Sunday, January 18, 2015: After our problem with the leaking pipe I decided to get out the water pressure regulator I purchased several years ago. When you click the photo you'll see the source of the water supply and also see the pressure regulator at the faucet. Apparently these are very old and don't work any longer. The dial on my pressure regulator shows a pressure of 80+ before I made an adjustment down to 50, 40 when the water is running, on my regulator. I believe I will leave the pressure regulator attached. This is my first time to use it but now, after the water leak, I'm thinking the pressure regulator should always be attached to the hose.

Thursday: January 15, 2015: Last night the ground fault interrupt(GFI) in the bathroom activated for no apparent reason. I walked into the bathroom and immediately smelled the odor of melted plastic so I began looking at the circuit breakers but soon discovered the odor was coming from the lavatory cabinet. There was only ONE receptacle attached to the cabinet. I soon learned this was the GFI which had activated and this was where the odor was coming from. I saved more investigation until this morning when I found why the receptacle had an odor. For some reason, one of the terminals overheated. There was no reason that I could find for this to happen. I can only hope it was a loose wire or faulty receptacle So I've replaced the receptacle Click the photo for a view of the new GFI.

I often joke that RV stands for "repair vehicle". After owning four RVs I'd have to say, if you aren't a "handy-person", you better have a big budget for repairs to your RV. Something is always going wrong. I've only owned non-motorized RVs but I would bet, an RV with a motor (motor home) must multiply the number of repairs by five. Just saying ....

Thursday, January 8, 2015: Today I replaced the ball which supports the "Sway Control" bar for my travel trailer (bolted to the frame). I broke it off weeks ago when I disconnected from the trailer then let the trailer down without adjusting or removing the Sway Control Bar. That put all the trailer weight onto this bar as I let down the tongue jack. The bolts broke from the frame. I simple redrilled the holes, replaced the stripped bolts and it's ready to go again. I'll tell you, the "Sway Control Bar" is a JOKE anyway. Draw Tite and other manufacturers of this type of hitch want you to think it works but it's a JOKE, especially for a trailer of this weight. Click the photo for a close view of the ball connected to the frame. So this is a good time to begin a related topic:

Why the purchase of the Alumascape was a MISTAKE!

I purchased the "27 foot" Alumascape with the assumption that it would be easier to pull than my 36 foot fifth wheel because it is 7,000 lbs lighter than the fifth wheel. I assumed better gas mileage because of less wind resistance and the lighter weight. I assumed easier and more relaxed driving because it's lighter weight and shorter. All those assumptions were wrong. Before I get into WHY they are wrong, I'll say that the quality of the Alumascape is superb. The quality is equal to or better than the quality of our fifth wheel so that hasn't been a disappointment. So where have my assumptions failed? This trailer is NOT easier to pull than my fifth wheel which is 7,000 lbs heavier. Yes, it is lighter, so my truck has an easier time towing the weight uphill but because it is a "bumper pull", it is far more difficult to steer. Because the hitch is located behind the rear bumper, EVERY little side wind (from a cross wind, passing car, passing semi-truck) tries to push the truck (our tow vehicle) in one direction or another and I must react immediately (or anticipate) to overcome the side force. This doesn't happen with the fifth wheel because it hitches slightly forward of the rear axle. There is a "fancy" Hensley hitch manufactured to "move the hitch point forward", but it's $3,000 and I have no idea if it really works. The "sway control" does LITTLE to eliminate these side forces. Additionally, because of the hitch point on my 36 foot fifth wheel, I have MORE maneuverability in backing or turning around. I can turn my fifth wheel around on a two lane road. I can't do that with a bumper pull. The trailer measures 27.5 feet from tip to tip and ALL 27.5 feet trails behind the rear bumper of the truck. The living space of the trailer, then, is 25.5 feet since we lose at least 2 feet to the hitch up front. A 27.5 foot fifth wheel would have 27.5 feet of living space and only 22.5 feet is trailing behind the truck since 5 feet is over the bed of the pickup. Better fuel mileage? WRONG assumption, if we get any better mileage, it's not more than 1 mile to the gallon. To sum up, the bumper pull trailer is MORE difficult to tow for many reasons that the fifth wheel. The bumper pull does not save fuel. The total tow-vehicle-trailer length is longer than the tow-vehicle-fifth-wheel length. The fifth wheel has more storage space and living space is from tip to tip where the bumper pull loses at least the first two feet. A better choice would have been a 25.5 foot fifth wheel (the same amount of living space as in the 27.5 foot Alumascape). Would we have been able to get a fifth wheel for the same price we paid for the Alumascape? Maybe, all we needed to find was a seller as motivated as the Alumascape owner. Now, having said ALL that, I know your are thinking ... why not SELL the Alumascape and buy a fifth wheel. We MAY do that but that means the transfer of the solar system AGAIN and I haven't been able to get my head around that yet! I DO expect to get MORE for the Alumascape than we paid for it since we've spent a lot of time and effort improving it.

Having said all that, when we towed a 21 foot Aerolite behind our Dodge Durango, the negatives about tow handling were not as noticable. Perhaps that's because it weighed only 2,800 lbs fully loaded. If you don't own a pickup, you have no choice.

Tuesday, January 6, 2015: Gwen discovered wet carpet. Fortunately I brought our little shop vacuum to clean the car. It also will vacuum water from a carpet. Next, where is the water coming from. I know about the spaghetti mess of pipes and wires below one of the drawers in the bathroom. I remove the door and see a wet floor but struggle to find where the water is coming from. I removed the electrical panel to get a better view, dried everything, turned the water back on, then found a slow lead in the "T" at the top of the spaghetti mess. It could have been in a much worse location. So now I need to replace the "T". I'm preparing to go the the RV store, 15 miles away when I remember the RV repairman in our park. Perhaps he has the parts I need which would save me the trip to the RV store. I met Marv working on a solar installation. He had the parts I needed but they weren't the thread-on style that I could install, they required special compression tools. I decided to let him install the "T". Click the photo to see a close up of the "T" needing replacement. Notice the sediment on the left side of the "T". I suspect it has been leaking for a while. Now, click here to see the replacement "T" installation completed by Marv. Marv charged me $48 for the 15 minutes it took to change the "T". I'd guess that's $100 per hour after subtracting the cost of the parts. Note the brass fitting and compression fittings. This is better than the original factory installation and much better than what I could have done with the threaded fittings.

Sunday, September 28, 2014: We are about to leave Oregon for as much as six months so that calls for cleaning the carpet in the Great Blue Heron Edition before we go. We purchased this little "Green Machine" about two years ago and it does an "OK" job of cleaning the carpet. It's really designed to clean up spot problems but the whole trailer carpet is about the size of a "spot" in a normal house. It's hard to imagine trying to clean the trailer carpet with a normal size cleaner. Note the brush marks in the carpet behind the Bissell cleaner. Those will vacuum out and the carpet will smell nice and clean when finished.

Tuesday, September 16, 2014: I solved a problem today that has been plaguing me since the installation of solar on the Alumascape. The short version of the story ... we can now plug in the entertainment center directly into the outlet behind the center while on solar power.

The long version of the story: Every RV comes with a "converter". The job of a converter is to convert AC shore power (when plugged into electricity at an RV park) to DC power to run everything which is DC in the RV (lights, some electronics). It also charges the batteries. The converter in the Alumascape (as compared to the one in our fifth wheel) is very poor when it comes to charging the batteries. It's essentially a trickle charger so next to useless when you need a "quick charge". When installing solar I also installed an "inverter" which converts DC power to AC power so AC appliances can be used when parked in the wilderness. This AC power connects to the AC system of the trailer which means it also connects to the converter. Now we have a loop. The solar panels are charging the batteries. The battery power passes through the inverter into the AC system. The AC system using the converter is also trying to charge the batteries. So the batteries are discharging to the converter and the converter is trying to charge the batteries ... we have a loop. In the fifth wheel the converter it totally separate and plugged into an outlet. To keep the loop from happening in the fifth wheel, I just unplug the converter when on solar power. Unfortunately the converter in the Alumascape is located in the AC circuit breaker box as a one piece unit. So the circuit breaker to the converter must be turned off to keep the loop from happening. That circuit breaker also sends power to the entertainment center and the bedroom so when on solar power, I had to run an extension cord to the entertainment center, very inconvenient. Last night, in a half dream state, I began going over that problem again and wondered how I would have wired the converter to a circuit breaker if I wanted to share that breaker with the bedroom circuit. I know RV makers want to do things as simply as possible so my answer was ... they connect TWO wires to ONE breaker. One wire goes to the converter and the other to the bedroom circuit. This was pure speculation on my part. Today I took the cover off the circuit breaker panel and popped out the circuit breaker for the bedroom circuit. YIKES! I was correct! Two wires going to that breaker. I disconnected the converter wire and moved it to the circuit I had installed for the bathroom heater. After all, I won't be using an electric heater when on solar power so that breaker won't be used when on solar, only when connected to shore power. Now I have power to all trailer circuits when on solar. Why didn't I think of this last year?

Monday, January 13, 2014: It's a tradition for us to have Sergio (or his crew) clean our RV when visiting Yuma. He's always done a good job in the past and usually a good price. But this time I'm not so sure. He gave us a decent price quote but then raised the price to do a "de-oxidation" of the front and rear fiberglass caps. For a ten year old RV, I knew the front and rear caps had some oxidation but was pessimistic about the success Sergio would have in getting it back to a "new" condition but I agreed to the new price anyway hoping it would work. I sat outside to watch them work, both to learn how to do it if I needed to try it myself and to make sure these guys worked hard for my money. The crew started out at five workers, one using a pressure washer on the roof first then around the sides. Other workers used brushes on a handle to wash the sides before the power rinse. That's about the time Sergio wanted to de-oxidize the caps because they would not polish with wax. I watched one worker use a de-oxidize chemical at least three times on the rear cap before returning to wax. It did work to remove much of the oxidation. I did some laundry during the front cap so I don't know how many times the crew member worked the front cap before applying the wax. The results are good but not perfect, maybe that's all can be expected for ten year old fiberglass. My evaluation is that the Great Blue Heron Edition looks the best it ever has but I'll bet the guys back in Sutherlin would do this job for about the same price, we'll see. The interesting thing about having a vehicle or RV washed in Yuma is that those doing the wash must bring their own water. Tap water has so many dissolved solids that when dry, the film remaining on the vehicle is as bad or worse than a dirty vehicle.

Tuesday, January 7, 2014: The stove top came with the Alumascape along with a convection oven/microwave. The display on the microwave never worked and finally died last week. We had already been looking for a range which includes an oven. Both the microwave and convection oven draw too much current to use while boondocked. We needed an oven. Checking prices in Quartzsite and Yuma showed starting prices at $475 for the cheaper model. Gwen happen to find the same model as the stove top on eBay which I won the bid for only $163. Since it was the identical model, it was easy to install and works perfectly. We lost the storage space blow the stove top but I'm expecting wonderful things from the oven. Click the stove top photo to see the new range.

Saturday, December 28, 2013: Today was a time for a few repairs. One of those repairs was to replace the shower curtain. These small travel trailers are not designed for extended living like the 2 - 6 month trips we plan. Having said that, it's mostly the little things in this Alumascape which are failing. The shower curtain is one of those small things. We have a glass shower door in our Cameo but the Alumascape is a plastic curtain which is beginning to crack. Gwen wanted a simple shower curtain. I purchased the liner, Gwen will chose the decorative curtain to add later. I also wanted a grab bar. The step down from the tub puts the shower-taker off balance so a grad bar is helpful. Click the photo to see the new liner and grab bar.

Friday, November 8, 2013: Today was the first service for our new Prius. Toyota maintains the prius for two years then we must take over. I went to the local Toyota dealer, Clint Newell in Roseburg but there was some confusion. The service representative told me, "no oil change until 10,000 miles", however, an oil change was shown on the invoice. I'm thinking Toyota was charged for an oil change when I didn't really get one so I called the service department and was told they were "training a new cashier and she entered the wrong codes". Additionally, I was told the car had been washed but later saw it was NOT washed. I called service to report this error also. Now I'm wondering about trying a different Toyota service department next time.

Gwen and I bought a new carpet and three drawer cabinet for the Alumascape. We both think this will help it feel more comfortable for our four month trip to Arizona. Click the photo for a larger view.

Thursday, August 1, 2013: On this first day of August, I'm working on a short "to-do" list after our return from our July trip. On the list was to shampoo the carpet which I completed today using our little "Green Machine". Something else I completed today was the installation of an accumulator tank to help stop the surging of the water when using the new pump I installed (below). My friend Ralph gave me the accumulator tank. You can see a short video for installation help here. It was relatively easy to install because I have plenty of room above the hot water heater. Click the photo to see the tank installed. You can see printed installation instructions here.

Monday, July 8, 2013: I've installed several sizes of wire loom to conceal and protect the inverter installation. This looks far cleaner than without the wire loom. Thanks to neighbor Jim who supplied me with the wire loom. Compare to the original wire installation. The plastic box around the inverter still looks funky but I haven't come up with another solution to that. It DID survive the gravel roads in the Deschutes National Forest, so mayby it's not too bad.

Wednesday, July 3, 2013: I mentioned yesterday that I was going to purchase some wire loom to wrap some of the battery and control cables going to the inverter. I actually stopped at an auto parts store to get the loom but they only sold the loom in packages of lengths I didn't want and I didn't want to pay for what I didn't need. I know NAPA, about one mile from Timber Valley sells the loom by the foot. I was intending to visit them today. However, I was visiting our neighbor, Jim, across the street who has just sold his park model and plans to purchase a small motor home. I walked across the street to be sure he knew that Max, another neighbor, had a really nice motor home for sale. During our conversation his wife, Pat, began to laugh about all the stuff they were getting rid of like that "plastic stuff you put around wires". "Say WHAT?! Jim went to his trash can and dug out several different sizes of wire loom, one of the sizes was exactly what I was looking for. This was far more than I was going to buy but now I'll look for other wires to wrap. They also loaded me down with some specialized cleaning supplies for RVs and patriot decorations for the golf cart loaned to us by our friends Don and Irene. We had just visited the dollar store to purchase a few decorations since we plan to participate in the July 4, golf cart parade early tomorrow morning. NOW we have some REAL decorations for the cart. Jim and Pat own a home in southern California and plan to return permanently in about a month so are "dumping" much of the stuff stored for years in their shed (you know how that goes). Morgan is just happy to be in the shade, although the temperature today was seven degrees cooler than yesterday.