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Things not to do while motorhoming…

CORRECTION! It was the KOA in Junction, not the KOA in Van Horn. Van Horn good. Junction bad.

From: Steve Taylor [mailto:spt@thetaylorcompany.net]
Sent: Monday, May 07, 2007 8:07 PM
To: ‘Tom Taylor’; ‘Bill Taylor (Bill Taylor)’; ‘David Taylor (David Taylor)’
Subject: RE: things not to do while motorhoming…“And good on your motorhome for being tolerant enough to survive the dirty power situation uharmed.” It notices things before we do, then takes preemptive action. It got us in trouble in a KOA in Van Horn. We plugged in, the shore power didn’t come on. We checked the screen inside and it said we had a ground fault. We were on our way to do something else, so we stopped by the office, told them we had a ground fault, and left. Lots of staff there. They would know how to take care of it, and sure enough, when we got back, the power was on. Trouble is, the next staff person that saw us told us they checked the electricity and there was nothing wrong with it. Who cares what the problem was, it works; but they got pretty pushy about telling us we reported a problem that wasn’t there. Every staff person we met after that began the conversation with, “Oh, you’re the people who said they had an electrical problem but didn’t”. Apparently we had attacked the integrity of their park and offended the whole lot of them. I blame it on the coach.

From: Tom Taylor [mailto:code-boy@earthlink.net]
Sent: Sunday, May 06, 2007 9:08 AM
To: Steve Taylor; Bill Taylor (Bill Taylor); David Taylor (David Taylor)
Subject: Re: things not to do while motorhoming…Great troubleshooting! And good on your motorhome for being tolerant enough to survive the dirty power situation uharmed.

—– Original Message —–

To: Bill Taylor (Bill Taylor) ; David Taylor (David Taylor) ; Tom Taylor (Tom Taylor)
Sent: Saturday, May 05, 2007 8:09 PM
Subject: things not to do while motorhoming…

Well, it’s not like we decided to do it, we certainly didn’t want to do it, but we had to troubleshoot the furnace today. It’s not the first time we’ve had to troubleshoot a furnace. Several years ago, when we had a different motorhome with a propane furnace, it quit and we had to get it fixed. As I recall, a repair guy had to replace the furnace motherboard. Within a couple months it failed again, in a different state, and a repair guy there replaced the limit switch. That took care of it. But this is different. This is a hydro-hot furnace. It runs on diesel. It’s supposed to run on diesel anyway. It has always run on diesel before, but Judy got up at 6 and it was cold in the front room, 55 degrees, so she turned up the thermostat. Nothing. She turned up the bedroom thermostat. Nothing. She got analytical on it. It runs off the same diesel the engine does. She turned on the key and checked the fuel tank. Plenty of fuel. She turned on the hot water (the hydro-hot system serves both the furnaces and the hot water). The hot water was hot. She ran the water for a few minutes. It stayed hot, so she knew the problem wasn’t the hydro-hot burner, but some control that triggers the furnaces. She got out the manual for the hydro-hot. No help. She went outside and looked in the cabinet the hydro-hot lives in. No reset button. Still no heat. Can’t turn on the heat pumps; they don’t work at all below freezing and really don’t do much until the outside temperature warms up toward the forties. She turned on the little electric space heater in the front room and came back to bed. After she warmed up, we both got up. We flipped any breaker in the control box that looked like it might help. Nothing. It’s getting colder. It’s snowing outside. Checked out the electrical status display. It said we had an open ground on the 30 amp shore power. That shouldn’t affect the furnace; it runs on 12 volts. It shouldn’t be the electrical power; everything else in the coach is on. Of course, if the 120 volt power goes out, the inverter just takes over and runs all the 120 volt stuff off the batteries. That complicates the analysis. Checked the inverter display. It said we had high voltage on line 1. Still shouldn’t affect the furnace, but we’re starting to suspect an electrical supply problem. Let’s bypass the shore power. Turned on the generator. 50+ amps of 240 volt power. No help. One thing left to try. We’re getting error readings on the shore power; let’s disconnect it completely. Victory! That was it! Dirty electrons coming out of the campground power source! Dirty power. All systems go. Hydro-hot burner cooking. Heater fans blowing. A lot of space to warm up, but within an hour we were toasty. Life on the road.

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Things not to do while motorhoming…

Well, it’s not like we decided to do it, we certainly didn’t want to do it, but we had to troubleshoot the furnace today. It’s not the first time we’ve had to troubleshoot a furnace. Several years ago, when we had a different motorhome with a propane furnace, it quit and we had to get it fixed. As I recall, a repair guy had to replace the furnace motherboard. Within a couple months it failed again, in a different state, and a repair guy there replaced the limit switch. That took care of it. But this is different. This is a hydro-hot furnace. It runs on diesel. It’s supposed to run on diesel anyway. It has always run on diesel before, but Judy got up at 6 and it was cold in the front room, 55 degrees, so she turned up the thermostat. Nothing. She turned up the bedroom thermostat. Nothing. She got analytical on it. It runs off the same diesel the engine does. She turned on the key and checked the fuel tank. Plenty of fuel. She turned on the hot water (the hydro-hot system serves both the furnaces and the hot water). The hot water was hot. She ran the water for a few minutes. It stayed hot, so she knew the problem wasn’t the hydro-hot burner, but some control that triggers the furnaces. She got out the manual for the hydro-hot. No help. She went outside and looked in the cabinet the hydro-hot lives in. No reset button. Still no heat. Can’t turn on the heat pumps; they don’t work at all below freezing and really don’t do much until the outside temperature warms up toward the forties. She turned on the little electric space heater in the front room and came back to bed. After she warmed up, we both got up. We flipped any breaker in the control box that looked like it might help. Nothing. It’s getting colder. It’s snowing outside. Checked out the electrical status display. It said we had an open ground on the 30 amp shore power. That shouldn’t affect the furnace; it runs on 12 volts. It shouldn’t be the electrical power; everything else in the coach is on. Of course, if the 120 volt power goes out, the inverter just takes over and runs all the 120 volt stuff off the batteries. That complicates the analysis. Checked the inverter display. It said we had high voltage on line 1. Still shouldn’t affect the furnace, but we’re starting to suspect an electrical supply problem. Let’s bypass the shore power. Turned on the generator. 50+ amps of 240 volt power. No help. One thing left to try. We’re getting error readings on the shore power; let’s disconnect it completely. Victory! That was it! Dirty electrons coming out of the campground power source! Dirty power. All systems go. Hydro-hot burner cooking. Heater fans blowing. A lot of space to warm up, but within an hour we were toasty. Life on the road.
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Silverton

Last weekend we got to drive through Ouray over Red Mountain pass to Silverton to meet with a potential contract auditor. Old mountain mining towns.
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Birders are…

Birders are a strange lot. They get up before dawn and go tramping about while it’s still cold and dark outside. Not the sort of thing we’d normally do. We’re not morning people. Except this morning. Up at 4am. Out of the house by 4:30. At the Gunnison Sage Grouse lek by 5. Park behind the half-wall. Engine off, lights out, don’t leave the car. Blackout and silence. Grouse lek protocol. Its thirty degrees outside. No-one gets to move or make a sound until the grouse leave the lek. They are most active in the hour before dawn. They are disturbed by artificial light and human presence. The males come out of the sagebrush and congregate on the lek, the dancing ground, the bare patch of earth, and do their puffing booming strutting dance. The most impressive males get the females. The display was a long way away, probably three hundred yards, but we have good birding binoculars and a scope we could rest against the partly open window. We got the whole show. Nothing, nothing, nothing, then suddenly at 5:45 a whole group of males broke out in the open in the dimmest light and began their strutting. Dancing shadows. The performance got clearer as it got lighter. Puffed up chests, flared tails, bulging air sacs, dancing fools. Suddenly, at 6:15 it was over. The birds just flew away to the sage highlands. Done for the day. They will be done for the season soon. Breeding season only lasts six weeks. They’ll be done by mid-May. A life bird. The Gunnison Sage Grouse. Very limited range; a tiny spot in Colorado. Not many people get to see them, maybe a few hundred a year. When we were sure Elvis had left the building, we started up, warmed up, and left. Back to the coach by seven. Gone from Gunnison by nine, at the Russell Stover Candy Factory Store in Montrose by eleven, and set-up in Ridgway State Park eating lunch by noon.