Our RV Adventures

Well, the consensus is that the water heater is going to have to come back out. Of course it’s a consensus of one, me, but I’m the one who’s doing it, so that’s what matters.

It’s wedged in there tight, with about 2” still hanging outside the rig, and it won’t budge, or even wiggle. So the only thing I can see to do is to pull it back out.

But I’m not sure how easy that’s going to be. In or out, it’s pretty stuck. But I know it went in that way, so that’s the way it’s got to come back out. Then once I get it back out I’ll take a wood rasp to the opening and enlarge it enough so that it just glides right in, easy peasy.

But in the meantime, I figured out how to correctly wire up the new water heater. Turns out that unlike my old unit, it requires a separate 12VDC voltage remote switch to energize the relay that puts power to the heating element.

The problem is that 12VDC is nowhere to be found in that compartment, or even near by, that I can get to. So after sleeping on it, I came up with a solution.

I’m going to buy a heavy-duty 6ft. multi-tap extension cord and cut it in half. The multi-tap end will be wired into the main 120VAC power coming in. The plug end will be wired onto the 120VAC power leads going into the unit.

Then the new plug on the water heater will plug into one socket on the multi-tap end. And then this will be plugged into the other multi-tap socket.

After I cut off the cigarette lighter plug, that will supply the 12VDC that I need for the remote switch. It will supply 2A so that should be plenty.

But we still have hot water so I’m not under any time constraints.

On the Flu Manchu front, llamas are in the news.

Llama antibodies may neutralize COVID and help prevent infections, lab trial finds

Researchers from the VIB-UGent Center for Medical Biotechnology in Ghent, Belgium, have found that antibodies extracted from a llama named Winter have neutralized the virus, including its variants, in laboratory testing.

The treatment would supplement vaccines by giving enhanced protection to people with weakened immune systems or help people who have been hospitalized with the virus, the company said.

Llama antibodies, which are unusually small, are able to bind to a specific part of the virus’ spike protein, blocking it from infecting cells.

“Their small size … allows them to reach targets, reach parts of the virus that are difficult to access with conventional antibodies,” VIB-UGent group leader Xavier Saelens said.

He Made It All Up!

By now you’ve probably seen the story about the emergency room doctor in Oklahoma saying that OK emergency rooms were so clogged up with people overdosing on ‘horse-paste’ Ivermectin that the ER’s were turning away gunshot victims.

The story, picked up by a number of national outlets, quickly spread across the Internet, adding voice to the baying hounds of Ivermectin negativism.

Turns out it was all just a lie. An out and out lie.

‘Not An Employee’: Hospital Blows Holes In Rolling Stone Story

In response to that interview and the Rolling Stone piece, the Northeastern Health System (NHS) – Sequoyah released a statement claiming Dr. Jason McElyea “is not an employee of NHS Sequoyah”, he also hasn’t worked at that hospital in over two months nor have they treated any patients for Ivermectin overdoses.

Oops!

And you may have also read that 70% of the calls to Mississippi’s Poison Control were from people who had been poisoned by taking the Ivermectin ‘horse-paste’ version.

Oops!

It was 2 percent, not 70 percent. And they weren’t calling because they were sick. They were fine, but got scared by all the fear-mongering going around.

About 1pm Jan and I celebrated Labor Day by having Baby Back Ribs and Brisket at our local Spring Creek BBQ.

After our last visit to Spring Creek when Jan sampled my brisket, this time Jan got Ribs and Brisket, rather than just ribs.

Jan gets her brisket lean with no bark, while I get mine Marbled with Extra Bark, like above.

Really good.
  

Thought For The Day:

Procrastination is great. You always have something to do tomorrow. Plus you have nothing to do today.

I was outside about 10:30 this morning to start pulling the old water heater out of its cubbyhole.

I had already disconnected the water lines and the power wires inside, so after I loosened the gas line outside and removed the 16 screws holding the unit to the rig, I started trying to pull it out.

And it would not budge. Not even a wiggle.

And when I tried to stick a screwdriver in between the heater and the wall, I found the problem. Besides the 16 screws, they decided to actually GLUE the unit into the opening. With a very strong glue, too.

So I started prying the sides in so I could cut through the adhesive.

Finally then I was able to wiggle and pry, and eventually got the unit out of the hole.

The plywood platform came right out and then I did my best to clean and dry the area out. But before I could go any further I needed to move the inside water connections over to the new unit.

No problem removing the elbow on the cold inlet, but when I tried to remove the piping on the hot outlet, the 1/2” plastic coupling just came apart.

So since it was about lunch time, it was off to Home Depot by way of Gator’s for lunch. Turns out Home Deport didn’t stock the plastic couplings and was out of the brass ones, so I bought a valve coupling instead, which will also let me isolate the water heater from the system if needed in the future. It was a little longer, but there was enough flex in the piping to handle it.

My next problem was that it seems that the new Styrofoam-covered heater is slightly larger and less squishable than the old fiber-insulated and covered-in-cardboard unit. In fact when I gave up for today (I was just tired of fooling with it) there was still about 2” of the unit sticking outside the rig. But I wanted to be sure it actually worked before I went any further with it.

So I hooked up the water and power, filled the heater with water, and then turned it on. And 30 minutes later, NO hot water.

No power was getting to the heating element. Then a lot more search told that this unit requires 12VDC through a remote switch to get it work on 120VAC. So to get us hot water I pretty much hot-wired it directly while I figure out hot to get 12VDC in the water heater area, since it’s only got 120VAC there. But that’s for tomorrow.

Tonight we have hot water.
 

Thought For The Day:

One good thing about having a bad memory is that jokes can be funny more than once.

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One good thing about having a bad memory is that jokes can be funny more than once.