60s in the day but 20s at night.

Spring is over a week old but it is still winter in Wyoming.  Stopped off at Key Hole Reservoir, it is still frozen even though it is in the 60s during the day.  After the sun sets it gets down in the 20s and 30s.  By the end of April night temps will probably be in the 40s so winter is fading fast.

 



 Here my daughter and her puppies are checking out the lake.  One of her three dogs just had to go on the ice.  He made it off ok, but you never know this time of year.

RV Slide Out Concerns

Our motor home has two slide outs plus automatic stairs.  We were having some work done on our motor home so when we picked it up we asked (ahead of time) for about a half an hour of a technicians time to go over these and other questions we had.

I already knew I needed a spare slide out fuse.  On my panel it looks like a small cube plugged in at the end of the auto fuses.  I also had the owners manual and it covered our main dinette slide out, but it did not cover the bed slide.   I knew the dinette motor was under the dinette slide and its manual crank was behind the drivers seat. So I had the technician walk me through the steps to manually retract in or out the bedroom slide.  Turns out to access it we needed to lift the bed and move some linen and in the middle take out six screws in the middle panel to access the motor.  There is a manual clutch we can hold over and someone can just push in the slide, or put on a ratchet on a nut and crank it in.

The stairs are automatic and I did have an owners manual on them but wanted to talk through the process.  It was helpful, I was reminded once I disengaged the steps I need something to tie them up because they will want to swing out.  Which is good while camping, but to travel I would need to tie them up to be safe on the road.

More tidbits in a future post.

Solar Panels

Finally got our two 100 watt panels up and working.  Since my roof is only 1/8 inch thick I want to make sure I use good fasteners so they stay attached.  These should allow me to run a few nights off batteries with my CPAP and O2 concentrator, without running the generator or plugging in to shore power.

Have a 30 amp controller installed next to our batteries, our panels only put out about eleven amps so we have room to add at least two more panels down the road.  The lights show the batteries and solar panels are working well.  Right now I have both panels going to one 109 amp battery connected directly to my 1000 watt inverter.  This should keep the battery charged daily.  The two panels together can generate up to 10.5 amps an hour back to the battery on a good day.  Currently, my house battery is not tied into the solar I will need to drive or run the generator to recharge it.

 

Had a good scare.  The day after adding the panels and taking the above photo it snowed.  When I went out to check the system the middle light was "orange" this could be a problem!  Then I realized the panels are snow covered!  So, I waited till the afternoon when the sun had melted the panels clear and checked the system all was green!  Lesson learned about reading the panels:)

Wireless Tire presure and temp monitor installed

I had some work done on the motor home so I had them add these screw on sensors over our tire valves.   I now have all six tires being monitored while driving down the road.

I was about 3 miles off the RV shop site and the new in-cab tire monitor went off, so I manually checked the tires saw no problem.   Then slowly drove back to the shop.  The technician had failed to set the temp minimums for the alarm.   So when I left the shop the 33 degree outside temp set off the alarm.  Once this was adjusted I drove it 250 miles with no more problems.

I also learned when you turn on the tire monitor system allow 5 to 10 minutes for the system to measure and average all tires.  Once the system is in sink an there are no problems you can head out on your road trip.  I feel better knowing the system is constantly checking my tires and if pressure or temp goes outside the range we set the alarm goes off.