As I approach 11 years of RVing, I’ve heard lots of things said about what you should or shouldn’t do, or explanations of a particular problem that have been passed along and accepted as truth. The problem is many of them aren’t much more than Old Wives’ Tales, or are so far removed from the…
Author: Dave
Cleaning 240,000 miles and 13 years of dirt off the ceiling
It didn’t look that dirty for the most part when I got it, but I knew it wasn’t the cleanest. The ceiling just had a slight grey hue, and if you took something down (like I did with the kitchen remodel), you could see a definite difference in color. Some of that was yellowing, which…
Putting things back together
Since there was so much stuff out of the way, it seemed like a good time to get rid of some nasty looking wallpaper in the bedroom. Every attempt at cleaning got a little dirt off, but it just never looked clean. A few coats of primer and paint can’t hurt. Here’s what it looked…
Getting things dried out…
So I left off last time with a little bit of carpet pulled up, and an idea of what I was dealing with. I needed to remove the side wall of the bed platform, which was a quick task of just removing a few screws. After (mostly) finishing draining the tank next to all of…
Drip, Drip, Drip…
You never want to hear the water pump cycle on when no one is using water. There’s only one thing it could be…a leak. Now we aren’t talking about something every few minutes, or even every few hours. It was more like once every few days, but I knew I had a leak.
My FoodSaver turns 25, and fixes the Air Conditioning
With anything I carry in the RV, it’s nice when it can perform more than one function. Such is the case for my FoodSaver vacuum sealer–it gets used regularly preparing food for the freezer, and for cooking sous vide. But it also falls in the “tool” category as well. How’s that? Well, it’s actually a…
Replacing PowerTech Generator Mounts
Last time, I briefly mentioned that the mounts on my generator were in need of replacement. You can see in the picture below that the rubber had deteriorated quite a bit, and was an oozy, greasy mess. PowerTech sells a replacement mount for my generator, but at over $60 each, plus shipping, I felt it…
More 12-volt Tweaks — Computer Power Supply
I mentioned last time that I wasn’t happy with the efficiency of the 12V power supply I installed for running the lights, water pump, furnace, and a few other smaller items. How bad was it? Well, putting out 2 amps at 12.3V, it was drawing 52W from the wall outlet. That’s less than 50% efficiency,…
Cooking at the HDT Rally
It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything non-technical, and needed to share a few notes from a cooking seminar–geared toward cooking healthy foods in small spaces–I presented at the National Heavy-Duty Truck Rally in Hutchinson, Kansas a couple of weeks ago. First, let me start by saying that I’m no chef, by any stretch…
More Electrical Changes
Last time I talked about this project, I left you hanging with the lead acid batteries from the old house power system gone, and the generator connected to the chassis batteries. But I didn’t have anything hooked up to power the remaining 12V house loads–things like the furnace, water heater, water pump, slide out motor,…