Best Laid Plans... (plus the Inverter Incident story I promised)

We are STILL in Pomona.  It appears that for Michael, catching up on sleep and chilling for a few days after the hectic rally schedule resulted in catching a cold.  There is no better remedy when you feel under the weather than to stay in bed and sleep.  I tried to extend our stay at East Shore RV Park for one and possibly two more days without luck.  They were fully booked for the weekend with groups coming in.

Though this is not a first for DH to get colds while on the road, it is a first for us to be told there is no room at the inn.

Luckily, KOA just down the road had plenty of space and we are now here.  And KOA assured me that should we need to remain longer than two days, they will not make us leave or move to another site.

The good thing about the KOA is that the wifi here is good.  East Shore, located in a wilderness area, had wifi at the office and laundry buildings (an inconvenience to lug computers there, but doable) and the cell phone coverage is weak, so our MiFi device was not as efficient.

This morning, DH is feeling better and thinks that tomorrow we will embark on our next leg along scenic 395.  He is busy entering overnight stays on our Good Sam GPS and checking that the mapping software transferred correctly.  We have been surprised a few times when Ginny led us to a different route than we had planned. 

Staying in Pomona one more day gives me the opportunity to tell you the saga about our inverter which we replaced in January.  And how in the process learned first-hand that this clever piece of equipment is in fact a rather important feature of this size RV.  Now, we are not new to RV-ing and our little 22-foot Rialta has functions very similar to our Alpine, but on a petite scale.  However, we have only owned our Alpine since October so we are still learning all about the various functions and how they interact in this coach.

As I tell you my story of the events leading up to the climax, all you experienced Alpiners will, I am quite sure, soon work out the cause and result of what occurred.  So here is what happened…  grab a cuppa’ –  my professor in grad school soon recognized that I lean towards prolix ;) 

After returning to Washington in late November last year from our maiden trip across the US, we took Alpine to our favorite spot in Anacortes and parked her at Fidalgo Bay RV Resort, about an hour and a half north of us. Rather than winterizing and keeping her in storage until our next trip, we decided that it would give us an opportunity to use our new-to-us coach as a get-away cabin.  Staying in the coach would give us the opportunity to figure out how we plan to use the interior space, organize the cupboards and storage areas, and move in all the things we plan to have on board.  It would also give Michael time to read and study about the inner workings of the coach and see to a few other issues he needed to take care of. 

This is when we discovered that the inverter plays a rather important role.

I noticed that our monitor panel, which I am in the habit of checking often, indicated that our battery level was down to ¼.  This had not happened before.  The batteries were always full or if down to ¾ on our homeward journey west, always returned to showing full after a day’s drive. 

It was a puzzle, but we assumed that since we were hooked up to shore power and all the 110 V appliances and plugs were working, everything was OK.  Michael planned to read up a little more about the various battery functions of this size coach to get a better understanding of how exactly all the systems functioned.

We had a couple of freezing spells this past winter.  Whenever an "arctic express" blows south from Canada, temperatures dip below freezing at night. Typically this does not last more than a week as the front marches through.  Luckily this time, there was no accompanying snow, only the clear skies and frigid temperatures. During the day, with temperatures creeping up above 40 degrees, we were able to rely on the heat pumps for our source of heat. At night, we switched to the furnace and also had a small space heater which we had used in the Rialta.  It was toasty in the Alpine, and we were reassured that the pipes and tanks would not freeze, always a concern. 

Well, I woke up at 5AM that next ultra-frigid morning when temps dipped well below freezing, and heard the furnace fan blowing.  It was a chilly 41 degrees inside the coach, and when the furnace fan kept on blowing, I began to wonder why, discovering very quickly that there was cold air blowing from the vent at the foot of the bed!  Not a good sign.  The small space heater was still working, but the gas furnace would not ignite. 

Our inverter and charger had failed, and the house batteries had been depleted.  Lesson #1:  The furnace needs 12V power to ignite its burners. 

I think I was too numb to complain (M knows precisely how I feel about being cold).  I do have a new love and respect for polar fleece, though.

This all occurred, of course, over New Year’s, when the repair folks were all taking vacation through the rest of the week and weekend.  With no heat and no repairman for another couple of days, we had to return home.  The kind folks at the office lent us a second space heater to keep the temperature inside just warm enough to prevent the pipes and tanks from freezing.  The freezing spell continued for several more days.

Part two of the story continues thus: We returned to Anacortes on Monday, only to discover that the fridge was dead.  Lesson #2:  The refrigerator also relies on 12V power to operate its thermostat.  Now we know.  Thankfully I didn’t have much in it because I always brought up food with us for the few days we were planning to spend in the Alpine.  The saddest and messiest part was the melted ice cream, my favorite mint chocolate chip. 

There is a terrific RV repair service in Anacortes and we were able to schedule an appointment that afternoon.  By now, Michael had contacted Sandy Johnson(what a gem of an Alpine guy to turn to with questions) who confirmed which inverter we needed.  Thing is that the inverter had to be ordered and would take a day to arrive.  But our friendly repairman, Tim, was able to hook up a battery charger so that the fridge was at least working again.  The next afternoon he installed the new pure sine wave inverter, and took the old one and the echo charger away, quite confident that the new inverter contained an echo charging function.

Everything was back to normal, and the control panel showed that the batteries were back to full capacity.  And only to the tune of around 2K. 

And so we turn to Part 3 of my story.  A couple of weeks went by and the next time we were back in the Alpine, Michael, who is diligent about maintaining all parts that need to work, decided to start up the engine after sitting idle for over a month. 

You know the result.  No go.  Engine would not start.  The engine batteries were flat.

Lesson #3:  The new inverter needs a battery combiner to keep the engine batteries charged. The rest of the story is that Tim too learned a lesson.  He installed the new battery combiner as soon as it was shipped and hopefully everything is now back to normal, running as it was designed and should be running. (If you are wondering, he only charged us for the new part since it was his mistake.)

I attended the seminar at the rally on electrical systems.  I have a slightly better understanding of how some of the functions work, but it still is not 100% clear. 
This is a complicated house, far more so than our one bolted to a foundation.  And it’s also a house that can multi-task a lot more than I can.  As long as the monitor panel displays five red lights, I won’t worry.  And if those red lights indicate that anything is below full, then I will know that it is a problem that needs to be addressed.  The consequences in frigid spells to heat in the house and ice cream in the freezer will not be pleasant.

In hindsight, our inverter was already failing ever since we took ownership of the Alpine.  There were clues – there was a buzzing noise coming out of the microwave when we hooked up to shore power and I always had to re-set the clock.  But I needed to set the clock in the Rialta, so we didn’t think much of it.  Now, if the inverter is on, even with no shore power, the microwave clock functions and keeps time. 

I suspect that over time, we will uncover more items and issues that will be lessons learned.  Hopefully this one will not need to be repeated any time soon.  Our Alpine is 14 years old, which means that the inverter has worked hard all these years.   

And so ends my tale of our failed inverter, the brain and heart of our Alpine electrical system.  Long may the new one live!