Our RV Adventures

I started on my new AC installation project first calling the office to see if by any change they had a tractor with a front loader on it that I could use to lift the unit up, but no luck with that.

Then I dragged the box from the back seat of the truck and over to the patio. I had already popped the straps and removed the top last night so I could get the instruction booklets out.

There is a small wood pallet underneath the box that I figured was bolted to the bottom of the AC and that I could use to lift the whole thing up on the roof. But as it turned out, everything was just stacked together and held in place by the two straps that I had already cut off to get to the manuals.

Foraging ahead I unboxed everything and turned the unit on its side to check out the control box and how it was wired up.

That’s when I found there was no control box. So then I went round and round with a guy from PPL who said the control box was in the outside unit.  I said “No, it’s not. All I have in the outside unit is a foot long cable with a nine pin connector on it.”

Then he said that then it must in the inside unit. I told him it wasn’t, and that my inside unit had no controls of any kind on it, since it was for a ducted system with an external thermostat. Like this.

Finally giving up, I called Coleman, and after I finally got through to somebody, (apparently they’re not really geared to working with the retail consumer) we figured out what the problem was.

Normally the control box is part of the inside unit and ties in with the controls on the cover. But since I was using an external thermostat, there were no controls there, and I would need to purchase a separate control box. Which looked like this.

ROAD TRIP!

By now it was 2:30 and we’d have to hustle to get into Houston and PPL before the rush hour hit. So by 2:45 we were on our way in.

PPL’s 75 miles away, but good part of the distance has a 75 MPH speed limit, so we were there a few minutes after 4pm and back on our way about 4:20. But that 20 minutes was just enough for the going-home travel to sock in. and it was now bumper-to-bumper on the Beltway.

It ended up taking us almost as long to make the 30 mile trip back to Brandi’s as it did to make the 75 mile trip in to PPL. We had an Amazon package delivered there today, and we wanted to see if they wanted to have dinner with us, but they already had other plans. Jan had already said that our surprise trip into Houston was a good excuse to have dinner at Torchy’s Tacos, so that’s where we headed.

Torchy’s has about a dozen restaurants around the state, and it’s not your average taco place. They’ve got tacos with Blackened Salmon, Seared Ahi Tuna, Fried Chicken, Grilled Portobello Mushrooms, and Fried Avocado. And more. You can check out their menu here: Torchy’s Menu

Jan got the Brushfire Taco, which has Jamaican jerk chicken, grilled jalapeños,
mango, sour cream & cilantro, and is served with Diablo sauce on a flour tortilla, along with a Baja Shrimp Taco, which has hand-battered fried shrimp with cooked
cabbage slaw topped with pickled jalapeños & onions, queso fresco, cilantro & a wedge of lime.

I got the Green Chile Pork Taco, which has slow-roasted pork carnitas with green chiles and topped with queso fresco, cilantro, onions, & a wedge of lime, as well as a Grilled Jalapeño Sausage Taco, with shredded cheese & pico de gallo, served with Poblano Sauce and on a flour tortilla.

All really good, and a great place to eat.

We were back on the road about 6:30, getting home about 7:30, after another busy day.

So how do I get it up on the roof?

__________________________________________________________

Thought for the Day:

“It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into” –Jonathan Swift

fsgfdgf

Jan and I headed out about 10:30 for a trip into Houston, with our first stop at Schobel’s Restaurant in Columbus for breakfast. They do a great omelet, and good coffee too.

We planned to have dinner with Brandi, Lowell, and Landon about 5:30, but we were doing some shopping first.

I have been noticing for a while that my front Coleman Mach V AC was laying down on the job a bit. So I had been thinking about replacing it with a new one. I’ve been doing some research on different brands and models, and came right back around to Coleman. The two we have are original, so they’ve been going for 16 years with only a total of $30 of repairs. I had to replace the compressor start caps on both units, one in 2009, and the other in 2013. Not a bad record overall.

Being cheap, my first thought was to maybe do a little RRAN (repair and replace as necessary – a military aircraft term) on the units, probably starting with checking the Freon level.

RV rooftop AC’s are mechanically very similar to home window units. Which means they both come sealed, with no ports to access the Freon in the system. But you can use one of these to check the pressure and add Freon if necessary.

It’s a saddle tap and it’s made specially for tapping into sealed systems like window AC’s  and refrigerators. But the compressor also has a lot of miles on it, with the possibility of leaky seals, worn bearings, etc. And of course the whole thing could just die next week.

All that, plus the fact that I’d really like to upgrade the size, led me to the Coleman Mach 15 from PPL. It has 15,000 BTU, an 11% increase over our 13,500 BTU units. And according to the specs, it also has a 1/3 hp fan motor, the largest one in the RV industry, especially recommended with a ducted system like we have in our American Eagle.

I thought about also replacing the bedroom unit, but I think I’ll wait. Since it cools a much smaller area, it’s still doing a good job for now.

So we made a stop at PPL Motorhomes to pick up a new Mach 15 upper unit, along with a ducted, cooling-only, external thermostat, inside unit.

Now, how am I going to get this 110 pound unit up on the roof?

Our next stop was at the Toys R US near Katy Mills Mall to pick out Landon’s gifts for his birthday party this Saturday. We got him 4 different Lego sets, all superhero based. He loves both, so he should be pretty happy.

I also found this other neat Lego set, but Brandi said Landon didn’t watch The Big Bang Theory and wouldn’t know who they are.

We got back to Brandi’s about 4pm, and got in a little nap before Brandi, Lowell,and Landon showed up about 5. Then it was off to have dinner at Little V’s Vietnamese Bistro, one of our all-time favorite restaurants. You can’t believe how good their Shaking Beef Vermicelli is.

Finally, after getting our last Landon hugs,  and everybody else hugs, we headed back toward Columbus, getting home about 7:45.

So how do I get it up on the roof?

__________________________________________________________

Thought for the Day:

Violence is rarely the answer. But when it is, it’s the only answer.

asdfasdf