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What is this?
If you come to this website, you might be wondering what is going on here. Well first off, welcome to my site. It is a collection of stuff about two primary things, our travels in our RV and about my Role-playing Game hobby, which at this point I am attempting to do some stuff while we traveling.
Last 5 Travel Journal Entries
Solar Panel Reconfigured
I am not sure where to start this one. Seems we had nothing but issues with rack system that we mounted the solar panels on. No matter what we did, the screws kept breaking. We spent an afternoon replacing them in a Home Depot parking lot, only to have the break after a test drive down the road. The road was not rough at all.
So we made the decision to take the whole thing down and we ended up with 600 watts of panels in the bed of the truck for now. I have no idea if that is going to be enough when we stop but for now, it seems to be working. Only future usage will tell us anything.
Broken Screws
One thing for sure, the rough roads in the forest of South of Prescott is not for the trailer. We went to try to find camping near Thumb Butte. To say the least, all the campsites were taken and the road we took around was really rough. It was not until the next day that we noticed that about half the screws holding the solar panel brackets on were broken.
We limped it to North Of Paulden. We managed to get some new screws in. The wife has to go out and get some more washers and screws so we can finish the repair. Needless to say we are going to have to watch them and see if we can get some less bumpy roads.
At this time, we think we are going to just write off all the sites south of Prescott. For whatever reason, they are always taken and even with the newer smaller RV, the sites are really small and hard to get into. I think they were all meant just for tent camping. Even then some of the spots, I do not think I would even want to do if I was only in a car and a tent.
Bad Water Pump
One of the most vital pieces of equipment in any RV is going to be the water pump. Without it, your shower, sink, and toilet are not going to get any water. So much to our surprise and horror, we started having issues with our water pump.
This of course should not have been. This pump is brand new. We purchased it to put in our Cargo Trailer Conversion. It worked normally until we started our summer voyage. The wife just went to use the water and the sink and nothing came out. The pump did not kick on.
This of course meant I had to go through all the electrical connections on the pump. I could not seem to find any reason. There were no loose wires anywhere, until I got to the pump itself.
On a typical water pump for an RV there are two wires, a red and black on that come off it for the positive and negative side of the DC circuit. The black wire goes to the motor and then the red wire goes to a switch of some sort and then a red wire goes from there to motor. It seems there is a loose connection in that switch.
At first I just giggled the wire and the motor came back on. I tried to see if I could seat it and it came on and stayed on. But after a 2nd move, it did it again. I again played with the wire and got it work off and on. This meant only one thing. We needed a new pump ASAP.
If we were not on the road, this is where I would have just taken the pump out and sent it back for warranty work. This was not an option here. Luckily were were able to find a pump at RV supplier near us. It was about $20 more than we would have paid online but that supplier is really nice and they have a free water and dump station that we have used a lot, so we felt justified spending the extra money.
Installing the new pump was a little tricky since there was water in the system. Luckily with the way the fresh water tank is, we were able to plug outlet hole, while I replaced the pump. There was minimal water loss. Which is a good thing when you are boondocking.
The new pump is a louder than the other one. Not sure why that is.
We do plan on sending the bad pump back to the maker for warranty repair that way we have a spare. Not sure yet were we are going to be having them send it back to. That is a problem for another day.
UPDATE
The water pump maker just had me send them photos and the receipt for the pump. They then did a good will replacement and are just going to ship me a new pump. At this time, I am having it sent to my sister's place until we come back next fall.
Almost On The Road Again
After a few months of being in on place and finishing up our new trailer, it is almost time to be on the road once again.
We still have to help out family with a little project and then head into Phoenix and get a few things done before we finally head up northern Arizona in by next weekend.
It is both scary and exciting to be able move around again. The real fun of course will always be finding a dump and fresh water. Last go around, that was one of the bigger issues. Still, I think we know how we are going to try to handle that.
At any rate, we should be in Phoenix by Wednesday. Since we need supplies and things, that is going to be a full day.
Propane Update
I have to say we just re-filled the propane on a whim. Good thing we did. We had to fill our 30 pound tank (7 gallons) with 6.8 gallons of propane two days ago. Which means we only made it 61 days with last propane fill. Which is about 21 day less than I was thinking with our last fill. Which means right now we are averaging about 10.8 days per gallon. On the last tank we averaged only about 8.7 days a gallon.
All of which means on the new trailer, which will have a 20 pound tank which is about 4.7 gallons. We will need to refill about every 6 weeks. I would say we should fill once a month if we have only one tank.