Category: Updates

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More Air Conditioning….

In my last post, I talked about swapping out a broken air conditioner. The new one is still working and working fine. Since it came with a new white cover, I managed to sell my old cover on FV Marketplace – probably for not enough money ($50) because on the first day of the listing I had 5 or 6 people wanting to buy it. Still, it’s not in the garage taking up space anymore.

While I was dragging the old rear AC out, I noticed just how dirty the evaporator coils were (condenser too). I change the vent filters regularly – and apparently, a lot of dirt gets by them because the evaporator coils were about 25% covered with dirt. I researched and bought some better filters so in a few weeks, I’ll see if they are doing a better job of catching Illinois field dirt. (Update – they do work well)

But back to the story – since the rear AC was that dirty, I figured I better clean the front unit as well. I gathered up my air compressor, the extra water hoses, my electric screwdriver, etc., etc. etc. plus the extension ladder. Whenever I might have to go up and down several times, I would rather use a real ladder instead of dragging things up the ladder on the back of the RV. When I have lots of stuff to take up, I’ll toss it all in a bag, tie a light rope to it, climb up with the rope looped around my arm, and then from the top, pull the bag up. Lots safer than trying to carry stuff up while climbing.

So, I disconnected my forward-looking camera and removed the AC cover. I used the hose the spray out the condenser coil from both sides. The water from there drains out on the roof so it’s not a big deal and I can see how dirty it is (not a lot). Deb tends to run the rear AC more than the front, perhaps that is why. Then I pull the Reflectix off the cold box, remove the screws and open it up. The “cold box” is where air is pulled up from the RV ceiling, pulled through the cold evaporator, and pushed back down into other ceiling ducts and back into the RV. Years ago when we changed from black covers to white, I also put a layer of Reflectix on that box. I figured why put a black cover over the AC which is trying to get rid of heat and why not put an extra layer of insulation over the part of the AC that is handling inside, cooled air?  Every  RV  air conditioner  I  have opened up also has this problem.  The wiring is a large rat’s nest right in the airflow.  So I stop and tie-wrap it neatly tuck in\t out of the way.  The next thing I found is the foam separator that is supposed to keep the warm room air on one side of a divider and the cooled air from the evaporator on the other side, which has two gaps about 4 inches wide that are missing.  So more foam and some aluminum tape to seal those off.  

Then I closed up the cold box, retaped the Reflectix, and installed the cover – wait – they put two foam pieces in the back of the cover so hot air exiting the condenser coils can’t recirculate back around the coil.  And, the foam they use isn’t UV resistant, so it’s pretty much dust after 5 years, so I cut and installed new foam, then the cover, reconnected my forward-looking camera – and all done.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, we have been selling and giving away stuff by the truckload.  We hope to sell next spring – so much stuff collected in 50 years!!!

mike

 

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Back Home (sort of) in Illinois

We planned 5 days to get home – and pushed the trip into 4 to get back before the bad weather. We ended up taking the north route AZ to Albuquerque, NM to Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, and finally Illinois. We saw lots of grass fires and were bored out of our skulls crossing Kansas. At one point I said, “If there weren’t all those bugs on the windshield, we’d have nothing to look at!” The new horn button works great – we had one opportunity to use it.  A trailer leaving the campground before us had its entrance door pop open.

The RVIBrake wanted to do an update on the first day – but we didn’t have time to let it happen. The second morning I let it update. In the middle of day 4, the RVIBrake and hub lost pairing – for no good reason. We drove the rest of the way without it as the software pairing routine needed a QR code and my unit was so old it didn’t have one. I wrote RVIBrake and they emailed me a QR code which worked, but no explanation as to why we lost pairing.  

The cold and rain followed us home, and we had a flurry of appointments to take care of the first couple of weeks. We are just about to get back to the house for some more downsizing. But not so fast….. The rear AC quit. Oh, it moved air and the compressor was running, but it didn’t cool. I used to work on ACs, so it didn’t take long to diagnose it was out of freon.  I found the leak. I “can” fix that but I’m not allowed to buy freon without certification which requires having training and expensive recovery equipment they can verify. So, I looked around and found we could wait days after ordering one online. Or we could drive 90 minutes to Pontiac RV and pick one up – just a bit more expensive, but in hand the same day, which we did. The weather didn’t cooperate however and it took several more days before I could work on it.

So, how does one get an 80-pound RV AC 12 feet up onto a class-A roof? Well, either lots of McGyvering or have someone offer to use their front loader. It was still a bit of work because the loader didn’t quite reach, but way more reliable method especially when a couple of other campers volunteered to help.

Before I took the old one down, I documented all the wiring to make sure I could install the new one correctly. It turns out that just four screws hold the AC in place. I found what appears to be a common problem (found this in my previous RV too). All of the wiring for the AC comes out of the roof in the return air portion of the ducting. Often there is a couple of feet of extra wire that is just shoved in there with no attempt to get it out of the air path. I took the time to clean up the wiring before putting it all back together. And I made one mistake. These ACs are often installed with an inside unit instead of being ducted like ours. Thus some if not all the hold-down bolts are put in from the bottom. So this (and my old) AC had four long screws with the front ones running through threaded inserts(normally used for bolts from the bottom) before entering the roof structure. The problem was the screws engaged the insert threads and stopped turning when they hit the insert instead of pulling the AC unit down and compressing the seal. I don’t know why I didn’t realize this when installing, but having done a major job like this, I rehash the process in my mind later. I realized that problem with the screws and went back up the next day. I removed the screws, drilled out the inserts so the screws could turn freely, and reinstalled them. When tightening, they compressed the seal nicely so no leaks in the future.  One last thing, this picture is of the return side of the evaporator.  If you have a removable ceiling cover for the AC, you can see this from the inside.  If you have a ducted system like mine, the only way to see this is to remove the cover and open the “cold side” of the AC.  This is 5 years of dirt, despiting having filters inside on the return air that I cleared periodically. 

While we were here in Illinois the eclipse was coming so we made arrangements to visit friends down in Marion – right on the center line.  The eclipse was spectacular.  I took lots of shots with my camera but forgot to remove the solar filter during totality 8^{  But it was a great experience.  Traffic from central Illinois to Marion and back was the worst we’ve ever seen on I-57.  We spent about half the trip on parallel state roads.  

Also, I bought a Coach Proxy microprocessor.  What is that?  Coach Proxy came out of a group of Tiffin owners.  The microprocessor talks to the Coach’s Spyder system and presents a web page that can be accessed by our phone or computer.  Everything the Spyder system can see or control can be controlled remotely.  The version I bought was new, preconfigured for my 32SA as well as my WIFI (or was supposed to be).  I needed to tweak the config files to get the WIFI up and running.  I used this feature to turn the rear AC on/off while I was on the roof.  The source for the software is available and some people have ported it to other brand RVs but it sounds like a real programming project.  Finally, Coach Proxy users have used a service called NGROK which allows the Coach Proxy to be accessed from the Internet when away from the RV.  I couldn’t get the free version to work.  So I switched to Dataplicity – which some people said worked – nope, no soap at first either.  It was installed and configured and showed up on Dataplicity servers but no communication.  I talked to their support and they gave me one more install command after which things worked.  Their installer assumed a certain piece of software was already installed on the Coach Proxy system.  Now I can turn my ACs on/off, control lights, etc from anywhere on the internet.

Mike