Kirk W

In the total scheme of things, I believe that the federal agencies are a better choice of land management of our national parks and also of most other federally controlled lands but I do think that some combining of agencies would save money as well as improving the management of those lands and facilities. An example is the federal lakes in the US are managed some by the COE, some by Bureau of Reclamation, others by the TVA, and one or two others. Most all of those lakes have parks on them which are each managed by a different agency and with different regulations. There are many other examples. Part of the issue for the NPS and for most other federal parks is what happens to money taken in at the gates and how that money is to be distributed as well as any additional money from public taxes. In general the larger, more visited parks revenues are used to subsidize the low receipts of smaller, less used parks. So who chooses where this money is to be used and how? The senior pass allows we older citizens to get into parks free and to stay in campgrounds for half price, so can the parks afford that benefit, or is it time for us to contribute? What about increasing user fees, or does that prevent use of parks by poor families unfairly? And what of special rates for kids groups like Boy & Girl Scouts? If we are to have parks, someone has to pay the bills. Another issue is the use of volunteers, like RV folks. Each time that a job is filled by one of us, doesn't that take away a position from the career park employees? Is that really fair, and should volunteers then be taxed on the value of any benefit the park supplies to them? Park budgets are not a simple issue and you can rest assured that anytime that politicians of any level get involved the issue will get even more complicated. That is also part of the problem as Congress also fights to put spending in the more influential member's districts, often ignoring the real needs of the parks and the agency that manages them. A former Yellowstone Park financial officer once told a group meeting that one of the problems that park has is that it is located in an area with so few voters that Congress wants to spend their money in more influential districts. The same would apply to the bureaucrats if you were to try and combine some of the federal agencies that manage our lands & lakes, or to move them from one agency to another. One example of this is that the COE is a part of the US Army and they don't want to give up their lakes because each COE district provides an easy duty station for another Colonel or above. They want to protect the number of senior positions!

Opportunity, perhaps but I'll believe it when some activity on the issue takes place in Washington DC.

I would add a small amount of chlorine bleach to whatever you choose to use in cleaning the awning. While dish soap is a gentle cleaner that will work at least to some degree, I've not had great results on our awnings over the years and have used it many times. What I have found to work best in cleaning our RV and awning is a product called Reliable that I was given a small amount of by an RV dealer, service manager. I'm out of it at the moment so am considering something new if others have a better product.

While your concern is highly improbable due to the way the ATS is designed, I hesitate to say impossible. In your ATS there is one set of movable contacts that has a connection to the output side which supplies the loads inside of the RV. The movable contacts sit connected to the shore power side if there is no power applied to the coil of the solenoid and they contact the generator side when power is applied to that coil because the coil is also connected to the generator's output. If you were to remove the cover it looks similar to this picture, although there are several different versions, this is a simple one. In this type the RV load is connected to the terminals on the left of the picture. Shore power connects to those on the far right which are closed with no power to the solenoid. The second from the right connections are for the generator supply. This is a very simple version but it does show the way things work to disconnect one supply before the other is applied. I have seen an ATS which has two separate sets of contacts for the two supplies with a single solenoid that was mechanically connected to both so that it opens one as it closes the other and there may be other designs as well, but all are intended to operate in the way that this one does.

If you have lost shore power, that means that nothing is now operating or has power. As such, there is no phase relationship involved and it would be the same as no shore power plugged in and since the ATS is wired to prefer the generator, nothing will happen when shore power returns. But if you do not remove shore power before you shut the generator down, then you will have the phase mismatch and cause problems. It is a good thing to shut down any large loads before you start the generator without shore power, & that same thing is true for connecting or disconnecting shore power. That is a good practice, but you should still completely remove one source before you connect the other. There is no delay built into the ATS devices installed into the RVs at this time, but if there were, that delay could easily prevent the phase related surge. All of the power monitors that I am familiar with (Surge Guard, Progressive, etc.) have a time delay built into them for several reasons but no ATS does to my knowledge. Even a small load will experience a surge that is major for it, if you instantly shift between power sources with them out of phase. A piece of equipment that only draws 0.1a that sees a surge of 1a has been exposed to potential problems just as much as would something drawing 10a that was exposed to 100a. True, the lighter load wouldn't harm the contacts of the ATS, but it could damage whatever you had power too. I'm sure that John will be along with his engineer version of all of this, but this is the simple version.

That is a fact. I may not be an engineer, but I do have more than 30 years of experience with RVs and 40 as a tech. I may not have your design education but I do know how the actually work. As you said, I made a statement and there was no question in it.

I don't know what you mean, but every motorhome that I have seen the wiring of which had a generator set and an ATS device, the ATS was connected to select the generator automatically as soon as it came on line. That means that it would not be possible to operate on shore power with the generator running and it also means that if you start the generator while connected to shore power, as soon as the generator comes up to speed and supplies power the ATS will shift to the generator output with no regard for the phase relationship of the two supplies. In nearly every case there will be a miss match and an associated power surge through anything that is operating. Only if the ATS has somehow shorted to both sides of the line at one time is that possible, particularly in a 30a RV which has only one phase of power. While I don't have a lot of experience with RV generators that have an auto start function, those which I have examined the auto start only happened if the battery voltage dropped due to battery discharge. I have not seen one that had an auto start function as a back-up to shore power. If you have, I'd be interested to know who makes it and anything else that you know about 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.

If you wish to stretch your budget by cutting expenses as well as adding some very interesting experiences to your RV life, then I suggest getting away from commercial RV parks completely and looking into things like wildlife refuges, historic sites, and even our national parks as a place that you can do some very interesting things and learn many new things, while providing a service that is much needed with agencies that have too little budget to accomplish their missions, and so they rely upon volunteers. We have done and seen many things which we could never have done in any other way. Check our our list of volunteer experiences at this link, and visit the pages with pictures and descriptions of the 20+ volunteer experiences!

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.

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.

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

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!

How do you spell enema?

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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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 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.