What a Week!

We left the next morning to drive 275 miles to our next stop in Lady Lake, FL at Grand Oaks RV Resort.  We have been there many times, it is on a huge farm with horses everywhere with lots of training and equestrian events, more pertinent it has large sites, lots of room, plenty of walking.  And we didn't expect our week to go the way it did.  

We have been plagued with cool weather for a long time, we have rarely seen even 70 degrees, so we have been using our heat a lot.  As I shared our AquaHot provides our heat and hot water and we lost one circulation pump which rendered our front and main living area without heat except for our heat pump.  Now that works, but it isn't particularly friendly as the heat pump is also our air conditioner which sits on the roof and shoots air down, cooling that way is fine, but to try to heat a room when heat rises from the ceiling isn't very efficient or comfortable.  I had mentioned we bought a replacement pump at our last stop and being in Lady Lake made it convenient to go to Lazy Days in The Villages, right nearby, to buy 2 more pumps.  The replacement pumps are not the same as originals requiring all new tubing to connect them with the system, so we decided to replace 3 out of the 4.  The one we did not replace is the engine preheat loop which obviously is used much less than the others.  Grand Oaks seemed like a good spot to do it.  And just to add icing to the cake, as we were making our plan, we happened to ask each other, have you heard our auxiliary air compressor for our leveling system cycle lately?  The answer was no.  Occasionally it will stop working if the pressure switch gets filled with water, so that's what I thought it was, cleared the switch and lines, no compressor, put power directly to the compressor and no joy.  Our compressor is dead as well, no worries, we have hydraulic jacks for leveling anyway.  So I deployed them and ordered a new compressor from Amazon.

On to the AquaHot repair.  We stopped for a nice lunch on the way to Lazy Days at the Lighthouse in the Villages.  The Villages is now the size of a small city with thousands of people, a million golf carts, shopping, restaurants, bars, golf courses, tennis courts, you get the idea, it is bustling!

Chicken wings

Boom Boom shrimp

Calamari

Lazy Days had several of the pumps in stock so I bought 2 more, gulped at the price, but it is what it is.  So we took a long ride back and planned for our project the next day.

The job appeared fairly straightforward with the challenge of the new pumps having a 3/4" connection and the original pumps including the connections on the AquaHot being 1/2".  The pumps came with a pretty complete retrofitting kit so at least we didn't need to buy any more parts.  Now one of the challenges is the unit holds 16 gallons of coolant or as they call it, Heat Transfer Fluid, and it all has to be drained:-)  On our travels the day before we had stopped into Home Depot and bought several cheap 5 gal pails for our project.  We easily drained the unit and lugged the fluid out of our way, and removed the 3 pumps, keeping the 2 good ones, and carefully determining where the fittings needed to go.

Draining the fluid with the burner out of the way

Getting the lines off, still quite a bit of fluid in the lines and pumps
Messy job

Almost ready for the new pumps

We carefully measured the lines and refit the new pumps back in place.

3 new pumps in

You have to pump the fluid back in through the same pipe we drained from.  We knew you have to purge the system to get the air out as you pump in the fluid, and then when close to full, you need to individually run the pumps to get the air out of the 3 separate zone heating loops.  There is a schrader valve at the top of the tank to release the air as you pump in the fluid.

4 1/2 hours later we put the burner back in, and fired it up, went inside and checked for heat in each zone, and it appeared to work, hurray!

Next morning, no heat in the coach!  Ugh.  Must not have gotten the air all out, back to it, pulled some fluid out, put it back in holding the schrader valve, then ran the pumps for 5 minutes each, checked for heat, seemed to work, out to lunch:-)  An Asian spot nearby, Bamboo Bistro.

Calamari

Ahi tuna wontons

Sexy Girl roll:-)

Pretty good.

Next morning we have heat in the bedroom, thought we nailed it until we found no heat in the toilet compartment or the front living area, man o man, getting discouraged now.  Put in a call to our AquaHot guru, Rudy Legett expecting the worst, but he said you have air bubbles, you need to get a real pump and clear the loops, the AquaHot pumps just don't have the oomph to get all the air out.  Wow, could that be it?  We had planned to go to Sanford anyway for lunch at a superb German restaurant, Hollerbachs, and we needed to pick up the aux air compressor in an Amazon drop box there, and also went to Harbor Freight and picked up a pump per Rudy.  Lunch was excellent!

Jan had "pig wings" on sauerkraut

I had this massive pork shank on sauerkraut and mashed potatoes
Yes. more than enough for lunch the next day!
Delish!

Picked up the air compressor, installed it quickly when we got back, easy job, in and out, and yes it works perfectly.  Then got a pump at Harbor Freight so we were already to do it the next day.

So bright and early we went out to bleed the lines.  We were able to clamp the lines so we could get the pumps pulled out and our lines hooked in, then we released the clamps and ran our new pump for 5 minutes on each loop, truly a mess this time.

BUT IT WORKED!  All zones are working perfectly now, thank you Rudy.  All back together.

But we did have one casualty, and she swears it didn't come from the work, she says she zigged when she should have zagged when making the bed.  Either way, Jan's lower back is locked up and killing her.  Here she is in the only chair she can sit in and get out of with only a modicum of pain.  I feel awful for her.

We are now in Riverview, FL at Hidden River RV Community, nice place with a transient section that is awesome, huge sites, paved roads, concrete patios, and all the amenities.

Also I am happy to report after 3 days Jan is on the road to recovery!