Dear RV friends,
Very sorry for my disappearing act after all the generous help I received. As soon as the problem got resolved, I headed off-grid into the boonies for boon docking.
I am quite embarrassed to give a report on what I’ve learned. It seems there was much less or much different a problem than what I first reported, born out of a bunch of separate ignorances colliding at once.
Firstly, the seller of the RV had told me (and later doubled down) that the propane detector light should always e a solid green. I took that as on authority, and it was even confirmed by google searches whereby people spoke of the continually-flashing-green-light as an indication that it wasn’t receiving a clean signal. This mixed with the fact that the heater was intermittently putting out actual heat (and not just reg’lar air) allowed me to assign the blame to the green light issue. Which in turn I thought must have something to do with the change in house batteries that happened just before I left for my trip. Additionally there was the fact that both the fan and light in the bathroom were not working. AND the fridge/freezer seemed…temperamental/unpredictable/unreliable. All of this I assigned to the blinking green light as source.
Well, here’s what I got wrong. Firstly, I was assured by forum people that the flashing green light is the norm. That was interesting. Okay. But what about, say, the fridge issue? It was suggested that the….fridge fritz phenomena…was caused by the fact that I was turning the propane on and off (suggested by the seller, to save money). In fact when I didn’t turn it on and off, there were no lulls in its effectiveness. And what about the bathroom light/fan? Simple: there is a small separate switch that turns on the bathroom power, a switch the owner must have turned off after his demo, and I never paid mind to it afterwards. Finally, what about the heat? I am still not sure about that one. It was definitely not giving heat (mostly) when I was camped at the cold, cold desert my first two days on the road. Later, when I didn’t actually need it due to warmer climes, the times I tried it, it worked. So maybe there’s still an issue there, maybe it can’t actually cough up heat in certain temps?, which is frustrating and mysterious.
So you see, much of the various inputs from you all have been wrong-headed, due to my initial wrongheadedness regards diagnosis and lack of bird’s eye comprehension. It was a real relief to understand the problem was not as bad and unsolvable as I originally thought. But I feel stupid for wasting you guys' times. I really appreciate the attempts to help though.
Merry Christmas to all!
