Tag Archives: water softener

2014/04/07 (M) Big Wheels Keep On Turning

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The boots may have been made for walking, but the wheels were made for turning and it does not make much sense (to us) to own a motorhome and not use the motor to move the home around at least occasionally.  Checkout time at Williston Crossings RV Resort is nominally 11 AM.  We were planning to leave by then, but a call to Suncoast Designers at 9 AM caused us to push our departure time back.  They suggested we not arrive until about 4 PM to make sure we had a place to park with hookups.  That put our departure time target at 2 PM.  We walked up to the office to make sure this would be OK.  It was; we have been here a long time and been good residents, and no one was scheduled to go in to “our” site today.

Given some extra time we had not planned on, we went for one last, long walk around the RV resort.  How different it looked and felt.  The resort is turning over from long-term winter/seasonal use to short-term summer/vacation use and there were many empty sites.  Eighty-nine rigs left yesterday.  Many were Carriage 5th wheels that were part of the 70 rig Carriage Travel Club rally that was here all last week.  But some were winter seasonal residents who have been dribbling out since April 1st and will continue to do so into May.  We were not the only rig pulling out today.  Our other neighbor, Sharon, is leaving this coming Sunday.  A few rigs were pulling in, of course, but the departures currently exceed the arrivals on any given day.

When we returned from our walk I mixed up a batch of the concoction we use in the waste holding tanks (48 oz PineSol, 48 oz water, 1cup Calgon).  I dumped the black-water tank and back-flushed it, followed by dumping the grey-water waste tank.  I ran additional water through the drain hose and then disconnected the hoses and fittings and stowed them for travel.  I reconnected the water softener and filled the fresh-water tank.  Once that was done Linda helped me disconnect, clean, and stow the fresh water hoses and the water softener.

We tend to forego coffee and breakfast on travel days, but had a little of both this morning as we were not leaving right away.  Because of the delay in our departure we did not have lunch.  To pass the time I continued with travel preparations.  The last time I had the coach batteries connected I noticed that the Pressure Pro TPMS (tire pressure monitoring system) was not reading one of the sensors (PS outside drive tire).  We have a repeater for this system that I plan to install in the rear of the coach someday, but for now it gets attached to the rear view mirror of the car.  I took care of that task and then decided to move the car up onto the patio next to passenger side of the coach.  I left the ignition on to power the repeater and connected the coach batteries to power the TPMS receiver.  After a few minutes all of the tire sensors were active and the tire pressures were OK for travel.  I disconnected the coach batteries and put the car back in front of the coach.

At 1:30 PM we started our final travel preparations, clearing off the counters and moving stuff from the cockpit to the sofa, the bed, and the bedroom floor.  At 1:45 PM I shut off the 240/120 VAC electrical power to the coach, disconnected the shoreline, and stowed it in the slide-out tray over the DS drive tires.  I installed the screw-in cover for the utility port hole in the bay floor, and closed/locked the bay.  I then checked the Magnum 4024 to make sure it had switched to inverter mode, which it had.

Once the shore power is cut we seem to develop an increased sense of urgency about leaving.  I think this is due, in part, to the fact that I do not have the ZENA power generator operational yet, so our house batteries do not get charged while we are driving.  That’s OK, up to a point; the battery bank was designed to be large enough to run the inverter and power reasonable loads for a reasonable length of time.  But the sooner we leave, the sooner we arrive, and the sooner we arrive, the sooner we can plug back in to shore power.  We have an auxiliary power plant, of course, so we always have the option of using that if needed.  The other reason we are probably anxious to leave is more psychological.  Once we are completely disconnected (physically) we are become disconnected mentally, although not necessarily emotionally.  We are no longer “tethered” to that spot, and that means it is time to go.

I connected the chassis batteries, fired up the engine, and set the level low system to the driving position.  While Linda moved the car to street I drained the auxiliary air tank using the nice dry air from the main engine air compressor.  With John’s assistance we got the coach out of the site and lined up on the street.  Linda pulled the car up behind the coach and we went through our procedure for hooking it up to the tow bar.  We did our standard light check and found that the turn signals on the car were not working.  A quick check of the connectors on both ends of the cable revealed a socket on the car end of the cable that was corroded.  I used the awl on John’s Swiss Army Knife to clean it up.  A recheck of the lights indicated that everything was working.  After a final “goodbye” with John and Ali we were on our way.

Our departure delay meant we would be traveling SSW into the sun at the hottest part of the day.  The air temperature was 85 degrees F when we left, and the engine ran slightly hotter than usual, indicating just above 195 degrees F on the coolant temperature gauge, so I decided not to run the coach air conditioning.  The drive to Hudson was warm, but not unbearable.  A cold front was approaching the gulf coast of Florida so we had increasing cloud cover as we progressed south and west towards the coast, which helped keep the cockpit from getting too warm.

We had a nice run from Williston to Hudson.  We headed south out of Williston on US-41/US-27/FL-121.  US-27/FL-121 split off to the west a mile south of town, made a sweeping turn to the left and then followed a nice straight line SW for 17 miles to its southern terminus at US-19.  This stretch of FL-121 is straight but hilly.  With the cruise control set the engine is very sensitive to hills.  I always know we are on a grade, however slight, by the reaction of the turbo boost gauge and the pyrometers.

Most of the rest of trip was on US-19 except for the last three miles.  Traffic was light until we got to Crystal River, which had slower speed limits, lots of stop lights, and lots of vehicles on the road.  It opened up a bit after Homosassa Springs, but got congested as we approached Weeki Wachee where FL-50 ends at US-19.  From Weeki Wachee to just north of Hudson traffic remained slow and congested with increasingly dense commercial use on both sides of the road and stop lights every mile.  Just north of Hudson we turned east onto Little Road, which immediately swung south, and followed it for about two miles to New York Avenue, where we turned west and went another mile to Labor Place, the location of Suncoast Designers.

The coach ran fine, although the Check Engine Light came on almost immediately and was on more than it was off for the whole trip.  That did not surprise me as we had not done any work over the last couple of months to fix the fuel temperature sensor voltage problem that is apparently setting a fault code in the DDEC II.  I had hoped that the repairs we made in the dashboard wiring harness would fix the speedometer/odometer problem, but they did not; the gauge sat on zero for the whole trip.  The left pyrometer (exhaust gas temperature) gauge, however, was much more responsive and tracked the right pyrometer gauge much more closely than it ever had before.  It appears that the wires we repaired were for this gauge rather than the speedo/odo.

Once we pulled in to Suncoast Designers we pulled to the side of the road, so as not to block traffic, and unhooked the car.  While Linda parked the car I found the office and checked on parking arrangements.  Suncoast Designers has at least a dozen RV sites with water and 50 A electric hookups.  The only one open was a somewhat tight spot between two other large Class A motorhomes that required me to back in.  The maneuver was made more difficult by the fact that the road in front of the sites had a curb on the far side and was not wide enough to allow me to swing the front end without scrubbing the front tires.  I repositioned the coach so that I was turning in from the driver’s side, but Linda and I could not figure out how to get the coach into the site.  The guy next to us on the driver’s side offered to help.  A former truck driver, he knew exactly what to have me do.  Unlike some RVers, our pride is not injured by not knowing how to do something, and we gladly accepted his help.

I pulled past the site close to the front of his rig and then turned out to the passenger side, putting the coach at an angle to the open site.  He had me back part way into the front of the site at that angle and then turn the steer tires full left to start to bring the coach around.  He had me stop and then turn the steer tires full right and pull forward.  Steer tires full left again and back up some more, then full right and pull forward. We repeated this one more time and finally had the coach lined up straight and centered between the coaches on either side without having hit either one!  Linda was keeping an eye on the back of the coach the whole time (to make sure I did not hit anything) and guided me into our final position.  We then leveled the coach and shut the engine down.

The outside air temperature was only in the upper 70’s, but it was 90 degrees F in the coach and the outside humidity was high.  In spite of having nine windows that open, the three ceiling vent fans are not very effective at cooling down the interior under such circumstances.  In theory we can run all three air conditioners on a “50 A” shore service, but we have tripped breakers before when doing that.  (The issue is that circuit breakers are commonly designed to only carry 80% of their rated current on a continuous basis, so two of our A/C units plus a little bit of miscellaneous load can exceed 40 A on one of the legs.)  Besides, as soon as I plugged in the Magnum 4024 was going to switch to charger mode and start recharging the house batteries.

I got the shore power connected and checked the Magnum 4024.  It went into bulk charging mode and started charging the house batteries at 86 Amps. Since it is a 24 VDC charger, it was drawing ~1/5 that much AC current, or ~17 A, the equivalent of one of our air conditioners.  The front (living room) and center (kitchen) A/C’s are on separate legs of the 240/120 VAC power supply, so we can run them at the same time.  The bedroom A/C is on the same leg as the front A/C and the Magnum is on the other leg.  We ran the front and center A/C’s along with Magnum and let the bedroom stay warm for the time being.

Suncoast Designers provides free WiFi for customers camped at their facility, but the signal we thought was theirs indicated it was “filtered” and we had not obtained the login information from the office before it closed.  We used our Verizon MiFi instead and had a good, strong signal.  I had a chance to ask our neighbor (helpful truck driver guy) later, and he said the open signal was the one they were using.  Although it was a weak (one bar) “g” signal, our WiFi Ranger latched on to it without difficulty.

Linda needed a few grocery items and located a Publix grocery store on Little Road less than three miles from Suncoast Designer’s.  As evening settled in we switched off the front A/C and turned on the bedroom unit.  Linda reheated some of the leftover Sloppy Joe’s from the pot luck dinner the night before, and we had that on the skinny buns we have started using, along with a simple spinach salad and a few Fritos corn chips.

After dinner Linda sent e-mails to several of our new friends from WCRVR while I checked in to RVillage and took care of a few e-mails of my own.  The overnight temperature was forecast to only drop into the upper 60’s with high humidity, and with rain starting before sunrise, so we decided to leave the rig closed up and the kitchen and bedroom A/C’s on all night.  We rarely do this because of the noise and because we prefer fresh air, except when it is too warm and/or too humid.  Considering that we had traveled less than 100 miles and been on the road just under two hours today, we both felt like it had been a very long day.  As much as we enjoyed the social life at WCRVR, it was nice to not have anything to do but go to bed and get some rest.

 

2013_11_08-15 (F-R) Another Busy Week

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The second week of November was another one of those weeks where we were busy every day from the time I got up until the time we went to bed, but I don’t have a clear recollection of what I was doing each day as I did not always mark it on my calendar.  I think that is because I spent a lot of time at my computers working on WordPress websites and installing packages/updates.  Some days are very clear, however.

2013-11-08 (F) The “Eyes” Have It

We had managed to snag a couple of appointment times this morning to have our eyes checked by our long-standing optometrist at the Farmington Vision Clinic.  Linda’s eyes had not changed very much, but it had been a couple of years since she got new glasses, so she decided to get a pair.  I had been experiencing intermittent “wavy” patterns and was a bit concerned about that.  The exam did not indicate any issues with diabetes or glaucoma, so that was a relief.  The tentative diagnosis was “pre-migraine ocular disturbance” which was interesting because I was not experiencing any headaches, and rarely do.  The trigger may be something that I eat, perhaps caffeine or wine, so I may need to keep a food log.  Ugh.  I like writing about the dishes Linda prepares, but I don’t like “logging” my food intake.

Chuck is in the process of prepping their bus for southbound travel, so I met up with him for lunch.  He had also gotten connected to a guy in California whose older brother was living in Michigan when he passed away back in June.  The older brother was well known in the Prevost bus community, and had a converted coach stored in the N.E. suburbs of the Detroit Metro Area.  The surviving brother needed to deal with as part of his brother’s affairs, and Chuck had offered our assistance on Sunday.

2013_11_09 (S) Schramm’s Mead

But first we had to deal with Saturday, which started with our usual ham radio club breakfast in South Lyon, Michigan.  Attendance varies, but we had a big crowd of at least 20 people.  After breakfast we decided to drive over to Ferndale and find Schramm’s Mead.  I worked with Ken Schramm before I retired from Wayne RESA.  He’s still the TV / Multi-media Production Manager there, but outside of normal business hours he is a well-known expert on the subject of mead, having written a well-respected book on the subject, and speaking at international conventions.  He and his wife Jean and their daughter Alison have been working for over a year to get Schramm’s Mead open, and that finally happened about 6 weeks ago.  They are at 327 W. 9 Mile Rd. in Ferndale, Michigan.  The meadery is located in a very “happening” part of town just a short walk west of the intersection of 9 Mile Rd. and Woodward Avenue and should be a good location for them.  Parking was plentiful, with both paid and free options.  We sampled their complete line of currently available mead products and bought three bottles.  I have added a section to the Health & Food tab of this website on Wine & Mead and refer you there for more information about mead and the offerings from Schramm’s Mead.  Let me just say here “this is good stuff.”

2013_11_10 (N) Buses & Ham Radio

Sunday found me headed to Chuck’s house near South Lyon bright and early, or at least early.  We needed to meet the guy from California at the RV storage lot in Shelby Township, so it took an hour to get there.  He was waiting for us, let us in, and led us to the bus.  It was a 1997 (~) Prevost XL (40’) Royale Coach conversion with a Detroit Diesel Series 60 engine and 6-speed automatic transmission.  It appeared to be in good shape and Chuck and I set about figuring out its state.  The chassis batteries had been left “on” and were drained.  The house and generator batteries were also “on” but appeared to be in better shape.  It did not appear to have much fuel in the tank, but with the chassis batteries drained we couldn’t get accurate readings from any of the gauges.  We got the generator started, plugged in the 24V emergency chassis battery charger, turned the house batter chargers on, and set about finding the circuit breakers and switches seeing what worked.

After letting the generator/24V charger run for several hours the chassis batteries showed no sign of coming back to life.  We still had enough hours of daylight to do something about it.  We located a NAPA Auto Parts Store less than 2.5 miles from the storage yard and gave them a call.  They had 8 of the type battery we needed (12V Group 31).  We only needed four.  We pulled the old ones out of the bus and headed over.  By taking the old ones we did not have worry about disposal/recycling of them and avoided a “core charge.”  We installed the new batteries and the DD-60S fired right up.  That’s was a beautiful thing to hear.  The chassis and brake systems aired-up correctly and the gauges all came to life.  That’s was a beautiful thing to see.

The bus had about ¼ tank of fuel indicated, or about 40+ gallons, so we decided we did NOT need to drive it someplace to fuel it right that minute.  The bus was headed to Staley Coach in Nashville, TN at the end of the week and could stop for fuel early in the trip.

I had a ham radio club meeting at 6:30 PM, and needed to get dinner, so Chuck and I made our exit and headed back to his house.  I got home in time to change clothes but not sit down and eat.  Linda made sandwiches for us to eat as we drove to the meeting.

Our November ham radio club meeting is a significant one as we elect officers for the coming year.  Mike (W8XH) agreed to run for a 2nd term as president, Paul (N8BHT) agreed to run again for Treasurer, and I (K8BRF) agreed to run again for Vice-President.  Marty (KB8JIU) did not wish to run again as Secretary, and Harvey (AC8NO) agreed to run for that position, which he has held in the past.  There being only one candidate for each officer, the slate was declared elected.  The program for the evening was put on by Mike (W8XH) and Steve (N8AR).  They demonstrated the use of Mike’s Vector Network Analyzer (VNA) to examine the characteristics of an antenna by calibrating out the effects of the transmission line.

Technical note:  Transmission lines have losses, i.e., they inherently dissipate as heat some of the energy they are trying to transfer from a radio transmitter to an antenna.  The losses depend on frequency, and if the transmission line is of low quality it will dissipate more energy per linear foot than a higher quality one at any particular frequency.  How much energy it dissipates thus depends on the inherent loss, the length, and the frequency of the signal.  When a transmitter sends energy through a transmission line it would ideally like all of the energy to reach the antenna, be transferred into the antenna, and cause it to resonate, producing electromagnetic radiation.  It never works quite that well in practice.  If there is a mismatch between the transmission line and the antenna, some of the energy will be “reflected” back down the transmission line towards the transmitter.  However, if there are sufficient losses in the transmission line the reflected energy never makes it back to the radio, which makes the radio think everything is just fine when in fact very little of the energy the radio produces may get turned into useful RF EM radiation.  Mike’s VNA allows the user to “calibrate out” the effect of the transmission line and “see” what is actually happening at the antenna.  That’s cool, and that’s a good thing to be able to do.

2013_11_11 (M) Odds ‘n’ Ends

Monday was a catch-all day for me while Linda went to Ann Arbor for her regular Monday babysitting duty.  I talked to Michele and she was encouraged that she would be able to fix the two expensive body panels that I crunched.  I called Prevost and ordered the 3rd panel that she would not be able to fix.  It would ship via UPS and arrive on Wednesday.  I updated my LinkedIn account and added all three of our phone numbers to the Federal DO NOT CALL LIST, a long overdue chore.  I called Adams Well Drilling and Water Treatment to get new whole-house sediment filters and chlorine tablets for the carbon filter unit.  We have a sediment filter housing that takes 10” long large-diameter filter elements.  They are a spun polypropylene with a dual micron rating; 50 microns on the outside and 5 microns on the inside.  It’s like having two filters in one!  The 50 micron portion removes the larger sediment that can quickly plug and filter and render it useless, leaving the 5 micron filter to remove only smaller particles.  The flow rate through this filter is excellent, and it’s easy to change thanks to the pre- & post-filter shutoff valves Adam’s installed, and the pressure relief button on top of the housing.

We had previously arranged to meet Kate for dinner.  Having just seen her in Ypsilanti, we agree to meet at the Zukey Lake Tavern in Pinckney, Michigan.  Linda and I wanted to check it out as our ham radio club had decided to go there for our December holiday meeting/dinner.  They have a very average salad bar, but I was able to get plenty to eat at it.  Linda had a veggie burger.  Not a great choice for us as restaurants go, but it will work well for the club.

2013_11_12 (T) Madeline Comes To Visit

Linda had agreed to babysit our grand-daughter on Tuesday so our son could continue working on a presentation for his department at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor.  I don’t get to see Madeline as much as Linda does, so our son offered to bring her to our house and work there while Linda and I handled baby duties.  Madeline is a busy little girl.  She is an accomplished crawler and is working on standing up and walking.  She loves her books and toys, and grandma bought some new ones to have at our house for her.  She kept us both busy while her dad worked on his computer.  He brought her Pack-n-Play and set it up in the bedroom that we have designated for her.  She went down for nap right on schedule at 2 PM and slept for ~90 minutes.  We got to play with her until sometime after 5 PM when it was time to leave.

2013_11_13 (W) & _14 (R)

Linda had called a couple of weeks ago and managed to get an appointment with our primary care physician for her annual physical due to a cancellation.  Her total cholesterol had risen a little from the last visit, which annoyed her given the way we eat, but her HDL, LDL, and triglyceride numbers all looked really good.  She was also able to talk to the nurse and find me an appointment time later in the month.  I really did not want to wait until late April or May for my next physical.

Thursday morning I went to Chuck’s bus garage to chat with him and our mobile Mechanic, Joe Cannarozzi, who had come in from Chicago to complete some work on Chuck’s coach.  Joe had also been engaged by the guy from California to drive the bus to Staley Coach near Nashville, Tennessee on Friday morning and bring the guy back to the Detroit area.  It turned out that Chuck needed new brake pads for his tag axle wheels.  We were sitting around wringing our hands about how to get those in time for Joe to finish the brake job when I realized that Joe was going to Nashville where Prevost has one of their major factory parts and service centers!  Phone calls were made, parts were ordered and put on account for will call, and it was agreed that Joe would pick them up on Friday and bring them back with him.  Sometimes bus stories do have happy endings.

I spent Wednesday and part of Thursday working at my computers.  Larry (K8UT) is a member of our ham radio club and a very accomplished web designer.  He had given me the “key” to getting a local web-server running:  LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, and phpMyAdmin).  I got MySQL and phpMyAdmin installed on the Linux box but was unable to create the databases I needed in spite of spending time with the documentation.  By Thursday evening I still did not have WordPress running on our local web-server, but I was clearly making progress in that direction.  Sometimes computer stories have happy endings too.

2013_10_04 (F) Craftsmen & Gamesmen

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I read a book years ago titled “The Gamesman.”  It was one of those pop social/psychology works that probably isn’t particularly scientific but none-the-less provides an interesting and even useful framework for looking at and possibly understanding the world, especially the world of work.  My take away from that book, which still rings true 30+ years later, was that I am a craftsman at heart who kept finding myself drawn into the gamesmanship of the workplace for which, in spite of not liking it, I seemed to have some aptitude.  Today was one of those days were a lot actually got done but I didn’t seem to be the one doing it, i.e., not a craftsman kind of day.  At least I made a partial recovery when we got home from Lowe’s and I had things I could install: light bulbs, a curtain rod, and salt for the water softener.  Such days leave me tired but not in a satisfied way.  Some days are like that, but so far I haven’t had very many of them in retirement.

I fixed two of our toilets on Thursday, but one of them apparently isn’t completely fixed yet.  I awoke this morning to sound of water running.  The flap had not sealed, causing the tank to not fill and the water to continue to run.  I have no idea how much water ran into the septic tank, but it was more than should have.  To make matters worse, I wanted to start a load of laundry early this morning only to discover that we had zero (0) gallons of water softener capacity remaining.  The softener indicated that it was going to recharge today, which meant around midnight based on how it is programmed, so I decided to start the regeneration cycle manually.  That was at 7:45 AM.  The cycle finished around 12:45 PM.  Yup, 5 hours during which I could not do the laundry, or dishes, or much else other than flush the toilets.  That’s why it’s set to run at night.  More thumb twiddling.

I checked my e-mail to see what the latest chatter was regarding the RV rally / photo workshop we are scheduled to attend.  With the federal government shut down we won’t have access to Smoky Mountain National Park (or any other federal facilities) and there was some thought of cancelling the workshop.  The problem is that the RV park where all of us are staying doesn’t give refunds and our deposit is 50% of the total camping fee for the week.  Since SMNP is closed the RV park was willing to let us re-book for any time during the next 12 months (that they had openings) for only an additional $25.  I wish I had to way to make money for doing nothing.

Our specific interest in this workshop is to learn to more fully use our digital camera (Sony Alpha 100) and to learn something about digital image post-processing software.  From that point of view, being in the Smoky Mountains in the fall was simply a bonus.  While we like nature, and I have always liked doing nature photography, our objectives for the workshop don’t require any specific subject matter in front of the lens.

We also made plans (and reservations) to meet up with Linda’s sister, brother, and his wife after the rally/workshop for a few days of camping, so we were committed to going whether there was a workshop or not.  It turned out that some of the other participants had done the same thing, and the final consensus was that the rally/workshop would go on as scheduled, national park or no national park.  That was a relief, but everything was up in the air for about 48 hours while this got sorted out.

Keith came by today to cut/trim the lawn.  He usually comes every other Tuesday, and normally would have come next week, but we asked him to pull ahead to the end of this week so the yard would look nice for the open house /warming.  He saves Fridays for “make up” work in case he gets rained out during the week.  That’s happened to him a lot this summer, but he was here as promised and in spite of the threat of rain.  It spritzed a little right after he arrived around 11 AM and then stopped, allowing him to get the whole yard done.  He always does a good job, and took the extra time today to get his blower out and blow off the driveways and the deck; a nice touch, and much appreciated.  But this was work Keith did, not me, so it was his craftsmanship, not mine.

Keith was done about the same time the water softener finished regenerating, so I finally got my load of laundry in the machine and we headed for Lowe’s and Meijer’s for last minute household items and food.  We are trying to prep this event so that the only thing we have to get on Sunday morning is ice for beverages.  We stopped at Teeko’s coffee shop before heading home.  (At Latson Road and Grand River Avenue, between Brighton and Howell, we have a Lowe’s, Walmart, Staples, Meijer’s, O’Reilly’s Auto, Teeko’s, and lots of other small stores.)  Teeko’s has become one of our favorite places to get coffee.  They stock “green” (dried but unroasted) beans and roast them at time of purchase.  They have a very nifty air-roaster that can produce anything from a very light to a very dark roast, but never burns the beans.  They have a nice variety of beans from Africa, Central/South America, and islands like Sumatra and Hawaii.  They even keep some 100% Kona on hand (we have some at home).  This time we picked up a pound each of a Costa Rica Decaf and Organic Guatemalan Nueva.

Linda made a really nice dish for dinner:  Fresh beets roasted with balsamic vinegar, grape seed oil, and a touch of sugar and served over fresh kale, wilted and mixed with couscous.  I’m sure there were some other seasonings in there, but those were the main ingredients.  Roasted beets are a real treat.

Linda has been monitoring the weather forecast leading up to/through Sunday.  The rain never materialized today, but it was very cloudy and humid and the high hit 81.  Not Michigan’s October best, but nothing to be done about it other than turn on the air conditioning.  Thunderstorms are forecast for overnight, and based on the radar it looks like we will finally get the promised rain.  Tomorrow will be a big day, with final house cleaning and lots of food preparation.  She has some tasty things planned for Sunday.

 

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_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.

 

2013_06_21 (Fri) FMCA Day 3

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We went to bed last night with a 20% chance of rain in the overnight weather forecast.  We are not sure when the rain started, but around 5:00 AM the skies opened up and it rained hard for an hour.  We are camped on somewhat higher ground with good grass sites and red rock roads, so the water drained away and we did not have flooding or muddy site/road issues.  This was not the case in other CAM-PLEX RV parks, as I discovered while walking to the 9:45 AM International Area (INTO) meeting.  My timing was bad, and I walked the 3/4 mile to the Wyoming Center in a downpour that included pea-size hail.  My raincoat and small umbrella were no match for the rain, and there was not a golf cart or shuttle (school) bus to be found anywhere.  In the end it was just water, and clothes eventually dry out.  Always looking for the learning experience in any situation, I resolved that we would purchase serious wet weather gear when we had the chance.

Linda remained in the coach to make sandwiches for lunch as we planned to meet up with Louise Stuart and Craig Davis after the 11:30 seminars.  We went to the Nostalgic Look Back at the Early Coaches of FMCA, moderated by Mike Middaugh, F3456.  Mike is yet another member of the Great Lakes Converted Coaches chapter that we also belong to.  Mike was joined by several other vintage converted coach owners who shared photographs of buses from the 1940’s, 50’s, and 60’s, some of them buses they had owned.

We then walked over to Louise and Craig’s motorhome, a very nice 38′ Monaco Dynasty.  We had our respective lunches and a great chat as we got to know fellow members of our FMCA Freethinkers Associate Chapter.  The service tech from HWH showed up around 2 PM to fix their slideout, so we took that as our cue to return to the vendor area in search of more knowledge and solutions to problems.

After some further discussion with the folks from A-1 Water Treatment we decided to purchase one of their water softeners with attached pre-filter.  It was both heavy enough and bulky enough that we arranged to have them deliver it to our coach after the vendor area closed today.

We then stopped at the WiFiRanger booth and purchased a WiFi Ranger Mobile Titanium (WFR-MT) and optional AC power supply.  (The Titanium version is identical in functionality to the standard version except for a metal case in place of a plastic one, and a 5-year warranty instead of a 1-year warranty.)  The WFR-M/MT device mounts outside the coach and combines a WiFi “booster” (transceiver) and a WiFi router.  The booster communicates with available Wi-Fi signals that can serve as on-ramps to the Internet.  These signals originate somewhere beyond our coach and are paid for, and controlled by, someone other than us. These can be public/open (unsecured) or private/closed (secured).  Use of a secured signal requires the correct authorization (password).  Public/open networks are, by definition, free to use as you do not need a password to connect to them.  Secured networks may be free, such as at some businesses, or there may be a charge, as in airports, and some hotels and campgrounds.  There is an extensive system of public/open WiFi access points available at the CAM-PLEX, sponsored by WiFiRanger.  It has been very good around the Wyoming Center, but varies out in the Boxelder RV Park.  The booster allows us to receive this weak signal, use it, and send a suitably strong signal back.  It does not, however, guarantee on-demand, robust access, as this is also a function of how many other stations are trying to access the system at the same time.

The router section of the WFR-MT generates a secure, local network that we control.  Although it is generated on the outside of the bus, it should be strong enough inside and around the coach to allow us to use our devices wherever we want around our campsite (within reason).  We won’t know this for sure until we hook it up, of course, but the device has been used and well reviewed by other travelers, including Technomadia.  Being a full-fledged router, it not only allows multiple WiFi devices to securely connect to the Internet (via the external WiFi source), but should allow them to securely communicate with each other.  (BTW:  Technomadia has the definitive book on mobile connectivity.  http://www.technomadia.comor Amazon.com)

I plan to mount the WFR to the cable entrance weatherhead with zip ties if it will work.  The device has an Ethernet cable that plugs into a POE (Power Over Ethernet) power supply.  The front cable entrance weatherhead opens into the cabinet behind/above the drivers head where a 19″ CRT TV was once housed.  It comes with a DC power adapter, but we purchased the AC power adapter as there is already AC power in this cabinet that is supplied from the inverter subpanel.

Our Verizon 4G/LTE MiFi 5510L Jetpack device does essentially the same thing as the WiFi-M, except it communicates with Verizon cell phone towers instead of external WiFi sources.  We will be using the Wi-Fi Ranger when possible, and the Verizon 5510L otherwise (assuming it has a usable signal).  This means we could have two different WiFi networks running simultaneously.  The upside to this is that we could have multiple devices accessing the Internet through different pipelines, resulting in faster data transfer.  The downside to this is that devices on one network can’t communicate with devices on the other one.  (We could solve that problem with a WiFi Ranger GO.)  Although interference between the networks is possible, it is unlikely.

We needed an additional length of hose to hook up the new water softener when it arrived, so Linda picked up a 10′ long food grade hose from the Camco booth.  She then returned to the coach to straighten it up for a visit later from Louise & Craig while I went off to the Great Lakes Area Motorcoach Association (GLAMA) gathering at 3:15 PM.

I attended the Great Lakes Area Motorcoach Association (area) meeting in the late afternoon.  The main items of interest at the GLAMA meeting were the upcoming GLAMARAMA in mid-September 2013 and the 2014 GLAMARAMA planned for next June.  Both rallies will be at the Elkhart County Fairgrounds in Goshen, IN.  After that the intention is to move it around through Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, and Ontario (Canada), perhaps doing two consecutive years in each state/province.

On the walk back to the coach I had a long, technical conversation with Michele Henry of Phoenix Paint in Edwardsburg, Michigan regarding how to remove and reinstall the broken searchlight on the front roof while minimizing damage to the paint.  Michele’s shop did the roof repair and repaint on our coach, and she always has a good sense about how to approach something like this.  She talked me through the best way to approach it, and after considering the process carefully, I decided to defer an actual repair until we can get the coach back to her shop.

Louise & Craig came by around 5:30 PM and we continued our conversation over snacks and some Red Ass Wine from the Prairie Berry Winery in the Black Hills of South Dakota.  The new water softener got delivered just as they showed up, so hookup was deferred until later.  We put out the Blue Diamond Wasabi Soy almonds, and I think they caught Louise by surprise.  (Sorry Louise.  We really should warn folks about these.  If you like almonds, and you like spicy, you will find these addictive.)