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Our New House

It was brought to my attention that we haven’t updated our Blog since 2013. Since we have become stagnant and haven’t really traveled for a while I didn’t have much of interest to post. Not that our life isn’t interesting, there just isn’t much RV Travel going on.

Well recently we have turned another page in our lives. We decided since we like our lifestyle so much that buying a house wasn’t in our plans. However we have pretty much outgrown the RV so…

We bought a Park Model home in the same resort where we have lived for the last 11 years in the motor home. If you are not familiar with a Park Model, it is a small 400 square foot manufactured home. Ours however is a bit more than a simple park model. First off ours is set in the ground so it is ground level, then a 200 square foot addition was added making it 600 square foot overall and the whole thing is stuccoed and the roof is tiled. There is also a 117 square foot building on the property, which serves as a laundry room and a shop. This building is attached to the house by a covered patio with outdoor kitchen. Along with the real residential appliances they topped it off with an air conditioner that can turn the house into a meat locker in the 120-degree Arizona summers. You can see more photos by clicking on the link in the left column.

I have added a link to the photos of our house HERE.

So, although we are keeping the motor home, it looks like we are not Fulltimers anymore.

Best wishes to all our readers and I hope your travels are as enjoyable as ours.

I will leave the Blog up because I know others enjoy reading about our travels.

Friday, February 11, 2011

I thought I was in BIG trouble

Since we are heading for the Las Vegas NASCAR race the first weekend in March, and we are dry camping, I thought I would do a load test on the batteries to see how they will hold up. My method is to shut off the Charger/Converter and turn everything DC on in the motorhome and monitor the DC voltage. All was going well. After about 15 minutes the voltage had dropped to about 12 VDC and held there. Not bad I thought but then I realized I had one more load I hadn’t put on the system, the heater. The heater fan is quite a bit of a load. So I turned on the heater. After a couple of minutes, suddenly everything went dead. Including the AC power. Now I am in BIG trouble, I thought. What did I do! Loosing the DC made some sense but why the AC? I checked the batteries and they were OK. I was thinking, circuit breaker, but where? Then I remembered the Battery Control Center.

I popped the cover off and sure enough there was 2 30-amp circuit breakers. Both were tripped. After resetting them all was well, including the AC voltage. But why the AC I wondered. I got out the manuals and started looking at schematics. Oh Yeah! My motorhome has a Smart Energy Management System.

This unit monitors AC loads and will automatically switch off things like the microwave, air conditioners and other loads to attempt to keep everything within the current available to the motorhome. The loads are switched in and out by means of 12V relays. When I lost the 12 VDC the relays opened and removed the 120 VAC from all the appliances. Another learning experience.


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