happy2rv
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Re: My prediction for the future..
Unless/until a lot of them hit the repossession market, I wonder how low the prices will go. A lot of people are going to be in a position where they can't afford to keep and and can't afford to sell it... Travel trailers financed for 10 years and motor homes financed for 15-20 years, bought at inflated prices mean that, even at current market prices, they will have to bring large sums to the bank to go with what they can sell it for just to pay off the note. I predict the repo market will get very hot in a couple of years. Not sure if/how many banks do short sales on RVs, but I doubt its an option for most. What's going to be interesting is when the new market "bubble" bursts. Obviously when new prices fall, used will have to follow unless new construction quality falls. But its hard to imagine new construction quality falling from where its been for the last few years. Like the housing market, now is the time to sell unless you need to replace. Haven't done much real research because I'm not ready to trade, but my year/model TT is listing on RV Trader for more than I paid for it 3 1/2 years ago. In a few years, I'll be ready to go back to a class A, hopefully we'll be able to trade for reasonable values by then. Until then, we'll hold on to our current TT.184Views0likes0CommentsRe: LED Ceiling Lights
Agree with others regarding swapping incandescent lights in place of LEDs. You would need to carefully assess the wire size, fuse size, and heat resistance. If you can find a make or model of the fixture you have it might help. LEDs come in a variety of colors and brightness ratings. However, finding something that would adapt to your existing fixture or be a drop in replacement may be more difficult. Dimmers are an option for some, but not all LED fixtures, but it may be difficult to install a dimmer or dimmers depending on how easy it is to access your wiring. You might be able to install dimmers at the wall switch location depending on how many fixtures you have on a switch and what type of switches you have. In our travel trailer, I moved the over the bed reading lights down below the bedside cabinets and replaced them with different fixtures and dimmers, but these would look quite out of place in the middle of the ceiling.1.3KViews0likes0CommentsRe: Refrigerator temp
Lots of factors affect cooling. Is the RV in direct sunlight? Is there any way to shade at least the side the fridge is on? How old is the RV/Fridge? How much has it been operated off level? Running off level doesn't necessarily result in immediate catastrophic failure, but the more it happens, the more damage that's done. Are the outside vents top and bottom clear and free of any debris? As others have suggested, fans in the outside compartment may help. Fans inside the refrigerator can help with even distribution. It's not at all uncommon to have trouble keeping it below 40 with gas absorption refrigerators. Shouldn't be a problem, but more often than not it is, especially in the heat of the day. Many people resort to putting a jug or jugs of water in the freezer at night and moving them to the refrigerator during the day. Again, shouldn't be necessary, but may help. I have to say, I don't miss RV style fridge. When we got our current TT with residential refrigerator, I was worried about batteries lasting during travel, but that hasn't been an issue so far.1KViews0likes0CommentsRe: Smelly RV propane detector
linfrye wrote: after a heavy rain this week, I detected a funny smell that seems to be coming from my propane detector. Is it a musty smell? How long after the rain? I'd search for damp/wet musty or molded wood. I can't think of a reason, aside from possible burnt electronics smell if something broke, that a smell would come from the propane detector. I suppose its possible an electrolytic capacitor in the propane detector could have ruptured and could theoretically emit a smell. It shouldn't take much effort to remove the propane detector and check it out outside the RV. As others have already indicated, if its the original detector, it should be replaced anyway.293Views0likes0CommentsRe: Samsung RF18 Fridge
RedRollingRoadblock wrote: Whiskey River wrote: OK thanks all. I will try what opnspaces posted from the Samsung website. I tried flipping the circuit breaker to the fridge, but that did not work. Don't know how the wiring works, but the invertor sent power to the fridge and it kept working. Its wired someway that the fridge works while driving down the road. The tow vehicle keeps the battery charged and the invertor keeps power to the fridge. I assume to make that stop, I need flip the circuit breaker to the Invertor and then pull the 15 or 20 amp fuse to the invertor. To complicated. I just want to shut off the fridge and still have power in the rig... Interesting about the inverter. Turning the breaker off should kill the refer weather the inverter is on or off. Maybe check that the refer breaker actually controls it. Wouldn't be the first time the factory monkey screwed something up. How about just unplugging it if the plug is accessible? Probably not the way most of the factory inverters are installed. They act kind of like a computer UPS. The breaker feeds the inverter and the inverter feeds the refrigerator and possibly a few other outlets. When the AC from the breaker cuts off either by the breaker being tripped or turned off or from the shore power being disconnected, the inverter switches over to battery and keeps things working.1KViews0likes0CommentsRe: Samsung RF18 Fridge
Unfortunately, I'm not familiar with the Solitude, but if the inverter is installed behind a panel, there is almost certainly a remote on/off switch somewhere inside. I saw a post on a Grand Design forum that the switch for other models is located "under the cabinet where the main panel is located". Not sure exactly what that means though. Also unfortunately, they don't always label them real well. It's usually a toggle switch and often has the brand name of the inverter like MAGNUM ENERGY or XANTREX on the surrounding faceplate. Hopefully someone more familiar with the Solitude will chime in.1KViews0likes0CommentsRe: Samsung RF18 Fridge
The inverter should have an on/off switch on it or a remote on/off switch. You may or may not need to flip the breaker in the load center in addition to turning the inverter off. What model of RV? Our Hemisphere has the inverter installed in the "outside" compartment (really just under the bed). It has a button on it to turn switch it on and off. When its on, it will automatically switch between 120V AC when it is available and providing inverter power from the battery when it loses AC.1KViews0likes0CommentsRe: Neutral lines reversed
As time2roll suggested, please post the model of surge protector and exactly which lights or message it was providing. Bottom line, if your surge protector isn't "happy" with the power, yes it's a big deal. Some problems have more potential to do great harm than others, but all issues should be resolved. As others have indicated, 50A service has 1 Neutral, 1 Ground, and 2 110V lines. It's not possible for both to be reversed, but it is possible for L1 and neutral or L2 and neutral to be reversed. If this is what was being indicated, it is a potentially dangerous situation, in terms of threat to life and damage to equipment, for several reasons.564Views0likes0CommentsRe: Battery isolation switch
The battery disconnect is used when you put your RV in storage. There are always "parasite" (some intentional, some not) that will drain the battery when its not hooked up to shore power. For instance, you should have a propane alarm and a carbon monoxide alarm. These will always be on if the battery is connected this is by design. Other things like the radio if its equipped, monitor panel, etc... can also drain small amounts of power. If you are storing the RV without shore power, you definitely want to switch the battery off. Even if you have shore power available, you may want to switch the battery off and hook up a battery maintainer instead of keeping the entire RV powered up when its not being used. There are several reasons for this. First, the stock power converter / chargers tend to be poor battery maintainers and tend to over charge the batteries. Second, unless you flip the breakers off, when you hook up to shore power, everything is powered up. This means more wear and tear and chance for surges or lightning strikes hitting all of your appliances and TVs. Dueeast wrote: Does it have an impact when having my fridge running off electric, then disconnecting electric and have the fridge automatically run on propane? Thanks. I just don't want the fridge to try to run on 12v dc This really isn't related to the refrigerator specifically. Depending on what type of refrigerator you have, it may or may not be able to run entirely on 12V. Given you referenced propane, I will assume you don't have a residential compressor type refrigerator. So, that leaves 2-Way or 3-Way RV refrigerators. A three way can run entirely off of 12V, but typically not very efficiently. The refrigerator will have a switch on it to select a specific mode of operation AC/propane/Auto for 2-Way or AC/DC/propane/Auto for 3-way. If you set it to Auto, it will run on propane when AC isn't available. As WayneAt63044 indicated, these types of refrigerators always need 12V for the control board to function. This is typically a small current draw compared to actually running the heating element on 12V. As Wayne also indicated, when you plug into shore power, the converter will provide 12V to power everything that operates at 12V and charge the battery.186Views0likes0CommentsRe: Electrical Issues on new travel trailer
First, welcome to the forum. Hopefully all the negative responses don't scare you away. There are many people here who are genuinely interested in helping but there are many others who look for any excuse to put others down or show their "superiority". As others have said, some in less polite ways, if someone else provided an RV plug that fit your trailer, a campground for instance, they have some explaining to do and possibly some liability. If you installed it yourself or used an existing plug of unknown origin, you've probably learned a valuable lesson. We all make mistakes and hopefully learn from them. So, now to tackle some of your questions. There will almost certainly be damage to the electrical system, especially if you saw/smelled the "magic" smoke escaping. The extent is the question. The full extent may take a while to know because some damage will show up as immediate failures and other failures may be delayed. Methodical testing is the best path forward. If you're not comfortable testing, you may need to get a technician to check things out. You indicated that "much later there was another pop and then the microwave, A/C and TV turned on." That being the case, they don't appear to have suffered instant failure. How were they being powered when they came back on? The microwave and A/C are almost certainly not powered by an inverter, so you must have moved to another outlet? Proper troubleshooting will require opening the main breaker panel in the RV and checking voltages with a voltmeter as well as some knowledge of electrical system. You can do limited testing without doing that. Start with turning off all of the circuit breakers in the RV's electrical panel. Hook up a surge suppressor with indicators to a known good/correctly wired power source and verify the indicators show proper wiring. Turn off the breaker at the hookup and connect the trailer with all of the circuit breakers still off. Once the trailer is plugged in, turn the breaker at the hookup point back on. Assuming it stays on and the surge suppressor still indicates good power, go inside the RV and turn on the main breaker in the RV panel. Check the indicators on the surge suppressor again and verify they are still good. Then one by one step through each circuit breaker turning them on and verifying whether the appliance or outlet they control works. One of the circuits will be your DC converter. This is usually installed behind the RV electrical panel or sometimes it's part of the electrical panel. This converts 110V AC to 12V DC. This is what powers your lights, refrigerator control board, and furnace among other things. When this is not plugged in, these things run off of the battery. You may or may not have an inverter that provides 110V AC from the batteries for a few plugs and/or refrigerator, depending on the style of refrigerator. The inverter would not power things like the microwave or air conditioning. Damages could be as simple as blown fuses, but if there was smoke, the damage is probably deeper. Verify what works and what doesn't.650Views0likes0Comments
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