All done plus some!

I left you mid week at Alliance Coach with our awning job.  Mother nature threw us a curve ball, although much more mild than the rest of the country, a high of 41 and rain is not pleasant especially for painting new awning slide toppers.  John, our tech, finished installing the slide toppers and even got all the new fabric installed on all our other awnings including the two main patio awnings by Wednesday evening.  So it was planned to have the coach head for paint on Thursday and be out of there.  But as I said with the weather plans needed to be changed.  The first bad indication was when our service writer, Robbie, accompanied by the head of paint, Victor, found us in the waiting room Thursday mid morning.  Not a good sign to be approached by your writer, worse when they come in pairs :-)  We were asked if we could spend the night in a hotel so the coach could stay inside in a drying room heated with blowing air to be sure it would be dry for paint, otherwise we would have to bring it back out in the weather for us to stay in it and they would have to start all over again.  We said of course.

I will digress for a moment and tell you about another little issue that came up on our visit that I think is important enough to share and maybe raise some interest to check your own power cord.  We arrived Sunday night to the Alliance campground and plugged into their 50 amp service as we did each night.  We had no problem Sunday and Monday, but on Tuesday, the power popped off and on for no reason, so we switched over to their 30 amp plug and had no more problems.  We reported the issue to them and they checked it out and reported back they could find nothing wrong with their power.  Hmmmm?  Who knows, maybe a fluke.  Well, Wednesday night we go out, find good power on the 50 amp receptacle, plug in and all is good for several hours, then when it's raining really hard, of course, the power quits.  So out into the rain I go, switch over to the 30 amp receptacle and all is good for the rest of the night.  I tell them about our experience, and they very nicely say even though they can't find anything wrong, they will install a new receptacle.  Super!  Now back to the drying booth.

We go out to the coach to get stuff to spend the night in a hotel, and to make sure Bert is all set for his night alone, and notice our coach is not plugged into power.  I mention it to the guy sanding and prepping it and he goes to grab an extension cord, and plugs us in.  Great, so we get our stuff together and on the way out I check to be sure we have power and ........ we do not.  Our meter is showing too low voltage only 102 volts on each leg and the coach's protection system will not allow it to connect.  So out I go, tell the guy I still don't have power so he goes and grabs another extension cord, plugs us in and.......still no good.  So they call for Kevin, the electrician that worked on our problem in the campground.  He checks the power at the extension cord and he gets 120 volts on each leg.  He says you've got a problem with your coach.  I'm thinking how could that be?  I've never had an issue until just now at Alliance.  He notices I had installed a replacement end to my power cord and suggests they have seen problems with aftermarket ends.  I think no way, I've had this on for several years with no problem, how could that be?  So I say we will look into it, the lunch bell rings and everyone in the shop goes to lunch.  Well, Jan and I tear our plug apart and Oh My God!  Most of the wires are loose, there is much molten plastic, and it smells as if it has been burning.  Looking at it, it is astounding we had any power at all!  So I run out to parts, grab another male end, install it, and can you believe it, full power! So I go and apologize to Kevin, tell him it is all my problem not theirs, and vow to take care of this permanently in the very near future.  He says they have had many problems arise with the after market plugs.  Good to know, we are lucky we didn't have a fire!

Now back to our awnings. First the overview.

The "before"

The "after"

As you can see the new Girard slide topper is much more sleek, the awning has a real slope to shed water, the awning rolls into the top box, brushing off any debris unlike the Carefree on the top which holds water, and all the debris gets rolled up in the awning.
Now this was a bit of a challenge changing them out, Alliance had never done this exchange before, so as I said, there was a learning curve.  But our tech, John, did a superb job.

John taking the original extrusion off

A close up view of the metal piece that needs to be removed
and modified for the new awnings

The mounting brackets in place

The first new Girard awning going on

The next project was replacing all the awning fabric over our windows, the door, and the two main patio awnings.  Just to give you an idea, our patio awnings are approximately 20' by 11', pretty large pieces of fabric that take a lot of hands and coordination to get them off and the new put on.

The old fabric off and just the framework showing

Getting set with the new fabric

Starting it on with 3 guys

Not enough!  It took 4 guys working together to get them on.

Almost there

On, just waiting for adjustment.

Victor completed the painting by lunchtime on Friday as promised.  It looks very good and we are very pleased.  We elected to install a soft flexible gasket ourselves that goes on the top of each awning to repel water as it is necessary for the paint to be completely dry before installation and that would have required us staying through the weekend.  So they gave us some pointers, and Jan and I will put those on this coming week.

Another view of our new toppers

All new, looking pretty sleek

Also, good news, Jason came down this weekend to visit, and enjoy some warmth I think. But while here he replaced our small air compressor under the coach that augments our automatic air leveling system, and helped us install the 3rd new AC unit on the roof.  He was an enormous help.  Getting the almost 150 pound unit on the roof is a challenge.  But we are all set now, new thermostats with programming, and best of all they work great!  The rest of our projects pale after these, especially since the floor is done until December!!  Good deal.