RV Home Automation
I have always been interested in Home Automation and in fact when we still owned a sticks and bricks home I had created a fairly sophisticated system there incorporating power monitoring, light control, climate, landscape watering, and security. Soon after we started full timing I had a discussion with a friend about a system that could allow you to remotely monitor temperature inside the RV for piece of mind when pets are left inside during day trips. That discussion started me thinking about how I could do the same thing myself and what other features I might want to include. The lockdowns for the COVID-19 pandemic gave me time to start looking into all this.
…
Tankless (On-Demand) Water Heaters
Let me say up front, I’m not an expert on RV water heaters. 99% of my experience is based on using our Truma AquaGo Comfort Plus system while living and travelling full time in our RV for the past 3 years. We mostly stay in parks with full hookups but do stay in parks without sewer several times a year. We rarely dry camp. How we camp definitely affects our attitudes toward tankless. The Truma AquaGo systems are arguably some of the best you can buy and the Comfort Plus model is the best of the best, but they are also some of the most expensive. For this post I’m talking mostly about hot water for fifth wheels and travel trailers. Large class A rigs may have other options (Oasis and Aqua Hot for instance) including those that run on Diesel or other fuels that are beyond the scope here.
Recently there have been a lot of questions on RVillage and Facebook about tankless water systems and whether someone should upgrade. Everyone has their opinion and there is both good information and bad that people share. To write this post, I’ve tried to capture a lot of the feedback other RVers have shared along with some information from the manufacturers and of course my own preferences and opinions. Hopefully, you will find this information helpful but I warn you – I’m biased based on how we use our RV and the heater we have. We love our Truma system!
…
Winter Camping – Lessons Learned (Revisited)
)As I write this we are on the 8’th day of extreme winter weather in North East Texas. During this week, we’ve had temperatures below 0°F (-5°F at the nearby airport) and it has snowed multiple times resulting in about a foot of total snowfall. At 201 hours below freezing, we beat the prior record in this area which was set sometime in the late 1800’s. While I realize many people from the northern states will say, so what – we get that all the time – I have lived in Texas for most of my life and I can tell you this much snow and the low temperatures is very unusual for this part of the country. We just don’t have the infrastructure to deal with it as well as other states might.
Bleeding the Brakes
While repacking the wheel bearings, we found a leaking brake caliper. At the same location the brake pads also showed some signs of damage with a portion of the brake pad missing. It’s not clear if that was from something like a rock being kicked up into the area or possibly from the leaking brake fluid getting on the lining.
Although it is usually somewhat easy to replace the brake piston seal and dust seal after honing out the cylinder to remove any places that might be causing the leak we decided to just replace the caliper (Kodiak part number DBC-338-HD-E). Replacing the caliper is much quicker and easier than servicing the original and if you include seals and a set of new brake pads the total cost wasn’t much different since the caliper came with pads.
…