Kirk W

You may be right. YMMV. I usually stay connected to shore power when doing a monthly generator exercise with a minimal load when starting it.

Don't be surprised when you eventually have to replace your ATS. Even a small load will cause problems in time and the issue is not the two power sources being connected at the same time, it is the rapid change between power sources that are not in phase.

Mike can do whatever he wishes, but as one who spent 40 years in electrical service, rest assured that doing as he does is a very bad practice. I have seen the inside of more than one burned ATS from his practice.

If your RV receives 120v power when the generator is running and also when connected to shore power, that means it is working. As Jim stated, never start the generator with shore power connected as the two sources will be out of phase and you will at the least it will burn the contacts and at worst it could destroy any of several different items in your RV. What is automatic is that the device will shift to the generator as a supply automatically when you start it.

EDIT:

Reading your post again, I'm wondering what makes you ask the question? A transfer device doesn't "fry" or otherwise harm anything but improper use of one can do so. The #1 cause of failures of an ATS device is the switching of it under load and because they have no ability to do "phase relationship matching" before switching it is possible to do major damage to some types of equipment by switching under load, depending upon what the device is and how much current it draws. The mismatch of phases can cause a surge through anything that is operating when you shift between the two power sources, but if you disconnect the shore power before you start the generator, then no such problem will ever occur. And always turn off all significant loads before you disconnect the cord or start the generator. I suggest that the generator should never be started before disconnecting shore power and shore power should never be connected before the generator has been shut down and all loads should be turned off prior to doing either.

The most we ever paid was in an RV park on the CA coast, just to the north of Santa Cruz. It was quite nice, had a private beach and golf course and was only about an hour south of San Fransisco. The price was $74/night in the week and $78/night for Friday & Saturday nights. This was in the fall of 2011.

We took early retirement which left us with a limited income so needed to supplement things. We discovered that we loved the RV volunteer lifestyle and it turned out to be our favorite lifestyle. We would spend 2 or 3 days per week working in a park or wildlife refuge and in return get our site and utilities free and very often other amenities as well.

Someplace I read that essentially the taxes are about the same in all states, just which bucket it is taken from. We move from TX to VA. Real estate taxes a lot less, even with pp tax thrown in, low sales tax, have income tax. $$ works out about the same, quality of life much better from our viewpoint. Weather definitely better.

State tax costs per tax payer do vary since some states are mineral rich and derive significant income from the mineral severance taxes that are federally collected but shared with the state the minerals come from, even on federal lands. TX benefits from that and it helps to keep things down, but isn't a pot of gold. States like WY that have low population and lots of minerals do very well and AK even pays money back to their residents in place of taking it from them. While tax burdens do have a wide difference at the high and low extremes, those middle states are usually more balanced comparing one to the next. But the thread was about vehicle registration cost, and that includes any and all taxes and fees on RVs and vehicles, but little else.

So, if you are full-time and have all your stuff in your rig, you have to pay based on the weight of your stuff and not just the weight of the vehicle?

Both of the class A's that we owned were registered based upon the GVWR but could have been lowered by weighing them, had I wished.

Wow, TX has high registration fees..............We live in VA and just paid $133 for 3 years on our MH.

But TX does not have a property tax on vehicles, like VA has.

 

The Personal Property Taxpayers Division assesses all vehicles including cars, trucks, trailers, motorcycles, motor homes, aircraft, and watercraft. Mobile homes on temporary foundations are also assessed as personal property.

Last year (2015), we came in just shy of $36,000 for the year. However, we increased the budget for 2016 because of where we have chosen to spend the majority - This Summer in The Black Hills of South Dakota, and this coming Winter in Gulfport, Mississippi (with a two week stint at Christmas to Key West, Florida)

We had a very inexpensive summer in the Black Hills in 2014 by serving as campground hosts at Angostura State Park. We got free RV site and free entrance into nearly all of the attractions in that area. It was great!

If I drink bleach will that work?

How do you spell enema?

I like the Geo Method except for the need to sanitize my waste tanks......no need for that IMHO.

If you do that, you need to sanitize what is being put into them also!

While bent fins are not a good thing, if only a few then it should not be enough to cause what you have. With voltage of 115/116 that also should not be a factor as it is well within the specifications. You were correct to replace the breaker with the same as was there before the problem began as installing a larger one could prove to be disastrous.

The 12.5a sounds pretty much right to me, but we need to figure out why the current is rising as 17.5 is clearly excessive and a 40% current increase is excessive, regardless of the amount of time involved. The issue to be determined is why the increase? Have you monitored the temperatures into and out of the cooling coils? The Δtemp. should by in the range of 18° to 22° or something close to that. If that difference is changing it might give us a clue to what is going on.

Reading through the responses, most of what I was about to say has been covered. If you have one, I'd use a "clamp on" amp meter to verify what the current load is accurately, if you have not already done so. But this statement: " It started at 12.5 Amp and gradually increased to over 17.5 amps, then the breaker popped." leads me to believe that you have done this. I'm just a little bit surprised that your A/C is on a 15a breaker as most that I'm familiar with are on a 20a but I don't advocate replacing it unless you make sure that the wire size is plenty large enough. Keep in mind that most circuit breakers will only carry about 80% of their rated current for a constant running condition. The A/C should be capable of pretty much constant running if everything is proper, but as Vern has mentioned, low voltage can be the problem and likely is.

With resistance loads, as voltage drops the current also drops but that is not true for an ac motor. With such motors what happens is that the power required to turn it does not change and since power is volts times amps, when voltage drops the current must increase and with the increased current the temperature of the motor also increases and so your circuit breaker may very well be preventing the failing of your a/c motors from getting too hot.

You will find a wide range of opinions about holding tanks, so I'll base my responses on my experience and observations.

 

1) do you leave the grey water tank/s valves closed when hooked up or do you fill and empty similar to the black water tank/s?

a) if open, how do you prevent odors from coming up the pipes in hot weather?

We keep the gray valve open, but I close it about a day before dumping the black tank, just to flush both the gray tank and the hose. To prevent a back flow of sewer gas from the connection, I support my hose off of the ground but leave a U in the hose right at the sewer connection, to act like a P-trap does.

 

if closed, do you put chemicals in them? What do you recommend?

You can if you want to perfume things but we discovered after a time that it is really a waste of money, if you are generous with the use of flush water. Septic systems work from naturally found bacteria and many of the chemicals just kill that and use perfume and chemistry. As such an excess of them is harmful to septic systems and has a lot to do with the closing of so many public dump stations. We just used ample water for most of our 12 years on the road fulltime and we still do that when we travel seasonally, usually for 4 or 5 months at a time.

 

2) has any one tried RID-X® RV Toilet Treatment (Liquid)?

We have and the only time I ever use anything it is one of the few products that I would use. It is septic friendly and it simply enhances the natural process of liquefying things in your tanks. In very hot weather or when we have several grandchildren visiting and so fill the tanks very quickly, I do use that product. But that doesn't happen often as we seldom have that many live-in guests and we avoid the hottest of weather.

 

a) if you leave your RV for a week, can you fill the black water tanks with fresh water and use RID-X (or something similar) to clean them while gone?

It sure wouldn't harm anything but I normally just leave about 1/4 tank or less of water in mine, after flushing it well and dumping. Now that we are back to seasonal travels, I clean my tank on the trip home, flush it out and then leave it empty and the valves open when stored.

 

do you recommend have your tanks professionally cleaned? How often would you recommend?

No but I do clean mine, myself. The best way that I've found to clean waste tanks is to put some really strong detergent that doesn't make suds into the tank in a very strong mix along with about a half tank of water, just before travel. You then drive to your next stop and you can even use the tanks in route if need be as it will not effect the cleaning process. Once you arrive you then dump the tanks as soon as possible, before things have much chance to settle out. I do this two times a year and always just prior to storage. My preferred detergent is the TSP products that are available from Amazon, but you can substitute laundry detergent. If you visit this page you can read a detailed article about tank maintenance.

I have no experience with any of them so perhaps someone who has will join in.

it probably don't matter & I wouldn't worry abiut heating it up. It operated on convection flow so hot is probably not helpful. If the problem is an obstruction, that might help for a time but isn't likely to be a permanent cure.

It won't hurt anything. Might be worth a try.

That shows 6.23 kΩ which is 6,230 Ω and that is reasonably close to the 7,000 Ω that they are calling for. Your refrigerator has a "fail safe" mode built into it for thermistor failure in which it will go into constant cool and the symptom of that is things freezing, even in the chill box area. If the system should detect a resistance in the thermistor that is outside of normal operating range it will go into a constant cool mode in the belief that less food is harmed by freezing than would be from things getting too warm and the frozen food thawing. In other words, I have never heard of any case with RV refrigerators in the past 25 or more years that a failed thermistor would cause it to fail to cool. All recent models that I know of will freeze things if a thermistor fails. The fail safe mode came into common use in the 80's if memory serves.

 

I set the OHM meter to 20k and got these readings:

 

Heating Element:
39.5 (I know you said 44ohms was right but is 39.,5 ok)

I just read you post again and realized something that I failed to pick up previously. If your meter was set to the 20k range and read 39.5 that would not be 39.5 Ω. That reading must have been taken on a different range setting. The reading would be proper if your meter was set on the 200 Ω range. Notice that in the picture which you sent, there is a small kΩ to the right of the reading and a 20 under it. For the resistance of that heating element to be correct, the display should show 39.5 and a small Ω to the right side of the display. You may want to check that reading another time. If the display has a reading of 39.5 with a kΩ beside it, that indicates that your heating element is bad and should be replaced.

You have not said, but have you tested the refrigerator to see if it will cool on propane? It will need to have a 12V supply in order to work properly with either source of heat. If it does not have 12V-dc available, it will not operate on any mode as the controls are powered by 12V-dc in order to be able to use the same ones with either electric or propane mode and it makes the auto mode possible.

Do you have 12V-dc power to the refrigerator? If so, is that voltage between 11 & 14V?

It depends upon your needs and preferences. I have used the pumps like those you listed for my entire RV experience of more than 30 years. Because I was not real happy with the performance, I added an accumulator which takes out the pressure surging from the basic pumps and lowers the pump run time so that pumps tend to last longer. It also helps to lessen the noise from the typical pump.

I have never heard of any carbon in the coolant system, but it can be a problem in the flue, as could rust. It would be a good idea to clean the flue as best you can. I'd also apply a shop vacuum to the lower end and all around the burner area to get rust, bug nests, and any soot build up out as best you can. If you look in the service manual it may address disassembly of the flue but if you do that be sure to get the baffle back into it the way that it is now.

The refrigerant is a mix of water, ammonia, anti-corrosive chemicals(the yellow stuff), and some hydrogen. What typically hardens inn the tubes is actually the anti-corrosive material in most cases. Sometimes tapping on the tubes with a hard rubber hammer will help but usually not for a long time.

As to fixing it yourself, you probably won't make it any worse, since it isn't working but you would also be the first that I know of to succeed in doing it yourself. It isn't as simple as just draining it out and pouring something back into the tank since they are purged of air, and the proper mix of ammonia, water, and chemicals isn't shared with the public. Once you get everything back in, you then need to charge the cooling coils with the proper amount of hydrogen to be dissolved into the coolant. There are several RV techs who frequent these forums and none of them do repairs on the cooling units in the field.

One thing to remember is there is a difference between a filter and a purifier.

Absolutely true, but most of the RV community only uses water that comes from campgrounds and other "approved" water supplies. Most of us are primarily interested in removing sediment, taste and minor kinds of contamination as compared to that found in lakes and streams. If we should get water from those sources, then the site you link to would be better than that of the RV Water Filter Store.

First of all, download a copy of the RV2652 service manual from Bryant RV website. Next:

Heating Element: 39.5 (I know you said 44ohms was right but is 39.,5 ok) That is less than 10% differential and should be OK.

Thermistor: 4.79 at around 75 degrees & 11.25 when put into ice cold water

 

THERMISTOR

Disconnect the thermistor harness from the P2, 2-pin terminal on the lower circuit board. Place the thermistor in a glass of ice water, approxi-
mately 33°F to 35°F. Wait 2 to 3 minutes. You should get a reading of approximately 7,000 to 10,000 ohms.

Your readings there seem to be in k-ohms? If that is just ohms they are clearly bad. If that is k-ohms then it would be pretty close and likely OK. If readings were taken on the 20k ohm scale, then that is probably within acceptable range. The voltage sounds correct as it should be pretty close to what you read across the battery and the units are built to operate between 14v and 10.5v.

It sounds like the cooling unit may be failing. Are there any signs of yellow powder or sludge anywhere in the back of the refrigerator, inside of the outside access panel? That is one of the indications of a refrigerant leak, but the lack of yellow doesn't mean that it still works. They can fail for many different reasons. How old is the refrigerator? In my opinion it is seldom cost justifiable to replace a cooling unit unless you plan to do the work yourself because the cost is close enough to that of a new refrigerator to make it a better choice. Boiling inside of the boiler part of the cooling unit is normal, but you usually can't easily hear it happening. The absorption refrigerator must boil the refrigerant for one to work.

Your brother is wrong about the repair of the cooling units, or at least I have never heard of anyone who does this. It is possible but most people buy a new cooling unit and install that as the labor cost of repairs would be excessive, if you could find someone who was willing to do the work. As for what you are looking at, I'd need to see a picture to say what it may be that you see.

Good advice, but I did want to welcome you to the Escapee forums!

First, welcome to the Escapee forums! We are happy to have you here and will help all that we are able.

You can install a water filter under the sink if there is enough room to do so, and many people do that. I prefer to use a high quality water filter on all water that I put into our RV so use one on the supply to the potable water tank/system. I use one of the whole house type, canister water filters such as you can get at Lowe's or Home Depot since the filters are more reasonably priced and you have more choice in filters.

Some folks use a single canister type while others use the two canister type with a sediment filter first, followed by the more expensive filter of carbon or other types of filter. A good place to check out RV water filter choices is the RV Water Filter Store.

Thanks for the update. Things like that can certainly drive a person crazy!

 

Maybe that's why we're not hearing from the original poster!

 

Lesson: Listen to RV - put all you money in TSLA - stop worrying about "the market"!

Try looking for the profile on the first post........ None exists which indicates that they probably removed it and after only one post??? If you can convince enough people to buy the stock you purchased, that will make the price rise, at least for a while.

One doesn't make anything unless one sells it.

Otherwise, it's just another market high that precedes another market drop.

You and I see things much the same way. I often marvel at the numbers some folks throw about speaking of both making money and also about losses. You have neither made nor lost a thing until you sell any particular investment. Large returns come with great risk taking and risky investments can loose money even more rapidly than they gain it, but both are just numbers on paper until liquidated.

Wise investors start by setting some goals to figure out what it is that they are seeking and then evaluate the risk that they are willing to accept to reach the goal. Younger folks who are still employed have much more time to recover from a bad choice than do those in my age group. I really don't care how impressive other folks numbers happen to be as I am only interested in what I am able to do with what I have and counting money isn't one of my hobbies. Nobody has figured out a way to take money with them to eternity, so I plan to make the best use I can of my resources while I am here. I am more interested in security of funds than I am in rapid growth. One has to balance between the two as I doubt any of those who share advice with you will help you to recover should that advice prove disastrous.

EDIT: I went back to take a peak at the person who made the first post in this thread........ Check it out as they seem to not exist any longer...... Or did they ever exist?