Tag Archives: hydronic heating system

2014/09/29 (M) Full Converted (Not)

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Linda was up at 5:45 AM.  Hey, it’s just a number.  I mean, who needs daylight?  She quietly got dressed and slipped out of the house to drive to the bakery.  This is how it’s going to be on days when she has to be physically present at the facility.  Unless I am away working on the bus.  In that case she probably does not worry about being quiet.

I got up around 7 AM and had a nice breakfast of homemade granola, orange/grapefruit juice, and coffee and then spent some time catching up on blogs that I follow.  Keith showed up around 9:30 AM to cut the grass.  Butch had called last night to ask Linda a question and asked that I call him when I had a chance.  Our company did not leave until after 9 PM last night, which was great, but too late to call Butch back so I called him this morning around 10:30 AM.

Butch had used a stop leak additive product to try to plug a leak in his Aqua-Hot main coolant loop but it did not work.  The Aqua-Hot is a Webasto-based diesel-fired hydronic heating system.  Rather than repair the Aqua-Hot, or replace it with another one, he decided to order an Oasis Combi unit from International Thermal Research.  The Combi has a lower BTU rating than the Aqua-Hot but is smaller, simpler, and uses stainless steel for some of the components.  It should be more than adequate for their bus, which is very well insulated, and give them years of trouble free service.

Butch and Fonda’s Aqua-Hot is a very similar model to ours and I will probably buy it from them as a source of spare parts.  His burner is fully functional, which ours is not at the moment, and the short term fix for our unit may be to just swap the burners.  I can then repair the defective burner at my leisure and have it available to swap back should the replacement ever develop a problem.

As a result of our conversation I decided that I will take our bus to their place tomorrow, leaving around noon and arriving between 4:30 and 5:00 PM.  In preparation for that trip I needed to gather up and organize parts, materials, and documentation for my initial set of projects.  I also needed to do laundry and select clothes for the trip.  I may also need to do some grocery shopping this evening unless Linda already has food in the house that I can take.  Tuesday morning I will have to load clothes and toiletries, hook up the car, check and adjust tire pressures, load computers and other last minute items, and get the bus ready for travel.

My main focus for Wed, Thu, and Fri will be the Aqua-Hot (no burn and leaky exhaust).  If we have time I would also like to finish installing the Zena 24 VDC power generating system and get it operational.  I will return on Friday afternoon/evening in the car as Butch and Fonda have plans for the weekend and I still have lots of things to take care of back at the house.

Keith finished up with the lawn a little before noon.  He will be back at least two more times, once in mid-October and again towards the end of the month.  Whether he cuts the grass in November or calls it quits for the season will depend on the weather between now and then.  His basic grass mowing season is April 1 through October 31 and he has his business insured for that range of dates, but he said he would come back in November if needed.  The grass should be dormant by then, but there may be a few leaves that still need to be mulched.  There could also be a foot of snow on the ground, so it will all depend on the conditions prevailing at the time.  During the mowing season he spends the work week living at their trailer/cabin at Haas Lake RV Park, which maybe 20 miles from our house, but by November 1 he is looking to move himself and his equipment back home to Milan for the winter.  Milan is at least 60 miles from our house, maybe a bit farther.

I spent a little time at my desk and decided to re-install WordPress 4.0 on the SLAARC, FMCA Freethinker, and FMCA Great Lakes Converted Coaches websites.  I re-installed it a couple of days ago on this (our personal) website, but I have not tried creating or editing image galleries since then so I do not know if the broken drag-n-drop feature has magically been repaired or not.  I suspect not, but Linda says I’m a pessimist.

I had a quick bite of lunch and then read a few more blog entries while I waited upstairs for Brandon from Bratcher Electric to show up and convert the whole house generator from propane to natural gas and do the annual maintenance and multi-point inspection.  He arrived at 2:15 PM and was here for about an hour.  I had him show me how to disable the generator as it has to be turned off anytime I want to shut off the power coming into the main distribution panel in the basement.  He did not have the correct length of flexible gas line and will come back on Friday to do the LP to NG conversion.  Besides disconnecting the propane and connecting the natural gas the conversion involves attaching two wires to a pair of corresponding terminals on the gas valve inside the unit and changing a setting in the controller.

While Brandon was working on the generator I started gathering things from the garage that I needed for tomorrow and loading them in the car and the bus.  We already have quite a few things staged to take to the Surplus and Salvage Rally next week, but I will take those things with me when I return to Butch and Fonda’s early next week.

Linda called at 4:35 PM to let me know she was on the way home.  I drained the water out of the fresh water tank on the bus as it had been sitting in there since June.  (Yuck.)  The fresh water hoses needed to be cleaned before I used them so I filled their storage tub half full of softened water and added some bleach.  I coiled them up, hooked the ends together, let them soak for a while, and then wiped them off with clean paper shop towels.  Much better looking, and probably and lot more sanitary.

Linda got home at 5:30 PM, a very quick trip for that time of day.  Butch had called just as she was getting home to let me know that he had spoken to someone who has two RV spots in Quartzite we can rent for a very reasonable price this winter.  Linda and I need to discuss it, and would like a few more details, but that probably makes more sense than trying to boondock our first time out there, especially as we do not yet have solar panel on the roof of our coach.

Linda made a nice green salad and heated up some of the lasagna from yesterday.  Italian bread with garlic “butter” and a glass of the 2009 Egri Merlot completed the meal.  We talked about our respective days, reminiscent of when we both worked outside the home.

After dinner I finished cleaning the fresh water hoses, filled the fresh water tank, and then drained and stored the hoses.  While I did that Linda gathered food items, bedding, and towels and put them aboard the bus.  It will still take me a few hours to get ready to leave tomorrow, but I should not be rushed getting everything done.

Linda heated up some of the apple/pear crisp for dessert after which we sat on the sofa and looked at highway maps on her iPad.  The map app on the iPad said the trip from our house to Quartzite, Arizona was about 2,100 miles and would take “1 day, 9 hours.”  That’s non-stop, of course; i.e., 24 + 9 = 33 driving hours.  That time works out to just under 64 MPH.  I typically drive the bus at 60 to 63 MPH on Interstate highways, but we do all of our trip planning based on 50 MPH.  That usually works out well at taking into account for fuel stops, rest stops, and non-Interstate roads.  This means our travel time will be more like 42 hours.  Our preference is to only travel 200 to 300 miles per day, or 4 to 6 hours a day, so the actual number of travel days will be between 10 and 7.  We like to spend more than one night at each stop, depending on what there is to see and do in the area, so the number of days it will take us to get to Quartzite will 2 to 3 times the number of driving days.  A lot of the details of our trip will be last minute decisions based on weather, but our “plan” is to leave December 1st and arrive in Quartzite by December 21st, more or less.

 

2014/09/22 (M) Hot Water

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Linda was up early to beat the morning traffic heading into Detroit from our part of S. E. Michigan.  On days when she has to go to the bakery she likes to get up and go and does not have breakfast at home.  Not that she doesn’t get something to eat; she’s spending the day working at a bakery after all.

I tend to stay up later at night than she does, so I also tend not to spring out of bed at oh-dark-thirty unless I have someplace I have to be at daybreak.  My job is to hear the alarms (we set several) and make sure Linda wakes up.  I am then free to pursue the rest of my day on my own timeline.  Today, however, I wanted to make sure I was up and dressed not later than 8 AM as there was a possibility that TOMTEK would be here to convert the hot-water base-board heating system boiler from propane to natural gas and/or that D. R. Electric Appliance would deliver and install our new natural gas kitchen range.  I did not, however, know if/when either of those things would happen so I was “stuck” at the house all day either waiting for phone calls.

I was dealing with e-mail when Tom called at 9:15 AM to let me know they had the part for our boiler and that he could be at our house around 10 AM if that was OK.   “Absolutely!”  I decided to bleed out whatever propane might be left in the 1/2″ line that feeds the kitchen and outdoor grill connector.  The pipe into the house was open to the outside for a while so I did not know how much propane, if any, even remained in the line.  I opened the shutoff valve in the laundry room for that line and then opened the outside valve for the gas grill.  Nothing.

It turns out that the quick-disconnect is a self-sealing device.  When the mating part is not plugged in, no gas can get out.  I should have known that, and it’s obvious that it should work that way, but I hadn’t really thought about it until that moment.  I closed the outside valve and then closed the shutoff valve in the basement and figured I (or the installer) would deal with that branch of the piping when the new range shows up.  I did not concern myself with the pipe to the furnace, which has its own shutoff valve, as I figured Tom would bleed the line before he started the unit.

Tom arrived about 10:20 AM.  He had the right part and he knew how to replace it.  The part (an orifice plate) was just a thin piece of metal, probably aluminum, with a hole about the size of a quarter in the center of it (the orifice) and several other holes for screws to pass through or other purposes.  I’m always trying to understand our technology and he let me observe and ask questions while he worked.  Tom disconnected a small vacuum hose, removed three or four screws, lowered the blower housing, slid the old propane orifice plate out, slid the new natural gas orifice plate in, reattached the blower housing, and our boiler was converted to natural gas.  Just like that.

Once he had the new natural gas orifice plate installed and everything reassembled he put gas to the furnace and turned on the electrical power.  It took a few seconds to purge the air and residual propane from the gas pipe but the burner lit and stayed lit on the first try.  He checked for gas leaks as it warmed up.  (He used an electronic sniffer rather than soapy water.)  He did not find any gas leaks but I noticed some condensation dripping from the flue pipe onto the top of the unit.  He shut the furnace off and let it cool down enough to handle the flue pipe and found that a joint between two sections was leaking.  He pulled it apart, applied a sealant, and put it back together nice and tight.  He turned the furnace on again and the leak did not reappear.  We did notice, however, that there was a similar leak at the next joint downstream.  I moved a spare macerator pump from under that joint and put a bucket there to catch any drips, although stains on the underside of the flue pipe indicated that this leak had existed for a while and that condensation leaking at that point had run back downhill towards the boiler along the underside of the pipe.  We may need to eventually have all of the joints resealed all the way to the outside.

I turned all of the thermostats on and set the temperatures a few degrees above ambient so they would call for heat and Tom monitored the temperature and pressure of the coolant as the unit heated up.  At 140 degrees F the pressure was between 35 and 40 PSI.  Tom said it should be closer to 20 PSI at that temperature, so he drained some of the coolant out of the system into a bucket.  As water trickled into the bucket the pressure dropped accordingly. The system eventually heated up to just under 180 degrees F, which is where it normally operates, and the pressure stayed below 25 PSI.  He put the covers back on the unit and gathered up his tools while I wrote a check and paid him for the service call. After he left I took a nice hot shower, the first one since last Wednesday morning.  ;-0

While I was doing chores around the house I got a call from Marilyn in the AT&T billing department.  She called to let me know that they were crediting our bill to compensate for the lack of usable service in August.  I got a call later from Shelley from the Office of the President (of AT&T) following up on our MPSC complaint.  I told her that the POTS and DSL had been working just fine since Bill was here to repair our service.  She had requested the billing credit and said she would report back to the commission that everything was repaired to our satisfaction.  I told her I would confirm that if contacted by the MPSC.

Today was shaping up to be a very good day.  It was sunny outside with light winds, puffy clouds, and afternoon high temperatures in the low 60’s; a little brisk, perhaps, but cheerful and very refreshing.  Earlier in the day I noticed the road grader going up and down our street smoothing out the bumps and filling in the holes.  With a forecast of no rain and high temperatures in the mid-to-upper 70’s for the next week the road should be decent to drive on for a while.

Some of the difficulty we have had this summer getting contractors to show up reminded me of a joke that Steven Wright told years ago on an HBO comedy show.  It went something like this:  “I walked up to the deli entrance and the sign said ‘Open 24 Hours’ so I tried the door but it was locked.  While I was standing there the owner walked up and unlocked the door.  I said to him ‘Your sign says ‘Open 24 Hours’.’  He just looked at me and said ‘We are, but not in a row’.”

I’m starting to wonder if the kitchen range is going to turn out to be another example of “tell the customer whatever you think they need to hear to get them to make the purchase.”  The difference in this case is that we have not given D. R. Electric Appliance a deposit or a credit card number, so if delivery is delayed much longer we can walk away from the deal with nothing to lose except time.  We probably won’t, as that would just further delay getting a new NG range, but it’s nice to know that we at least have that option if this drags on any longer.  We were told “three days” and based our decision to order from them in part on that information.

With respect to the conversion or our generator from propane to natural gas, our new NG fireplace logs, and our new NG outdoor grill, our hands are basically tied.  We either have parts on order, for which we have already paid, don’t have a choice of contractor, or have made the choice not to look for another contractor as that would simply involve more delay and the uncertainty of working with someone we have not worked with before.  Still, it’s a little frustrating that we can’t get this stuff taken care of.  The real issue for me is that I need to take our bus to Butch and Fonda’s place to work on it, and I cannot do that until all of the natural gas related work is done.  The other issue is that we do not want to contact Consumer’s Energy (natural gas) and AmeriGas (propane) until all of our gas appliances are switched over.  Consumer’s Energy “requires” us to accomplish this within 30 days of hanging the meter, which occurred one week ago today, so we do not have an unlimited amount of time to get this stuff taken care of.

Interestingly, I learned at breakfast on Saturday that two of our ham radio club members had contacted Bratcher Electric based on my recommendation.  Mike had already been to one of their houses, quoted them a whole house generator installation, gotten a signed contract and a deposit, and given them an installation date.  The other guy had a scheduled appointment for Mike to come out and give him a quote.  Mike looked at our job five weeks ago and I don’t have a price or a service date scheduled yet.  What’s up with that?!  I did not want to spoil today’s winning streak, however, so I chose not to make follow up phone calls today.  Tomorrow morning, however…

We were both tired and turned in early to watch episode 2 of Ken Burns “The Roosevelts: An Intimate Portrait.”  I was putting the finishing touches on this post afterwards and noted the occurrence of the autumnal equinox at 10:39 PM EDT.

 

2013_10_03 (R) The Sound of Music

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Today was a bakery day for Linda, so I was left to my own devices.  I let the Garmin Express update run all night last night.  When I checked this morning it indicated there had been an error, so I downloaded the 2014.20 map update, again.  It took another 3+ hours, again.  It said it downloaded it so I installed it.  It said it was “done”, but that the “update failed.”  At this point I have no idea if my maps are up-to-date or not.  We have had the Garmin nuvi 465T GPS unit for quite some time now, and I really like it.  I also liked the desktop docking software that came with it, which always worked fine.  The replacement desktop docking software, Garmin Express, is simpler to use but doesn’t seem to work very well.  A quick Google Search yesterday indicated that lots of other folks have apparently had issues with it as well.

In terms of getting ready for the open house / warming on Sunday, I am down to what builders call a “punch list.”  I don’t know the origin of that term, and yet it seems somehow appropriate.  (I always supposed that it came from the idea that the workers were going to “punch these things out,” but that doesn’t make any more sense than the original phrase.  The other day Linda made some final selections for artwork for the small bedroom, so today I hung those up.  That was one of the items on my punch list.

One of the things that came with the new house was built in speakers, two in the main floor hallway ceiling and two in the Florida room (library) ceiling.  The speaker wires for these all run to a basement wall opening where the previous owners had their audio entertainment equipment.  We have enough else to do without completely re-wiring the house, so we put some of our audio equipment in the same spot.  Linda had asked that I try to wire up the audio system so we could have music on Sunday; another item on my punch list.  With the house mostly ready, I decided to see if I could get the built-in speakers wired up, along with a pair of our freestanding ones.  I used my volt-ohm meter (VOM) to check for continuity and resistance to figure out which wires did what.  As part of the harness wiring harness, there were also two pairs of wires with both ends free that I could use to wire up the local freestanding speakers.

Measuring DC resistance through a speaker does not tell you what its rated impedance is as impedance is a characteristic of a device when AC (alternating current, from an applied alternating voltage) flows back and forth through it.  It does, however, give you some idea of what’s at the other end of the wire pair.  The amplifier in our receiver is designed to drive two sets of speakers (A and B) and prefers not to see less than 8 ohms impedance at the connection terminals.  There is a switch on the back, however, that allows you to select 4 ohm or 8 ohm speakers.

Connecting impedances in parallel results in lower total impedance and connecting them in series adds the impedances.  The pair of speakers in the hall has a volume control, and the pair in the library also has one, and it appeared that turning them from one extreme position to the other increased the DC resistance slightly, but not that much.  So, just to be safe, I decided to wire one speaker from the hall in series with and one from the library (think “left speakers”) and then repeated that for the other pair (think “right speakers”).  I connected the CD changer to the receiver, started a CD, and voila, the sound of music…everywhere!

The main (basement) speakers were too loud relative to the ones upstairs, so I connected the built-ins in parallel, which resulted in more power going to them relative to the main speakers.  It also allowed the volume control in the hall to control both of the hall speakers, and only those.  Ditto for the volume control in the library.  I also switched the amplifier to work with 4 ohm speakers instead of 8 ohm.  The name of the game is impedance matching, and if you can’t match impedances choosing a higher impedance load rather than a lower impedance one is generally better for the amplifier (up to a point).

Tom and Tom from TOMTEK HVAC showed up as scheduled around 3 PM to finish the work on the hydronic heating system.  This time they had all of the parts they needed: new burner cone, igniter, expansion tank, expansion / quick fill value, shutoff value, fittings, and copper pipe to re-plumb the pressure relief discharge pipe from the domestic hot water tank.  I tried to check in on the progress of the work periodically without getting in their way and slowing them down.  I always do this when anyone works on anything in our house as I want to know as much as possible about the system.  They finished up around 6 PM.  While we did not anticipate the furnace / hot water system needing this much work, or this soon, it was fortunate that we had TOMTEK come out for a “routine maintenance” visit and discover/fix all of the other problems as a result.

When Linda got home we were both too tired to even go out, so we had the left over “sloppy Joes” from yesterday’s dinner along with fresh fruit.  This particular recipe used textured vegetable protein, known as TVP, instead of the soy crumbles she normally uses.  The two products are very similar in taste (nothing strong or characteristic) and texture (kind of like ground beef) and work well in “mock” dishes like chili, sloppy Joes, or anything else that would normally call for ground beef as an ingredient.  These products do not work well, however, to make mock “hamburger” patties; there are other products made to directly satisfy that market.

 

2013_09_23-27 (M-F) Getting Ready

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There is always lots to do around the house when we return from an RV rally, more so since we are still getting moved in to our new (to us) house and trying to get it ready for an open house / house warming.  We decided about a month ago to have the house warming as a way to “force” us to accelerate the moving-in process and so far that seems to be working.

Arriving home yesterday we were able to pull in to our pull-through driveway with the car attached, which was very nice.  With the added “fines” (sandy silt) material mixed in with the 21aa road gravel, the driveway is now packing together very tightly and easily supporting the weight of the bus.  The planned driveway geometry has worked out well allowing us to pull in and out with the car attached.  That means we cook hook/unhook the car in the driveway rather than in the street.

Linda babysat for Madeline on Monday while I worked around the house, unloaded the clothes and bedding from the bus, and started doing laundry; not very interesting, perhaps, but satisfying work in its own way.  We both spent a fair amount of time on our computers this week, Linda with household accounting chores and RV park research and me with some CEPI work, our website/blog, and websites for several other organizations.  Using WordPress to create/manage websites and blogs has really grabbed my interest.  I’m not very proficient yet, but I’m leaning.

We hung the last few pieces of artwork for now and spent part of the week opening and moving boxes.  Linda was looking for papers we could take to a shredding company and managed to accumulate quite a few boxes of them.  At this point we’ve run out of time to open boxes and sort through the contents, so we turned our attention to finding places to “hide” them until after the open house.  We’re not there yet, but we are comfortable that the house will be presentable enough by the time it needs to be.

We decided to harvest some of the apples from our apple tree and discovered that a large branch (3-4” diameter) had peeled loose in three places, probably due to the copious amount of fruit on it, the age of the tree, and the fact that it had not been pruned properly (or at all) for years.  We don’t know much about fruit trees, but we know that this is not the time of year to prune them.  With the tree obviously damaged, however, we decided to cut the branch off and let nature take its course.  We took it off in three pieces to make sure we could handle them.  The branches of an apple tree tend to get intertwined, especially if it isn’t pruned, so we really had to pull to get the pieces down.  That brought lots of apples to the ground besides the ones on the damaged branch.  We left the branches and their apples on the ground for the deer and other animals that frequent our backyard.

We collected a large bag of apples and Linda spent time during the rest of the week peeling them, dipping them in lemon, and freezing them.  She also made apple sauce and apple bread (both of which were outstanding).  She commented at one point that “I am starting to understand why farm wives never got out of the kitchen.”  Cooking real food with real ingredients (whole-food, plant-based) is a lot of work.  Linda finds the work satisfying, however, now that she has the time to do it, and I certainly find the results satisfying as well.  Yummy.

Ed and Betty Burns arrived on Thursday afternoon in their Tiffin Phaeton motorhome and stayed until late Friday morning.  This was their second visit in about a month and we really enjoyed having them here again.  They have been working at the Middleton Berry Farm and finished their tour of duty on Thursday.  I moved our motorhome out of the pull-through driveway so they could pull in and park in a level spot with power.

They got here in time for dinner and Linda put out a nice meal.  She served a nice Waldorf style green salad using some of our fresh-picked apples with homemade apple bread.  The main course was a lentil loaf with a baked potato and homemade applesauce on the side.  I chose the Blueberry Wine from Forestedge Winery in LaPorte, Minnesota to go with the meal.  (It only occurred to us later than we had an apple wine from the same winery, which would have really completed our apple-themed meal.)  Forestedge Winery is owned by Paul and Sharon Shuster, who are members of our FMCA Freethinkers associate chapter as are Ed and Betty.

Linda made apple crisp for dessert, but none of us had room, so we saved it for breakfast the next day.  In addition to the apple crisp, breakfast included Linda’s homemade granola cereal with fresh blueberries, fresh banana slices, and raspberries that we had personally picked at the Middleton Berry Farm a few weeks ago and frozen.  A little orange juice and a 50/50 blend of Ethiopian Yirga Cheffe and Kona coffee rounded out the meal.

We decided earlier in the week that we would try Florida for our first snowbird experience.  (Snowbird is a term used to describe folks who live in northern climates where it snows and head south for the winter to get away from same.  If there is a corresponding term for folks who live in the south and travel north in the summer to avoid heat and humidity, I don’t know what it is, other than perhaps Bridwons.  Think about it.)  Our decision was motivated by the desire to attend a large converted bus rally in Arcadia, Florida that is held each year from December 26 to January 1st.  (The actual rally is Dec 29, 30, 31, but you can arrive as early as the 26th and departure is the 1st.)  The rally was started by Jack and Paula Conrad, who ran it for the first ten years.

Ed and Betty used to live in Florida so we were eager to draw on their knowledge and experience before trying to book a place or places to stay.  Earlier in the week we called the Low-Key Hideaway RV Park and Motel in Cedar Key, but they were not able to accommodate us.  We knew about Low-Key Hideaway Cherie Ve Ard’s Technomadia blog postings, and it appears that the place has developed quite a clientele, perhaps in part as a result of Technomadia’s publicity.

At the last two GLCC rallies we had talked at length with Pat and Vicky, who winter in Florida.  I also had an in-depth conversation this week with two other fellow RVers (Ed and Al) who winter in Florida and got their thoughts, suggestions, and recommendations.  Our friends and fellow H3-40 owners, Chuck and Barbara, have spent the last seven winters in Florida and the last several at Pelican Lake Motorcoach Resort in Naples, Florida.  We delayed our return home following the Holistic Holiday At Sea cruise in March so we could drive over from Ft. Lauderdale to see the resort and have dinner with them.  It was very nice, as you would expect.

We learned a number of things as a result of this quick “research”.  Some of it was stuff we knew, or assumed as a form of common sense, but some of it we did not:

  1. The cost per day generally goes down the longer you stay in one place.  The usual breakpoints are week, month, 2-month, 3-month, 4-month, 6-month, and year.  (You can also purchase lots, but probably don’t want to calculate the per day cost for that.)
  2. The farther south you go, the more expensive it gets.
  3. The reason for the previous point is the average daily temperate range.  In northern Florida it is not unusual for temperatures to drop into the upper 30’s at night, and record lows have been recorded in the teens.  That doesn’t happen in Key West, and money tends to follow the pleasant climate.
  4. The closer you are to one of the coasts, the more expensive it gets.  You pay a price for beaches and sunrises/sunsets.
  5. No-See-Ums, however, can be a real problem near the coasts, and some folks have very bad reactions to their bites.
  6. If the RV park has “resort” in the name, it will be more expensive, with “motorcoach resort” costing even more, and “luxury motorcoach resort” costing even more than that.
  7. Most of Florida is swampy; being inland or staying at a “luxury” resort does not guarantee that you are not camped in or next to a swamp.  Think bugs, snakes, and alligators.
  8. You can almost always rent a deeded site at a higher-end park directly from the owners much cheaper than you can rent it through the park management office.  Check the classifieds in the back of FMC Magazine.
  9. Moving every week is expensive and tiring, but gets you access to more of the state.
  10. Staying more than one month at the same place can get a bit boring, but that’s a personal thing.
  11. Some parks are in dense urban areas, others are near small towns, and some are in the middle of nowhere.  It’s a shopping convenience versus solitude thing.  You can end up having to drive 20 miles or more for groceries if you are not paying attention when you choose an RV park.
  12. Not all parks are “big rig friendly” (even though they will claim they are).
  13. Most parks have punitive refunds polices, so be sure before you know what they are before you book.
  14. Make sure your park of choice is located near things you want to do (hike, bike, kayak, fish, watch sunrises and/or sunsets, or have access to highways so you can visit natural and historic sites in your car, etc.)  Tallahassee is not a good base camp for visiting Key West.
  15. Many RV parks are adjacent to a major freeway, railroad track, or airport; sometimes all three.  If you don’t think the noise will bother you, you’re wrong.
  16. Some RV parks are gated (if you care).
  17. Whether the residents in a park or nice or not seems to have little to due with the physical appearance and amenities of the place.
  18. There are a lot of older parks with mixed use, i.e., year-round “Park Models” in addition to sites for vacationers and snowbirds.
  19. Check the type/quality of the interior roads and parking pads (concrete, gravel, grass, hard dirt, or sand), it might matter with a big, heavy coach.
  20. The spacing of the sites varies greatly; some parks have sites that are small and close together (but they will tell you they are very spacious).
  21. Find out whether there is any landscaping, especially shade trees around the sites.
  22. Find out whether the roads and sites have trees trimmed up and back sufficiently to not scratch your RV.
  23. Check to see if “lakes” on the property actually have water in them (seriously).
  24. Check on the availability and cleanliness of onsite bath/shower facilities and Laundromats.
  25. Check the availability of onsite activities (which could be a plus or a minus) and facilities such as swimming pools, tennis courts, etc.  If you don’t want them, why pay for them?
  26. Find out if the park has pet restrictions, and if so, what they are.
  27. Some parks are 55+ operations, others allow/encourage/cater to families with children.  Know which type you are signing up for and make sure it’s what you want.
  28. The photos on the website always look beautiful, but somehow manage to avoid showing you views of the parking sites from a vantage point that allows you to assess all of the factors mentioned above.
  29. Google Earth and other satellite image websites/apps are your best friend and ultimate research tool.

Our goal was to book a park or parks for January and February by the end of the day Friday, but we didn’t make it; too much to ponder and no time to make phone calls.  We will get back to it early next week as Tuesday is October 1st, and January 1st will only be three months away.

Tom and Tom from TOMTEK HVAC were back on Friday afternoon to finish up repairs on our hydronic heating system.  They did not have one of the parts they were going to replace but it didn’t matter as they discovered some additional issues that will require a return visit.

The first thing they discovered was that the propane shut off valve didn’t shut off the propane.  We had to turn off the supply at the tank so they could replace the valve before doing anything else.  When they removed the propane diffuser cone to clean it and replace the gasket they discovered that the end of the cone had large holes in it.  These holes were preventing the propane from burning as efficiently as it should, and if they got bigger could prevent the furnace from working at all.  Parts like this for a Weil-McLain GV Gold Series hydronic heating system are not common, i.e., they don’t carry them on their truck or even stock them at their office, so they had to special order it.

As long as they had the combustion chamber open, they went ahead and vacuumed it out.  They had me look at it, and it had what appeared to be a couple of inches of rusty debris lying in the bottom, the result of a lack of proper (professional) service over a very long period of time (or perhaps any service at all).  They put it all back together and will replace the diffuser cone, gasket, and igniter (along with the part they forgot to bring) when they return next week.

I don’t know if this qualifies as serendipity in the usual sense, but we are lucky that we decided to have the system “serviced” in advance of the start of the heating season.  If not, we would not have discovered defects that could have led to a wintertime failure of the furnace with serious consequences for the house.

As I was working at my computer Friday evening an e-mail showed up with the PDF version of the October 2013 issue of Bus Conversions Magazine.  The article I wrote on the mid-August Back-To-The-Bricks rally in Clio, Michigan was the cover/centerfold article, the fifth one I have had published in BCM.  (See the BCM page of the website for the complete list and information about Bus Conversions Magazine.)  That was a nice end to nice week.

 

2013_09_11 (Wed) Fresh Water Systems

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On Wednesday we had a new water treatment system installed by Brian and Matt from Adams Well Drilling & Water Treatment.  When Brian was out the week before he determined that our old Water Boss water softener was not working very well.  This came as no surprise to us based on the house purchase inspection, but we had hoped it might last a bit longer than it did.  Alas, he also determined (confirmed) that we had sulphur-reducing bacteria and probably iron bacteria as well.  The water has always had a slight rotten egg smell (hydrogen sulfide) but had gotten worse recently.  The inside of the toilet tanks had also become a nursery of sorts (iron bacteria), so something clearly needed to be done.  They removed the old Water Boss water softener along with the old sediment pre-filter and carbon post-filter.  We also had them remove a Culligan Reverse Osmosis (RO) system.  The only thing that remained from the old system, other than pipes and tubing, was the Well-X-Trol storage/surge tank (and the well pump, of course).

With the old stuff out of the way, they first installed a new large capacity, dual porosity sediment pre-filter.  The replaceable filter element is 50 microns on the outer portion and 5 microns on the inner portion.  Although 5 microns is relatively small, the element has enough surface area to pass many gallons of water per minute.  They reconfigured some of the pipes and fittings and then installed a Water Right water softener with a large brine tank, and a Water Right carbon filtration unit with a chlorine pellet tank for the unit’s self cleansing feature.  The softener will treat about 800 gallons of water before needing to regenerate the media and has a controller that tracks the usage.  (By comparison our Water Boss regenerated every 300 gallons.)  It will also learn over time what our water usage pattern is and adjust the regen cycle accordingly.  For this reason it would be in our best interest to standardize when we do things like laundry and running the dishwasher.  To date, however, our life in retirement has lacked that degree of routine.

Their last task was to install an RO system to replace the Culligan system they took out.  The new system has a pressure boost pump on the input, a pre-filter, RO membrane, post-filter, large storage tank, delivery pump, and finally an Arsenic 3 filter.  They replaced the Culligan faucet at the main kitchen sink.  They also ran a line to the bar sink in the basement where they removed the old Insta-Hot and installed an RO faucet.  Since Adams also drills and services wells (and probably installed the one in our house many years ago) we now have one local vendor responsible for our entire fresh water system, with the exception of the hot water heater, from well to faucet.  The water heater is part of the hydronic heating system and is serviced by TOMTEK HVAC.

Wednesday was also our Door-To-Door Organics delivery.  Linda has a standing order for the “bitty fruit” as it is an appropriate size for us and the fruit is usually quite good.  She has found that she does better buying vegetables on a more frequent, as needed basis, and gets what she can from the Howell Farmers Market on Sunday mornings if we are around.

 

2013_09_07 (Sat) Wi-Fi & Wall Art

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Our day started with the surprise discovery that we did not have our usual domestic hot water.  The HVAC guys were here yesterday working on the hydronic heating system, which includes the water heater, and I had a moment of concern (and annoyance, I admit).  I knew the “boiler” was working because they tested some of the heating loops yesterday before they left.  I also knew it was a zoned system with five loops and more than a dozen valves, so it was possible a valve was left in the wrong position.  Sure enough, the valves for the Florida room (library) loop and the domestic hot water loop were both closed.  I opened them, but unfortunately the hot water tank did not return to its normal temperature in time for either of us to get the hot showers we had planned on taking when we got up.  But we left for our usual Saturday morning ham radio breakfast in South Lyon knowing that we would have our usual hot water when we returned.

There was a good turnout for breakfast and we chatted for a couple of hours.  (BTW: the extended group breakfast chat is one of the hallmarks of retirement, and often occurs on a workday.  It just so happens that Saturdays work best for the members who like to attend the SLAARC breakfast.)

Following breakfast we headed to the recycling center in Howell.  We do not have curbside recycling, so we have to take our recyclables to Recycle Livingston on Wednesdays and Saturdays.  Recycle Livingston runs a very efficient operation and always seems to have lots of workers.  We presume are (mostly) volunteers.  Besides our normal recyclables, we have been accumulating corrugated cardboard as we continue to unpack moving boxes.

When we got back to the house we set up the Wi-Fi enabled main thermostat, a Honeywell Focus Pro TH6320WF that TOMTEK installed yesterday.  This thermostat is located at the start of the main floor hallway and controls the heating loop for the living room / dining room / kitchen zone and the air-conditioning for the whole main floor.  When properly configured it allows us to monitor and control these two parts of the HVAC system.

The TH6320WF was fairly easy to set up, in part because it is a very clever device, and in part because the directions are very clearly written.  When power was first applied it came up in Wi-Fi Setup mode and behaved like a wireless host (router or access point), broadcasting its own name/ SSID .  When I opened my iPad2 and scanned for available Wi-Fi networks it was on the list and I selected it.  I then opened my browser (Safari) and pointed it to the thermostat’s home page.  From there, I activated the thermostat’s wireless client mode and connected it to our primary home wireless network.  At that point the thermostat had an IP address from the AT&T gateway and was able to communicate with a website whose purpose is remote monitoring and control of this type of equipment.  Before that could happen, however, I had to create an account on the website.  The account creation process sent us an e-mail.  Following the instructions in the e-mail we completed the registration and activation process.  We are now able to remotely monitor and control this thermostat using a smartphone, iPad, or computer.

The rest of the afternoon was spent selecting and hanging wall art.  While the hanging part can be tedious, deciding what to hang and where to hang it takes time, judgment, and patience.  It was heavily overcast and starting to rain by the time we got started.  The living room tends to be a bit dark on this kind of day so we decided to hang photographs in the recreation room.  We hung 40 objects in the last three days and have at least two dozen more to install.  Getting the “objects d’art” on the “walls d’house” has dramatically transformed the look and feel of the interior and made a significant dent in the “clutter d’move”.

By 6:00 PM we were tired and a bit hungry.  Since Linda had not had time to prepare our evening meal we decided to try the El Patron Mexican restaurant in Howell.  The vegetarian fajitas worked well for us, they had Dos Equis amber on draft, the wait staff was pleasant and efficient, and our waiter had a subtle sense of humor.  Nuf said.

 

2013_09_06 (Fri) House Systems

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I have often commented here about the “house” systems in our converted coach; the water (fresh and sewage) and electrical (lights, appliances) systems and their components that make a large motorized vehicle behave like a stationary house.  Those components include things that are found in any stationary dwelling (water and sewage pipes, plumbing fixtures, electrical wires, circuit breakers, switches, light fixtures, appliances, etc.), things that are found in some stationary dwellings (sewage tanks, macerator pumps, well pumps, fresh water pressure tanks, reverse osmosis systems, power generators and transfer switches), and things that are not commonly found in stationary homes (yet) (various gauges, batteries, inverters & chargers, power protection devices, solar panels, and even wind turbines.)  RVs do not have geothermal or low-head hydro systems.

Today, however, was about actual house systems, that is to say, systems for our actual (stationary) house.  We have had a “rotten egg” smell in our domestic fresh water system since we bought the house and finally called Adams Well Drilling and Water Treatment, a local Howell-based company, to come out and take a look at our current equipment.  Brian arrived as scheduled at 9 AM and we walked him through the complete fresh water system.  He took some water samples directly from the well (before any filtering, softening, or other treatment).  The good news was that our dissolved iron was at 1.2 ppm (mg/L), which is a treatable level, but above the 0.3 ppm at which iron starts to become a problem in the water.  The less good news came from two directions: 1) that our Water Boss water softener wasn’t doing a very good job and 2) we appeared to have iron bacteria, which a regular water softener doesn’t treat very well (or at all) even with the special “iron out” salt.

We discussed a range of options but Brian’s recommendation, which we accepted, was a new water softener and a “carbon unit”.  The carbon unit is self cleaning using special chlorine crystals, and is very effective in dealing with iron bacteria.  We will also have new sediment and taste filter housing installed as part of the installation.  There may be other issues with the water system in this house, which was built in 1977, but the water treatment equipment was probably due to be replaced regardless of what else we do.  The following website from the Illinois Department of Public Health gives a nice synopsis of iron in drinking water:   http://www.idph.state.il.us/envhealth/factsheets/ironFS.htm .

The other fresh water issue we have, based on the testing that was done as part of the purchase inspection, is Arsenic.  The level that came back from the lab was 34 ppb (ug/L).  The old “safe” level was 50 ppb, but the current “safe” level is 10 ppb.  Zero ppb would be ideal, of course, but is not achievable at a reasonable cost. To further complicate matters, there are two kinds of Arsenic found in well water: Arsenic 5 and Arsenic 3.  The prior water testing did not test for these separately, but the sample Brian took today is going to a private lab that can/will test for each separately.  We were told previously that Arsenic 5 is the more typical and is mostly removed by Reverse Osmosis (RO) but that Arsenic 3 is not removed by RO.  The house has a Culligan RO system installed that supplies water to the refrigerator and a special faucet in the kitchen sink.  It was in the house when we bought it and we decided to continue renting it until we could determine our true needs and consider our options.  Not knowing if we had Arsenic 3 in our water, we purchased a special Arsenic 3 filter from Culligan which installs in the manifold after the RO membrane.  We made a call to Culligan to check on our contract and got a call back from our rep (Jeff) who has been a good guy to work with.  Long term it makes no sense to rent the unit, so we are exploring purchasing it or removing it and having Adams install a similar system.

While Brian was doing his thing, Darryl showed up from DMC HVAC.  Darryl did the HVAC installation for our office/library/garage addition/renovation at the old house and did a great job.  When it comes to contractors I like to use local people when I can but I also like to stick with people we have worked with before.  Darryl is not local to our new place, but he is a known quantity whose work we respect.  Although we have a loop from the hydronic hot water heating system in the Florida room/library, it has some issues.

The major issue is that the supply and return lines run through the ceiling and into the wall which adjoins the garage.  We think this house originally had a detached garage with a concrete patio between the garage and the end of the house.  Sometime later a roof was added connecting the house and the garage and the two open sides were closed in with 16 feet of doorwall and fixed glass panels.  The only practical way to extend the heating systems was to run the pipes overhead.

The other issue is that this space does not have air-conditioning.  (There is a small window mount unit in the garage wall.  Yup, it exhausts heat into the garage.)  We have space in a corner of the garage by this room to install a small forced-air furnace/air-conditioner and get the air to/from the room easily along the garage ceiling.  We would also like a ceiling mounted forced-air furnace in the garage so we can store paints and other things that we want to be able to keep above freezing, or bump the temperature up a bit and have a comfortable place to work.  Darryl installed one of these at our old house, and it was a very nice feature.

In anticipation of this work, we had a second propane tank installed next to the garage when the whole house backup generator was installed back in May.  I told AmeriGas at the time what we planned to do so they did a temporary installation of the tank and ran a line directly to the generator.  One of the thinks Darryl will need to do is mount a permanent pressure regulator on the side of the garage and then run pipe to get the propane over to the two new furnaces.

As Darryl was finishing up, Tom and Tom showed up from TOMTEK HVAC.  TOMTEK is a Howell-based company that we decided to have service our hydronic heating system.  It’s an old Weil-McLain Gold unit with some corroded parts.  It was also filled with water.  When we looked at the house originally the heating loop to the Florida room was shut off.  It turned out that something had failed while the owners were away during the winter and that loop had frozen and ruptured.  They repaired it prior to closing, but I never did understand why the system didn’t have an appropriate anti-freeze in it instead of water.  As of today, it does.

One of the nice things about hydronic heat is that it is easily zoned.  Our system has four zones, each with its own thermostat.  One of those thermostats also controls the air-conditioning for the main floor of the house.  That may seem odd, but it is a consequence of the A/C unit probably being added sometime after the house was built.  As a result, the air handler is in the attic and all of the air ducting is too.  It’s a single system controlled from a single point, and is completely separate from the hydronic heating system except for this one shared thermostat.  It was the failure of this particular thermostat that prompted us to go ahead and contact TOMTEK and have them out to service the system and install four new thermostats.  The one that controls the living/dining rooms and kitchen, as well as the air-conditioning, is a Wi-Fi enabled device that will allow us to monitor the temperature in the hallway, which is the most central point in the house, and control the main heating loop and the air-conditioner remotely if we so desire.  Pretty cool; literally.  The “boiler” needed some additional service for which TOMTEK had to order parts, so they will be back another day to finish up the maintenance on the unit.

Overlapping contractors made for a somewhat intense day.  Fortunately there were two of us available to interact with them, and they all got the attention they needed from us, when they needed it.  As soon as Brian was done I called Adams Well Drilling and Water Treatment and scheduled him to come back on the 11th to install the new water treatment equipment.