for a few days then take it to the dump station again and see what comes out. The next step go to Home Depot for some R-67.As gross as it may sound, I don’t throw toilet paper down the drain. I keep plastic bags from the produce department in the lav and stick it in there. Give the inside of the bag a shot of some alcohol from a spray bottle and seal it up. They do the same thing on cruise ships except for the spray of alcohol.
Buzz
Be sure to look at Handy Bob’s site before you go out and get it done. There’s a lot off good info there so we can make informed decisions.
My plan is Solar by Spring. What does help a lot though is that I use a Power Inverter(right now) for my AC needs like the computer. I only need to run my Genny occasionally to juice up the sixers(6 volt battery bank).Timing seems off? Is that on Shore Power or Generator? Was the unit bought from an appliance store or did it come with the RV? Is it new or used?
If you bought it somewhere else and are trying to use it with the Genny then it may be the difference in cycles between what the Genny puts out and what Shore Power current supplies.
If you’re on shore power then there should be no issue.
Bottom line is we don’t have enough information to make an informed decision and we’ll just be shooting from the hip.Jimbo,
As a photographer I get asked alot “Which is better, Canon or Nikon.” The short, yet long, answer is “it depends.” It depends on what your use for it is.
Full-timer? Boondocker and living off the grid or RV park camper tethered to utilites? On-the-go or parking for long periods in an RV park?? Married or single(us guys will usually tolerate a lot more minor inconveniences than a woman will), A jack-of-all-trades(this will tell if you want to buy new or used)?
You said you planned on living in it alone so that answers one question and a half ton truck is the tow vehicle. I have reservations about the truck.If you have a truck that can SAFELY pull a trailer then that is an option. Just because you have a hitch and can go 65 mph doesn’t mean you can SAFELY pull a trailer. The salesman will tell you “Oh sure, your rig will pull this little beauty” but don’t listen to him. He’s not interested in keeping you alive, he’s interested in selling a trailer. You need more than horsepower. You need a truck that is designed to handle that kind of load. Most of the truck manufacturers offer a “trailer special” truck that’s designed with a truck drivetrain and suspension for heavy loads. I’ve talked to more than one person that found out that their motor could pull the trailer but the transmission was never designed for that heavy of a load. Got a spare $3000 for a new tranny? Look into it. You want a truck, not a half-ton gentleman’s pick-up truck.
I personally own a 30′ Class A motorhome. I wanted something that I can pull a toad with(my car at the moment thats paid for). A trailer will actually give you more usable space than a motorhome because about the first 5 feet of that motorhome is not livable space. It’s dedicated to the motoring of the vehicle. My 30′ Moho actually has about 18% less living space(25′) than a 30′ travel trailer, so that’s something to consider. Don’t forget that you have to maneuver anything that you get. Don’t think you won’t take a wrong turn and have to make tight turns on streets that were never designed for anything other that a large pick-up truck.
Pippi mentioned to always get something with slide-outs and I don’t agree with that. Each slide-outs adds about 1500 lbs to the weight of the rig. More weight means less gas mileage, more money to purchase and maintain, and in the case of a trailer, a heavier tow vehicle to SAFELY pull it.
They require yet more maintenance( lubricating the slides, seals seem to be a problem that’s age related, alignement of the slide with the flooring, etc….) but are better for extended stays. If you’re always on the go, extending and retracting them alot then you will be quickly addressing issues on them as well as everything else.Since you’re situation is of limited income then you’ll be buying a used rig. That means you’ll also need to be handy with a multi-meter for testing electrical circuits, a comprehensive selection of wrenching tools, screwdrivers of all kinds, some woodworking stuff like a saw to replace water damaged framing and flooring, and the one tool that you will use extensively at first, a caulking gun. A lot of people let their RV sit for a long time unused then decide to sell it because they aren’t using it. During that time, things go to hell and it usually starts with seals on seams, around windows, and around things on the roof.
Here’s a link to a book that I bought before making my decision because I wanted to know what to look for in an RV,
http://www.amazon.com/How-Select-Inspect-Buy-RV/dp/1890049107.Given your physical condition at this time I would pay an RV Inspector to check out any rig you’re considering. You need to check for water damage(the BIGGEST issue) and that means getting up on that roof and crawling around in tight spaces looking for it.
I’ll stop for now and let you chew on all this.
Buzz
