Category: RV Help

Recently I had a client say that their fridge wouldn’t run very long on the inverter and several other things weren’t working for long on 12 volts / Coach batteries alone. They also said that they were getting unusual voltage readings on the charging meter, like 0 amps when plugged in.  When I arrived to look things over we looked at the Magnum charging controls inside, which usually show some amperage reading despite the battery charging state.  We eventually walked outside to look over the batteries, mostly due to the odd readings and the customers complaint that they were not getting much life from the batteries. All I can say is that it was a Very good thing that the previous owner had put in sealed Glass Mat batteries. the picture below shows the reason why things weren’t just right. Normally battery terminals do not melt or Glow Red Hot!

Thankfully in part due to the type of batteries and the grace of God, these people didn’t end up being a statistic due to fire or explosion.  This was one of two overheated battery terminals that due to loose connections eventually started to heat up and the battery posts and never got hot enough to cause a fire or explosion of the battery.  Simple periodic maintenance and checking of batteries could have prevented this.

 

With each of our last two trips we have experienced an issue with our gray water tank getting full and not draining normally. The first time was when we had to scoot out of town to get out of the way of hurricane Irma. Over the days of our trip I had closed the gray water valve during transit, then when we got to each of the destinations I would open it every other day, much to my dismay, by the time we reached West Virginia I discovered the tank was full and leaking. The bad part is that the fittings right at the tank were starting to pull loose and draining all over the place! Thankfully it wasn’t the black tank!

I thought the problem was the gate valve because I was having trouble moving it via the cable connected to it. Long and short of things is that I had to rearrange some of the plumbing in order to re-seat the drain fitting back in the tank. I also had noticed that there was what almost looks like Grits on the ground where the tank had drained out.  I thought maybe it was something that had been ground up in the disposal in the kitchen sink, like egg shells.

NOW much to my dismay I think I have discovered that since the cable to the gray tank broke a month or so ago, (right at the end of the handle) I installed an external valve until I could get a new cable controlled valve and the time to install it with travel plans ahead of us. Now that we have arrived in Petoskey Michigan, we are experiencing the same issue with the gray tank not draining! Well that is except to leak from the overfilled shower drain etc. and with the gray valve full open, despite the broken control cable!

So I disassembled the gate /  drain valve thinking the issue was there again, and having most of the tank draining onto the driveway, I found what looks like about 2 pounds of this grit!  I have not done an analysis of the grit or anything, but I think what I am seeing here is the result of having the gray valve open for months at a time, allowing calcium and other deposits to form and collect in the tank. My thinking is that when we hit the road with sloshing and vibration the grit comes loose.

So I discovered with a bit of research that for one, the ground egg shells are collecting in the tank, along with calcium or other deposits, then when its time to drain the tank after a couple of days the sludge if you will goes straight into the drain system and clogs things up! Well I now believe that this video I found below has VERY GOOD ADVICE! Please take time to review it and adjust your long term tank maintenance routine.

I found a great video related to this issue, not naming the grit, but naming the problems!

RVTravel Gray Tank Info Video

 

Do you  have wax film and water spots and other crud that Just doesn’t seem to clean off the windshield and it’s looking cloudy?

I tried something a little different today and found that it did a fantastic job of cleaning the windshield!

With a little effort and I mean a little effort,  Not a ton of hard work and hours, using the product pictured here did wonders for getting the glass clean and new looking.

Try it for yourself and let me know what you think.

(PS original post was Typo laden using my cellphone to post info.)

Says “Heavy Duty Removes burned on foods”, it works great on water spots and Bugs too! 🙂

Well I let my sacrificial anode rod in my water heater go a lot longer than I should have, which can lead to early failure of the water heater or internal components and the tank rusting out.  So I let it go about 18 months or so and it should have been done at about 1 year.  The photo here show a new one on the left and my nearly non-existent one on the right.

I can only attribute the extended life to the fact that I have a complex water filter system in place that eliminates a lot of chlorine, calcium, and other crud but none the less it doesn’t eliminate all of the stuff that can cause problems in the water heater.  Simply put it’s best not to put off a simple and cheep annual maintenance item that could lead to costly repairs.

So if you have a Suburban brand water heater in your RV, change the sacrificial anode once a year! If you have a Atwood, they don’t use one because the tank is made of aluminum, and with other types of systems like an Oasis, or Aqua-Hot they need annual maintenance as well. Maintenance that is recommended, is done so to keep things working properly longer, which in the long run means lower costs to you and more enjoyment from your RV.

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OK so usually the waste tank valves can be sticky or binding a bit and sometimes don’t close all the way, all this is fairly normal within reason, and often times these valves will get either easier to use over time as things wear in or harder to use because of things wearing out or binding. What you don’t expect is that with your new RV that you would have clogging issue and valves that simply refuse to close all the way. That is what happened to one of my clients recently.

First off the tank wouldn’t drain even though he had the valve all the way open, I went and investigated only to discover that a major blockage was occurring at the valve, I recommended using Draino and a large quantity of it to clear the blockage. I wouldn’t normally recommend the use of Draino as it isn’t good for  septic systems. 

After several hours the blockage cleared and the owner was able to start using the black tank again. With one exception that the valve wouldn’t close fully now, they worked with it like that for a couple days until i could get back to help out again. Upon investigation and some pretty smelly work, I opened the belly of the RV and then removed the black tank valve, much to my surprise I saw this Silver object that was sticking into the valve opening. I grabbed it with a pliers and then discover a 6″ crescent wrench that was obviously dropped into the black tank at the factory.

The wrench and valve shown in the picture is what I removed and the shows the damage it did to the black tank valve. Needless to say, things are operating a lot more normally now!

 

After investing a bit of time and effort I finally have the business showing up in a local search on google ! Now all I need is some good honest reviews to help boost my ranking from real customers.

Thanks to anyone willing to post a good review on my behalf, I appreciate the business that many of my friends and neighbors have given me and I hope to serve you with good reliable and timely services.

Thanks Very Much and Happy Camping

Google search listing for Rick The RoVing Tech

Rick

With the help of my client John G.  and his visit to the Tampa RV show where he recommended me to the owner of Boogie Lights as a great installer I am now a distributor of high quality LED lighting products that carry a 3 year warranty.

Look for more information soon on the website!

Happy Camping

Rick

Over the past couple of months I have had people contact me to say that their air conditioner wasn’t working as good as it used to. In two of these cases the owners or family members smoked cigarettes inside the trailer. The result is in the pictures of the cooling coils of the rooftop air conditioner, in one case the unit also had some RV construction debris of foam board insulation collect on the coil first, then the nicotine started collecting dust and crud brought in partly because of a missing air return filter.

Both of the units were just over 6 years old,  and required both vacuuming and chemically cleaning the coils. Needless to say that after they were cleaned the units performed almost as though they were new.

I went to a call for help the other day on a fifth wheel where the owner shared that none of his GFI outlets worked. About a week or so after the initial failure of the GFI, he bypassed the GFI, and he got a shock touching his front door.

He also reported that his neighbor got shocked in a similar way.  He showed me an area where the RV suffered damage from a tire blow out and suspected maybe faulty or damaged writing above that area. We opened it up and didn’t find anything.

Using an ohm meter I discovered the hot or black wire on the load side of the GFI was sorted to ground. I started checking the outside outlet and found no problems there. Asked about any loose outlets the were currently not working. They said there wasn’t any problems they were aware of. We unplugged the fridge thinking maybe something there had shorted to ground. With nothing plugged in and still showing a short to ground I decided to investigate near the blowout damage area again.

This time I went to the exposed wire junction boxes that connect the wires from the stationary part of the RV to the slide out. The was a bit of discoloration on the outside of the two boxes which having road spray isn’t unusual. The first one I opened was clean and in good shape inside. The next one as I started to unscrew the cover I got a face full of brown liquid!

After that I decided to move off to the side a little and finish removing the cover. Which poured out what seemed like about 6 ounces of this brown liquid. After opening the cover completely and inspecting the wires in it and drying them off I went back to my meter to find that the short to ground had gone away.

Come to find out that about 3 weeks ago the owners had a container of iced tea laying on its side in the bottom of the fridge, they discovered  the next day that the lid wasn’t on tight and it had dripped out onto the floor and disappeared. It was shorly after that they started having the problem with me GFI. But failed to tie the two together never suspecting that the iced tea could have gotten into an electrical box and shorted things out.

The shock hazard came from the owner connecting the line and load side wires together at the GFI and removing the surge suppressor which kept tripping because of the short to ground.

The moral of the story is, never bypass a GFI of it or the circuit breaker attached to it keep tripping off. There is a problem and it needs to be found.

Happy Camping and stay safe!

Rick