Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Easy day

Had a pretty quiet day yesterday.  Kids in school, Todd at work, and Kelly at several meetings along with transportation duty of course.  We did a couple things on the motorhome though, one we were planning to do and one we tripped over.
We have 3 air conditioners, actually heat pumps that sit on the roof.  As you know even in house AC units, a lot of water is produced as they run, a lot of RVs just allow the water to run down across the roof and then down the side.  Ours has 2 catch cups on each unit that tie into flexible tubing that routes the water under the coach.  It's great most of the time.  Unfortunately, especially when the ACs haven't been used for awhile, the tubes tend to gum up and get blocked allowing the water to run down over the side of the coach.  So periodically we clean them out.  We have tried several different methods of doing this, blowing air up through the lines from the bottom of the coach, dropping the ceiling panels over the ACs inside, disconnecting the hoses and using a wire to run through as much of the tubing as we can, or forcing water up the tubing from the bottom.  The water solution is new and we are hoping is the answer going forward.  What makes it challenging is the manufacturer didn't just use a single run of tubing from the ACs to the underneath of the coach, they used several 90 degree fittings which prevent a snake from getting through.
The rear AC seems to cause most of our problems.  We had tried to blow it out previously with high pressure air that was not successful, so we had pulled down the ceiling and cleaned it that way.  It was acting up again and we didn't feel like pulling down the ceiling so we decided to try the water method.  I got outside with the hose and Jan went inside so she could scream holy hell if the fittings gave way and water started pouring out of the ceiling, meanwhile I turn on the water and immediately get soaked as water pours out of the air intake above my head on the back of the motorhome!  What the hell? All I can think is one of the 90's way up in the rear cap gave way and it's somehow pouring out the intake.  NOT SO.  Come to find out I'm an idiot and have the wrong hose!  And I realize when we tried previously to blow air up through to unclog it I had the wrong hose.  I had the hose that allows water to drain out of the intake to prevent water from getting into the engine, duh!  Found the right hose, right near the other one and forced water up and through with no disasters.  Jan went up on the roof to make sure water was coming out on both sides of the AC unit, which it was, so we think we have discovered a new and better method of cleaning these tubes, once we got around my stupidity:)
The other repair we stumbled over.  We park the Jeep in front of the motorhome where we are and as I pull in yesterday I notice what looks to be a small hose or wire hanging down under the front of the coach.  I check it out and sure enough it is a small air hose that been dragging along the road for who knows how long!  We have an inflatable door seal on our entry door.  It is supposed to inflate when we put the motorhome in gear to cut down on any air noise from the door.  It works very well usually, but lately Jan and I thought it was louder than normal, and as we found out, it wasn't working at all..  A quick trip to Lowes, some new rubber hose, a new fitting, and we're good as new.  Wish all repairs were this easy.

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