Tag Archives: water softener (H3-40)

2015/12/26 (S) Departure Preparations

In spite of overnight lows in the upper 60s and plenty of humidity we left the windows open, the exhaust fans on, and the air-conditioners off last night and did not get up until 8:30 this morning. I made our pot of morning coffee and Linda eventually warmed up the remaining cinnamon rolls for breakfast. I finished up yesterday’s blog post while she played word games on her iPad. I got a text message from John letting us know that he took Ali to the hospital early this morning but he did not elaborate.

Although we are not leaving until Monday morning, we wanted to start some of our departure preparations today. For me that meant:

dumping the waste tanks;
filling the fresh water tank;
putting away the hoses and water softener;
airing up the tires; and,
doing the laundry, including the bedding.

Linda walked up to get a shower and I started working on these chores in roughly that order I dumped the black tank and then checked the tank level monitor in the house systems panel. The indicator for Tank #2 no longer showed full but still showed 2/3rds. The indicator for Tank #1 did not change, showing 2/3rds before and after. I back flushed the black water tank which helped clean off the floor of the tank but did not do anything for the level sensors. I then dumped the grey water tank. Once it was empty I checked the monitor again and the Tank #1 indicator had dropped from 2/3rds to 1/3rd. All of this seemed to confirm that Tank #2 was plumbed into the toilet and corresponded to the bodily function of the same number. I was reminded that I really should mark the display with ‘B’ and ‘G’.

When Linda returned from her shower I took a load of whites to the laundry room and put them in a washing machine. When I returned to our coach I tapped on the side of the fresh water tank to determine the water level. It was very low, below 1/6th (20 gallons) and perhaps more like 1/8 (15 gallons). At our water usage rate we might have been able to go one more day but there wasn’t any reason to cut it that close. Besides, the lines coming out of the tank are on the side near the bottom but are not at the very bottom so there are a few gallons in there that are not usable. My reason for wanting to know was so I could enter the gallons in my water usage tracking spreadsheet. I also wanted to get the tank filled so I could put the hoses and water softener away.

While the tank was filling I got out the air-compressor, air hose, air chuck, and air pressure gauge and started checking the tires. The tires on the sunny south-facing driver’s side of the bus were a bit higher than I wanted so I adjusted them as follows (in PSI): DST=87.5, DSOD=DSID=97.5, DSS=117.5. The passenger side tires were in the shade so I figured they were not as inflated as the driver side tires and the pressures would not drop as much overnight. I set them as follows (in PSI): PST=86, PSOD=PSID=96. When I checked the PSS tire it was 70 PSI. It was supposed to be 115. Yikes!

This tire has always had a slow leak but it sat most of the summer without losing much air. I checked/adjusted the pressures on November 25 (the day before Thanksgiving) but did not check them again until today. In retrospect that was probably a mistake but it is my second least favorite chore, right behind recharging the water softener. The tire had lost 45 PSI in about 30 days, an average of 1.5 PSI per day. That is not a fast enough leak to pose a problem for driving as long as I check it every day while driving and don’t go more than a few days while parked, but it was troubling nonetheless as it was a change in the behavior of the tire.

The small pancake air compressor we carry has a 150 PSI maximum tank pressure and will provide a regulated output almost that high, but not for very long as it does not have a lot of volume. It’s designed to run low volume air tools, such as nailers and staplers, not high volume air tools, like sanders or impact wrenches. It works fine for topping up a tire but is not designed to inflate a bus tire from 70 to 115 PSI.

It took a lot of cycles to finally get the pressure to 115.5 PSI and before it did the compressor stopped coming on to re-pressurize the tank. It was warm and I thought a thermal overload protector might have opened. Another possibility is that once the tire gets up to about 110 PSI the compressor only supplies a small amount of additional air at 130 to 140 PSI until the tank pressure drops to match what is in the tire. At that point the compressor cannot push more air into the tire but the tank pressure is not low enough to cause the compressor to turn on. At this point I was really regretting that we did not bring the 15 gallon DeWalt air compressor with the 200 PSI tank and 150 PSI regulated output. Yeah, it’s big; but it works.

The front of the car was parked facing the front of the bus so the passenger side tires were in the sun. I adjusted the PSF=33.5 PSI (32 is normal) and the PSR=35.5 PSI (34 is normal). I set the DSF=32.5 and the DSR=34.5. I really need to check all of the tires first thing in the morning while it is cool, and before the sun heats up one side of the vehicles, but I am usually enjoying my morning coffee and not fully dressed. I also do not want to run the air compressor too early in the day, as it is noisy, so I have to write down the pressure adjustment needed for each tire and do it later. All things considered it’s a slightly obnoxious process.

With the waste tanks drained and the water tank filled I tested the water coming out of the softener and it was still indicating 1.5 gpg (25 ppm). I disconnected the water hoses from the coach, the supply faucet, and the water softener but left them connected to both sides of the separate pre-filter. After draining them as best I could I coiled the pre-filter hoses around the filter housing and connected the ends together to prevent leaks and put it on top of a tub in the front bay on the driver’s side. I removed the cover from the filter housing attached to the softener, which does not have a filter element in it, and dumped the water out to get rid of the weight. I then stored the softener in the passenger side of the front bay.

With the fresh water apparatuses taken care of I disconnected the waste hose from the angle adapter, flushed it out, collapsed it, and coiled it in the tub where we store all of the waste tank related accessories. I disconnected the backflush angle adapter, removed the backflush water hose, capped the discharge fitting, and added all of that to the waste accessories tub.

I put the air compressor back in the passenger side of the front bay, coiled up the air hose, and stored it in the driver side tray over the drive tires. Back inside I reattached the air inlet screen for the middle air-conditioner, put the drill and driver buts away with the other tools, and closed up all the bays. Other than rechecking the passenger side front tire all I have left to do to get the bus ready to travel is stow the bag chairs and fold up table, stow the awnings, and disconnect and stow the shorepower cord. After that it’s the usual departure procedure. Once we are out of our site I will back the bus up so as not to block anyone’s driveway and Linda will pull the car around behind it so we can hook it up for towing. We will then exit the resort via the covered bridge to the main gate and out to US-27.

I sat outside for the later part of the afternoon working on this post. Linda was out too for a while, but went in to lie down. She said she felt OK but was very tired. I put the second load of laundry in a washing machine around 2 PM and went back at 3 to transfer it to a dryer. John stopped by on the way back to his rig and said the hospital was probably going to admit Ali but as of when he left she was still in the ER. He took her in this morning because of severe abdominal pain.

I was getting ready to go back at 3:45 PM to retrieve the laundry when I got involved in a conversation with our neighbors to the south, Danny and Dorothy. We had previously exchanged salutations and had brief chats but this was our first real conversation. Pam, who is in the rig to our north with her husband Ken, stopped to chat briefly as she headed out for a walk. It was also the first time we have talked. It seems that this often happens. Two years ago it was March before we got to be friends with more than just John and Ali and by the time we left in early April we were being sociable with a dozen people.

At 4:15 PM Linda decided we should go for an easy walk. The sun had just dropped below the trees so the air temperature was pleasant but the humidity had not yet risen. We strolled up to the office and checked for mail. The holiday card from Brendan, Shawna, and Madeline was there but not the Christmas card from Marilyn. We will be gone before the mail arrives on Monday so we will have to ask in the office tomorrow about having stuff forwarded. We also have to let them know we are pulling out early Monday and need to have someone read the meter so we can settle the electric bill.

We had partly cloudy skies for our walk which thinned out as the evening progressed and allowed some radiational cooling. Basically we have been going from 83 degrees and 63% relative humidity during the day to 68 degrees and 83% relative humidity overnight. Comfortable enough in the day but muggy at night.

Back at the rig we sat outside with our iPads until Linda went in at 5:30 to prepare leftovers for dinner and I went inside at 5:45 to eat them. We had crossed paths with John while we were walking and he said there would be a fire in the firepit tonight. At 6:30 Linda filled our flip top insulated coffee mugs with wine and packed them in our carry bag, along with our two plastic wine glasses, and we walked up to the campfire. There were already a half dozen people there and more showed up after us so that we almost filled the available seats.

Big Mike had built the fire and had it going. John was there to tend to things but did not play his guitar and sing. He is still recovering from whatever made him ill overnight Wednesday and with the high heat/humidity, and Ali in the hospital, he probably did not feel much like performing. As much as we enjoy the entertainment we also enjoy the conversation, and there was plenty of that to go around. We ended up talking to Peter and Giselle from Ontario, whom we had not met before. They are not retired yet but are arranging some extended vacation time to try out the RV lifestyle. That is really smart in our opinion if your employment situation permits it.

Peter, John, Linda, and I were the last to leave. At 10 PM I spread out the remaining fire logs and John locked up the shed. He took off on his golf cart to lock up the various buildings in the park and we walked back to our coach. The skies were partly cloudy and there was a large, bright, full moon. The temperature was pleasant and the park was still and quiet save for one person we saw walking their dog off in the distance. This was our last campfire at WCRVR this season unless we return briefly in March on our way north. We missed seeing Ali but even with her absence, and without music, we enjoyed it our evening sitting around the campfire.

Back at our coach we had the last of the apple strudel with Coconut Bliss non-dairy ice cream for dessert. I flipped channels on the TV while Linda read and I played games. We caught the tail end of a vegan cooking show that we had never seen or even heard of and caught the news/weather at 11 PM. We were interested in the storm system moving into the Midwest but otherwise there wasn’t much on that grabbed our interest.

As we were getting ready for bed I put soiled clothes in the hamper and realized that I had not taken the clothes from there yesterday and laundered them with the second/dark load. That meant I would be doing an unexpected load of laundry in the morning. In spite of a forecast of possibly early morning light fog we left the windows open and two of the three exhaust fans running all night. We do better (up to a point) with fresh, moving air, even if it is humid, than we do with the coach closed up and the noise of the air-conditioners. Linda fell asleep quickly but I played games on my iPad and watched Cook’s Country on the PBS Create channel before turning off the lights at 12:30 AM.

2015/12/08 (T) Hudson and Back

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The outside air temperature dropped into the 40’s last night. I closed the roof vents before turning in but we left the windows open a bit. It was 61 degrees F in the kitchen when I got up at 8 AM so I turned on the Aqua-Hot, turned up all three thermostats, and turned on the front electric toekick heater. I fed the cats and then made our morning coffee. Linda got up around 8:20. After our first cup of coffee we had granola for breakfast. When the temperature in the coach reached 70 I turned off the thermostats and the electric heater and shut off the Aqua-Hot diesel burner. (The electric heating element in the Aqua-Hot stays on whenever we are plugged in and living in the coach.)

I called Suncoast Designers and talked to Donna. She talked to the technician and reported back that the bus window would be ready for pickup at 3 PM. The office closes at 3:45 PM, so I would need to be there close to 3 to get it and settle the bill.

I found my water usage spreadsheet, which I last updated on April 19 of this year, and edited it to include the dump and fill activity since then. I had to go back to my blog posts from late April to confirm just what I had done and when I had done it. I checked my most recent post drafts and discovered that I had not made mention of dumping here at WCRVR. Linda and I agreed that it was not the day we got here and not the following day so I recorded it as the 3rd. Since there had been large time gaps in our use of the coach, and I had dumped the fresh water tank and refilled it the day before Thanksgiving, I had to reset the spreadsheet to known starting points.

After entering the missing data I determined that, with two people living in the coach, we continue to use fresh water at the rate of approximately 12 gallons per day and fill the waste tanks at the rate of approximately 12 gallons per day; five for the black tank and seven for the gray tank. With 120 gallons of fresh water that means we can boondock for about 10 days, during which time we would use up the 120 gallons of fresh water and add roughly the same number of gallons to the two waste tanks, 50 to the 80 gallon black tank, and 70 to the 120 gallon gray tank. I also determined that we have used about half the capacity of the water softener.

The numbers for the waste tanks are very rough as our tank level monitors do not work and I cannot see the levels in the tanks, even though they are translucent white plastic, as they are hidden behind “beauty panels.” Still, I think my estimates are reasonable. Given the 3:4 ratio of fresh:waste tank capacity I am inclined to redo the water bay next spring as a 300 gallon, 2-tank, system replacing the current 330 gallons of combined tank capacity (125 fresh, 125 gray, 80 black). I could reuse the current 125 gallon fresh tank but I would probably replace it with one of a different shape to make room for the water softener and filters to be built in and to relocate the fresh water pump to the driver side floor at the level of the bottom of the fresh water tank.

At current usage rates a 125 gallon fresh water tank and a single 175 gallon waste tank would, hypothetically, allow us to boondock for 13 days, running out of fresh water just as our waste tank reached capacity. We might be able to stay out longer if we could reduce fresh water usage and waste generation proportionally. In practice, however, we would probably not go more than 13 to 14 days and only then if the new tank monitors worked accurately. Still, that would allow us to stay out two full weeks before we had to dump and fill, which seems like a good amount of time.

The other benefits of reconfiguring the tanks in the utility bay include slightly different tank shapes that would create some space for the water softener and filters and provide access to the tanks for servicing and monitoring. It would also allow me to install rotating spray heads for the waste tank and drain it through the macerator pump, allowing use to “dump” our tanks at our house or anywhere we could get a garden hose into a waste drain. We might even gain space, or access to space that is already there, to store drain hoses, and other utilities-related things, in the bay. I would, for instance, love to have a shorepower reel but I do not think I can create that kind of space without making the tanks too small.

What we would lose in the redo is a separate gray tank that could, hypothetically, be drained onto the ground in some places. The number of places where that is legal, however, is too small (in my opinion) to justify keeping that capability. The other main argument for keeping separate black and gray waste water tanks is that the contents of the gray tank can be used to flush the drain hose out after first dumping the contents of the black tank. Indeed, some bus converters set up their waste tanks with the gray tank above the black tank and plumb them so that the gray tank can be drained into the black tank to help flush it out, or drained directly (which leaves open the option of draining it in on the ground).

We heard another interesting take on water management for boondocking at a seminar in August 2012 at the FMCA national rally in Madison, WI. The presenter described his system, which involved three tanks, fresh, gray, and black. His twist on this was that he ran the gray water through a filter (or set of filters) and then used it to flush the toilet. The advantage is that all of the fresh water becomes available for gray water use, i.e., cooking and cleaning. As an example, consider a setup (such as we might have in our bus conversion) with a 150 gallon fresh water tank, a 100 gallon gray tank, and a 50 gallon black tank. Since the first 50 gallons that go into the gray tank will potentially end up in the black tank the entire 150 gallons of fresh water can ultimately end up in the 100 gallon gray tank. With careful management of water usage, that could really extend the amount of time the rig can be used without hookups. These tanks could be sized differently, larger waste and smaller fresh, if you had a fresh water bladder that could be used to retrieve additional fresh water and refill the tank without moving the RV. Lot’s of interesting possibilities, all of which involve engineering design tradeoffs.

I opened the box of BCM back issues that arrived yesterday and went through them. There were two of each issue but I won’t know if they are all there until I can integrate them into the partial sets I brought from home. Those sets were under the bed and there was a cat on the bed so retrieving them would have to wait until later. I worked on this post for a while instead and stopped at noon to have lunch. Linda made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and sliced an apple. Simple but delicious.

I looked through the articles in my BCM “in process” folder and opened the one on tips for taking photographs to see how complete it was. While not finished, the article was much more than an outline. I spent about 20 minutes reviewing what I already had and doing some additional editing but did not feel like digging into in it.

I left at 1 PM for Hudson, taking the same route I took yesterday, and arrived at 2:45 PM. I was 15 minutes early but the window was done. There was no charge for the repair, which I appreciated, as the seal failed not long after the window was originally fixed in April 2014. The technician wanted the window to stay horizontal for at least another day, supported by its frame, before being reinstalled in the bus. Because the back of the car was full and could not be rearranged I moved the passenger seat all the way forward and leaned the seat back as far as it would go. I used the blanket to plug the gap between the front edge of the seat and dashboard and set the window in place, outside up, with one short edge on the blanket and the other one on the seatback. It traveled very well that way on the drive home and I decided it was safer to leave it there than setting it out on the picnic table overnight. I got back to the rig around 5 PM even though I stopped twice, once for popcorn at Rural King, and then at McDonald’s for a diet pop.

Linda made seitan vegan stroganoff for dinner which we enjoyed with a glass of Mimbres Red table wine from St. Clair Winery in Deming, New Mexico. In retrospect we should have bought more bottles while we were there. Every wine we bought from them was a red and very much to our liking, especially mine, which is unusual.

We had both spent most of the day sitting on our butts (not our hands) and went for a brisk stroll after dinner. We watched a few TV programs, went to bed at 10:30, and finished watching Rick Steves’ Europe before turning out the lights.

2015/12/06 (N) Multiple Threads

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I got out of bed at 8 AM, fed the cats, refreshed their water, and cleaned their litter tray. I made some hot soapy water for dishes and then measured out and ground our morning coffee beans. Once I had the coffee brewing I cleaned the grinder, which I had not done in a while.

Linda got up around 8:30 and we both sat with our iPads and enjoyed our first cup of coffee. I had a reply to the e-mail I sent our son last night and replied back. I also sent the photo I created on Thursday to him and our daughter. It is a 3-image panorama looking north out of our passenger side living room window of our motorcoach.

At 9:30 Linda started making pancakes, which has become something of a regular treat for our Sunday breakfast. I got a call from my sister at 10 letting me know she was heading to the hospital where our dad is in the ICU. We finished our coffee around 10:30 and got dressed. Linda settled in to work on her counted cross-stitch project and I checked our fresh water tank. The level was finally below 1/3 on the monitor so I decided to test the park water. As I expected, based on our previous time here, the hardness was at the maximum on the test strip so I got the water softener out and connected it to the supply valve. The quick disconnect, while a nice idea, is made of plastic. It was finally worn to the point where it would not seal so I unthreaded it from the pressure regulator and put it back in the fresh water tub where it joined a dozen other components that I should throw away. Someday.

I have read in multiple publications and blogs that the RV sewer hose, and especially the bayonet connectors used on RV sewer hoses, is the weakest component on an RV, both by design and manufacture. While these components may be in contention for that status, I submit that the garden hose fittings that are universally used for the fresh water connections may actually be the worst. My fresh water connections always leak even when I tighten them (gently) with a wrench. My sewer connections do not generally leak.

But I have digressed once again. When I had the softener connected I tested the output and it appeared to be fully charged so I connected it to the inlet of the coach and refilled the fresh water tank. In Quartzsite, Arizona this past winter I kept track of the details of when I dumped and filled tanks, including the hardness was of the water coming out of the softener before and after each fill. This data served two purposes.

One purpose was to compensate for our waste tank level monitors, which do not work. We were trying to determine the rate at which we were filling them so we could calibrate how long we could reasonably boondock before we had to dump them. That turned out to be about nine days, conservatively, which is how long we went before hooked up here and dumped.

Because the water softener can only remove a certain number of grains of hardness before it is exhausted the number of gallons it can soften before it has to be recharged depends on the hardness of the water coming in. At 25 grains of hardness per gallon, which is what we had in Q and what we have here in Williston, the softener, which has a capacity of about 10,000 grains, can process about 400 gallons. If the hardness is higher than 25 gpg we will not be able to process that many gallons. 400 gallons is about four refills if I refill it when the level is down to 1/6 (20 gallons). Our usage data from Q indicated that we used about 9 gallons per person per day on average (18 gallons per day) and that I was filling the tank every 5 to 6 days and recharging it every three weeks.

While setting up the water softener I noticed an active nest of red ants. I saw John drive by and a few minutes later saw him headed back our way and flagged him down. He did not have the ant poison on his cart but offered to get it and come back, which he did. He also brought a rake. It turned out that he buys this product at his own expense and uses it to treat sites before folks check in, so I will buy a bag for ourselves and one to replenish his stock as part of my trip to Hudson tomorrow.

With the refill underway I resumed working on the photos for the BCM article on the International Thermal Research (ITR) OASIS Combi hydronic heating system in Butch and Fonda Willams’ 1987 MCI MC-9 NJT bus conversion. The hospital tried to reach me at 12:14 PM but the call went directly to my voice mail. After a few text messages back and forth with my sister and niece I received a phone number for the doctor and was able to get her on the phone.

Brendan texted me at 1 PM to let me know he was headed to our house. He called when he got there and I called him back on our house phone. He spent about half an hour searching through brief cases looking for certain papers and telling me what he was finding. He found the case I needed and took it back to his house where he can go through it more comfortably and ship it to me if needed.

I had resumed working on the BCM article when John and Ali showed up. We invited them into the coach to see the remodeling work we have done and they stayed long enough to chat awhile and have a small glass of wine. I opened the bottle of Viva La Rojo from the Heart Of The Desert winery in Alamogordo, New Mexico and we all agreed it was very nice. It is at such moments that I am left to wonder why we did not buy more than one bottle.

After they left I continued working on the article until I was too tired to concentrate. It was well into the second half of the afternoon so we both put our projects aside and removed the fogged living room awning style window/frame, wrapped it in a blanket, and put it in the car. I need to leave early in the morning and drive to Suncoast Designers in Hudson to have the window repaired and did not want to be messing around with it at 6 AM in the morning.

Getting the window out required the step ladder and a small screwdriver to remove two C-clips so it was a bit more involved than it sounds. Linda put the screen back in place, covered it with a piece of the silvered bubble insulation, and taped it around the edges. The RV resort is very safe so someone getting into our rig was not our concern. Rather, the low temperature overnight Monday into Tuesday is forecast to be in the 40’s so we really cannot have an uninsulated opening in the side of the coach. The chance for rain is low to zero, and we have the awning out over most of that window, so we are hopeful we will not have to seal the outside with plastic. Our other concern was our cats. The screens do not fit as tight as we would like and if this one fell out the cats could jump to their “freedom” with potentially dire consequences.

Linda made stuffed Poblano peppers for dinner. The preparation took a while so I laid down on the sofa and watched Martha Bakes and Ask This Old House on the Create channel from the University of Florida, Gainesville PBS station. What can I say? I find TV that teaches me things entertaining, even if I can’t eat anything Martha bakes. At home Linda would normally cook the peppers on our outdoor or indoor grill but tonight she pan-seared them. The peppers were stuffed with a mixture of rice, black beans, tomatoes, scallions, vegan cheddar cheese, and vegan sour cream. The peppers brought just enough heat to the dish and we finished the bottle of Viva La Rojo, which smoothed everything out. We had a nice salad with sun-dried tomato vinaigrette as a first course. We had sliced fresh strawberries for dessert. It was a really good meal.

We watched President Obama’s address to the nation from the Oval Office, an interesting episode of 60 Minutes (which I have not seen in years), and the Sinatra 100 Grammy tribute. It was an unusual evening of television for us but very enjoyable and a nice conclusion to a day that was broken up into multiple threads.

2015/01/01-07 (R-W) Q 2015 W1

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2015/01/01 (R) Hola 2015

The salt restraining tube for the water filter housing. The slotted end (R) goes down and the o-rings sit in the other end.

Having stayed up later than usual last night to see the old year out and welcome the new year in we were in no hurry to get up this morning, especially given that the temperature outside was in the upper 20s. But Linda said she would make her yummy vegan cinnamon rolls for breakfast so I felt obligated to get up and eat them. Besides, it’s my job to make the coffee. The rolls took quite a while to make and we ended up having them for brunch, but they were worth the wait.

I spent much of the morning looking for new games in the iStore. I downloaded a dozen free ones and then started trying them in turn. Most of them immediately tried to sell me a full version or ran a full-screen advertisement each time I tried to start a new round of play. If they did that I immediately deleted the app. I cannot imagine what makes a game developer think someone with tolerate that more than once. At some point I realized that my AppleID was still associated with an old e-mail address so I initiated the process of changing it. The process was not as seamless as I thought it could/would/should be, but I eventually got it sorted out. Or as they say or Doc Martin, “sorted.” As it turned out my credit card information was also out of date so I updated that as well. Obviously I do not make iStore purchases very often.

I needed to regenerate our portable water softener even though it was 48 degrees F outside in the shade. It was, however, comfortable enough in the sun to be able to work. I started at noon cutting the plastic drain pipe that I bought at Herb’s Hardware the other day to a length of 10″ which is the length of a standard water filter. I cut eight 3/8″ slots in the bottom end of the tube and got an O-ring from Butch to fit in the swaged upper end. The purpose of the tube is to hold salt so that incoming water is required to pass through it to get to the softener but the salt crystals cannot actually wash into the softener.

Linda helped me transfer the contents of a 40 pound bag of solar salt to several two-gallon zip lock bags. I then put a small quantity of salt in a one-quart zip lock bag and gently smashed it with a two-pound sledgehammer, although as I write that it seems to be something of an oxymoron. I inserted the tube into the removable filter housing, slotted side down, and poured the salt around the outside of the tube. I smashed a second bag of salt and added it to the housing. I put the housing back on the filter head and slowly ran water through the softener for almost two hours. I got a water hardness test strip from Butch and tested the output of the softener. It was still showing 7 grains of hardness, exactly the same as two days ago. It appeared that the regeneration process had not had any effect. Bummer.

I discussed the situation with Butch and he suggested I back flush the softener. To do that I needed a hose with female hose fittings on each end. This is the kind of hose used to hook up a washing machine but neither one of us had one with us. Butch, however, had a female-female adapter which allowed me to connect a male hose end to a male fitting on the outlet of the water softener. (Backflushing literally means running water through the softener in the reverse direction to flush out any debris that may after gotten in through the normal inlet.)

The salt retaining tube in the filter housing with salt around the bottom outside and the o-ring visible at the top.

After backflushing the softener I tried regenerating it again. This time I used a 26 ounces of fine grain non-iodized table salt. With my homemade diverter tube still in place I added the salt around the outside and screwed the housing back on. I let the salt sit in the housing for 20 minutes to start to make a brine and then ran water through the softener until I got a very salty taste at the output. I then shut the outlet valve and let it sit for 20 minutes. When the time elapsed I ran water through the softener for another 15 seconds, checked it for saltiness, and shut the outlet valve. At the end of another 20 minutes I ran water through it at a very slow rate for 20 minutes and then checked it again for salty taste. It was still slightly salty and as it was getting close to sunset I decided to let it sit overnight. I will finish flushing it tomorrow and check the hardness again.

While I was fussing with our water softener Butch recharged theirs in about 30 minutes. When he tested the water at the end it indicated zero (0) grains of hardness; completely softened. Their softener is different from ours and the regeneration procedure is very straightforward and apparently works. For now I need to figure out a guaranteed procedure for regenerating ours, but long-term I need to figure out some other arrangement of just get a different softener.

The arrangement I am considering would be in conjunction with redoing the water bay. With a different arrangement of tanks I could create space in the bay for the softener, multiple filter housings, and associated plumbing. I could set up an arrangement that would divert the incoming water (after the first/sediment filter) through a clear filter housing into which I could put the salt. That clear housing/head would be permanently modified to force water through the salt and allow me to see when the salt was gone. It would also eliminate the need to remove and reinstall the filter the way I have to now. Alternatively I could put a tank between the filter housing and the softener (instead of the clear housing) and use it as a brine tank. If the tank was big enough to hold a 40 pound bag of solar salt it would work just like a home softening system. Water would sit in the tank with the salt for days so that the brine was ready to use when it was time to regenerate the softener. I could even rig up a separate pump just for pumping the brine into the softener. I’m going to give this a lot of thought before I start changing things around, but last winter in Florida and this winter in Quartzsite have made it very clear that hard water is a problem and we need a very effective and efficient way to deal with it.

While I worked with the water softener Linda began preparing a Tex-Mex bean soup for dinner and then went for a long walk. She finished making the soup when she got back while I took a short nap. It cooled off quickly as the sun set and nothing is quite as satisfying on a cool evening as hearty, hot soup. It also had a bit of red pepper heat which was a nice bonus. It was really good soup.

I had a few e-mails from Gary at BCM and a nice follow-up e-mail from Kathy at the Michigan Assessment Consortium. She attached a copy of their holiday letter so I attached a copy of ours in reply. I spent a little time browsing websites for OTA TV antennas and turbo boost gauges and finally went to bed without resolving what to do about either thing. I have a lot of nights that end like that.

2015/01/02 (F) Crazy Days In Q

Contact is established with our cat, Jasper.

The “show” at Desert Gardens officially opened yesterday and runs through the end of February, so Quartzsite is quickly be transformed into a crazy place. We were chatting with Butch, Fonda, Jim, and Barb after breakfast and Barb reminded us that starting now driving and parking “downtown”, and especially along Kuehn Street south of I-10, during the day will be difficult to impossible. She offered to drive us down in the golf cart and come pick us up if we did not want to walk. She also told us that many vendors will hold purchases for pickup at the end of the day. We exchanged cell phone numbers, which we had not yet done since they arrived. She suggested that if we wanted to eat out we should go early or right before closing as we might not be able to get seated/served otherwise. There’s no doubt that we have lucked out on our arrangements this winter, and the situation just keeps getting better.

Linda was browsing on her iPad and discovered an all vegan grocery store in Rancho Cucamonga, California; the largest all-vegan grocery store in the world. I looked up Rancho Cucamonga on Google Maps and it is located about half way between Los Angeles and San Bernardino. Based on the speeds I like to drive (often just below the speed limit or 68 MPH, whichever is less) it looks like a four hour drive one-way from Q. That’s obviously too far for a regular grocery run, but we might make a day trip in that direction sometime this winter and find the store while we are over there.

One of the things I did after climbing in bed last night was spend a little time looking at the Sure Marine Service website. SMS is a major supplier of repair parts for Webasto diesel-fired hydronic systems headquartered in Seattle, Washington. After studying their parts diagrams I became unclear (and concerned) as to whether the burner we removed from Butch’s old unit was a DBW2010 or a DBW2020. They are very similar but not identical. I am almost certain that our original burner is a DBW2010, but our AHU-xxx Aqua-Hot is so old that the model number is no longer referenced on the website and model specific documentation, like a service manual, is not available for download.

The reason I was looking at the parts diagrams was to identify the bearing kit for the blower as I wanted to order two of them today. What I could tell from the website was that the 2020 is a higher BTU output burner and so one of the differences is that the 2010 uses a 0.35 GPH nozzle while the 2020 uses a 0.60 GPH nozzle. That alone might account for why we seem to have poor combustion, although even money is still on bad bearings. The unresolved issues and the inability to investigate at midnight did not make for a good night’s sleep.

I have the Aqua-Hot service/repair manual for the unit I bought from Butch, both on paper and on my iPad, so I spent some time this morning looking at the iPad version. I could not tell if they used the same bearing parts so I did not order anything today and won’t until I can determine model numbers. I asked Butch if he knew which burner was in the Aqua-Hot I bought from him, but he did not. The service manual shows a Webasto label that identifies the burner model, but does not show where the label is located. More investigation was needed.

After I got dressed I e-mailed Bill Gerrie (RetiredBusNut) in Ontario, Canada with questions about gauges and sending units for our bus engine and transmission. I then started dealing with the water softener. Linda returned from her walk and started preparing lunch, so I emptied the filter housing of the little bit of salt that was still in the bottom, rinsed it clean, re-installed the filter, and let it run for 20 minutes to fully flush out any residual salt water.

Linda made a warm garbanzo bean and kale salad for lunch with lemon juice and garlic. It was the first time she had tried this recipe and we both agreed it was a keeper. After lunch I tested the hardness of the water coming out of the softener and it registered on the test strip between zero (completely soft) and 1.5 (definitely soft) so I dumped the remaining (hard) water in the fresh water tank and refilled it with 120 gallons of nice, soft water. After the tank was full I retested the water coming out of the softener and got the same reading as before. Finally, some good news on the water softener front.

With water softening taken care of (for now) I did an online search for a panoramic camera tripod head. I really like shooting panoramas and the Microsoft Image Composite Editor (MS-ICE) does a remarkable job stitching images together. Most of my panoramas have been handheld, which makes the performance of MS-ICE all the more impressive. I have shot a few panoramas using a tripod but without a nodal point (spherical) pan head, so that is what I was searching for online. B&H Photo had a Manfrotto on sale for $280, marked down from $600, but their order desk was closing for the day and I did not want to be rushed making this decision so I did not order it. They will reopen tomorrow, so I will think about it overnight and do some more research.

I got our old Webasto burner out of the front bay and found the label. It is, indeed, a DBW2010, specifically a DBW2010.75 with a 0.35 GPH nozzle rated at 45,000 BTU. Linda recorded the details, including the serial number, and then helped me rewrap it in bubble wrap so I could put back in its storage pail.

Linda then went to Parker, Arizona with Butch and Fonda to check out the Safeway grocery store and look for some things at Walmart. The Parker Safeway was supposed to carry Daiya vegan cheese products but they were nowhere to be found. It appears that our closest source will be Whole Foods. There are five of them in the greater Phoenix area but that is a two hour drive one way.

While the three amigos were gone I removed the cover from the Aqua-Hot in our coach and found its label. Much to my relief it is also a Webasto DBW2010.75, 45,000 BTU. It should also have a 0.35 GPH nozzle, and probably does, but I did not pull the burner out to check. I noticed some soot on the final fuel filter inside the housing and in other places so that gave me something new to be concerned about. I was pondering the situation when Jim and Barb and Roho came over to visit and we had a good long chat. When they went back to their motorhome I put the cover back on the Aqua-Hot and put all of my tools away.

My plan for tomorrow is to turn the Aqua-Hot off, let it cool down, and pull the burner to check the nozzle. It’s possible, though not likely, that I do not have the burner seated quite right and there’s a chance, though very small, that reinstalling it will fix, or least improve the performance. My money (literally) is still on the blower bearings. Hopefully it does not also need a new motor as everything on a Webasto is more expensive than seems reasonable. It’s another fine example of precision German engineering and manufacturing.

Even though I have quite a few e-mail addresses that I use to segregate electronic correspondence into manageable categories my inboxes still end up flooded with e-mails. Very few of them are spam—we have good spam filtering on all of the accounts—but some of the highest volume inbound traffic is notifications of things like failed login attempts on WordPress websites. Those e-mails do not get replies and often do not require any specific action on my part, but they sometimes obscure the presence of other e-mails that do require my attention.

Microsoft Outlook is able to deal with incoming (and outgoing) e-mails based on user-defined “rules” but I had never played with that feature until today. I used the online help system to read about the whys and wherefores of e-mail rules and then tried creating some. Once I understood what I was trying to accomplish it was mostly point and click to get it done, with a little typing thrown in. What I ended up doing was creating sender/subject subfolders under the inbox of certain accounts and then creating a rule for each subfolder that directs incoming e-mails matching the criteria to the correct folder. By keeping the sub folders under the inbox folder it will be clear to me that these are e-mails that I have received but not yet dealt with.

For dinner Linda made a cooked shredded Brussels’ Sprouts dish with tomatoes, dried cranberries, and pistachios and served it alongside the leftover Mexican rice with a glass of sangria. Ole! We agreed that both of these dishes were keepers and went well with the fruity wine. The rest of the evening was quiet. Linda read and played her online games while I finished up working on this post. I finally went to bed and started reading the service and repair manuals for the Aqua-Hot system and the Webasto burner. According to the long-term weather forecast tonight should be our last night with an overnight low temperature below freezing.

A few of the vendors at Desert Gardens, Quartzsite, AZ.

2015/01/03 (S) Hammer Stahl

I got up at 6:30 AM today. I had been awake for a while before that and had some things I needed/wanted to do on my computer. These were quiet tasks that I could do in the front of the coach, with the heat turned up, without disturbing Linda.

I always check my e-mail first. There was a group message from Hillary at RVillage to all of the Ambassadors regarding a new feature they will be rolling out soon and seeking our assistance. I mentioned this to Linda when she got up and we watched the two YouTube videos. We did not have time today but will work on it tomorrow in advance of a 5 PM (4 PM PST) web meeting.

My first project today was updating the spreadsheet I maintain for our FMCA Freethinkers Chapter, which I started working on last night. The chapter treasurer maintains our checking account but as the secretary I maintain the records including the roster and who has paid their dues for what years. Because I have all of those details I also generate the quarterly and annual financial statements. I entered the information for dues payments that had been received between November 1 and December 31. I then added the five worksheets for 2015 (four quarters and year), which tie together and link back to the 2014 statement, and updated the cumulative financial statement.

Linda got up so I put my work aside to make coffee while she made breakfast. We had a few bananas that were ripe so she made green smoothies for breakfast. We happen to like kale but if we didn’t, green smoothies would be an excellent way to get our daily dose along with several other healthy ingredients.

We talked about visiting the market area today and decided to go later when it was a bit warmer. The temperature a 9AM was still only 40 degrees F so Linda bundled up and went for her morning walk while I continued to work on my spreadsheet.

Once I finished the spreadsheet I worked outside for a bit. I removed the cover from the burner end of the Aqua-Hot while it was running to check for an exhaust leak (sight, smell, touch) but I could not detect one. When the cycle finished I turned the burner off. My plan was to let the unit cool off and then remove the burner to check the nozzle size and do a general inspection of the combustion chamber and visible parts, but that did not happen today.

What I did instead was return to my computer and start putting Webasto repair parts in my shopping cart on the Sure Marine Service website. The bearings on the installed burner are definitely whining and need to be replaced. They are supposed to be replaced regularly anyway, so I put two sets in the cart. It is very likely that they are causing the motor to run slow which means insufficient combustion air, and possibly lower fuel pressure, leading to the dark smoky exhaust. I also put a fuel solenoid valve in the cart. There is a good chance that the valve and/or the solenoid are not working on the other burner. There’s also a chance that the ignition coil has failed, but the solenoid valve costs 1/2 as much as the coil, so I’m hoping it’s the valve. I got the order submitted with UPS ground shipping and used PayPal to make the payment.

Once I completed the SMS order I loaded the B&H Photo app onto my iPad and spent quite a bit of time going between their website and the Sony online store trying to figure out if I should order a panoramic tripod head and/or new camera, possibly with a lens and flash unit. Sony has the Alpha 99 FF body marked down from $2,800 to $1,900 with the vertical grip and an extra battery thrown into the deal, an additional $500+ value. They will also bundle in the SAM 28-75mm f/2.8 lens for $400. The lens by itself is normally $900, so that’s another $500 savings.

So for $2,500 I could get $4,200 worth of Sony’s top-of-the-line “flagship” DSLR (DSLT, actually) equipment, except for one thing; it was all on back order with an ESTIMATED ship date of February 4, 2015. That’s my birthday, so if it actually shipped on that date it would be quite the birthday present, but if it was delayed very much there would be the very real possibility of it arriving at our location in Q after we had left. Not good.

So what about B&H Photo? It turns out that they (claim to) have all of these pieces in stock and they are selling the body with the added pieces for the same price as Sony, but they are not offering the lens at the bundled price. That was the deal breaker that saved me spending a lot of money today. Besides, I have been waiting a long time for Sony to officially announce and the ship the new (rumored) flagship alpha a99-II with its 36MP FF 35mm sensor and long list of awesome features. To decide now to by prior generation technology it would have to be a very attractive deal, much better than what I was seeing online.

I ended up ordering a Manfrotto Nodal Point Pro panoramic tripod mount from B&H. It should be here by the end of the week. When it arrives I think we will hike up to the top of “Q Mountain” and try to capture the true essence of Quartzsite in the winter, which is RVs from horizon to horizon.

We headed down to the market area on Kuehn Street with Butch and Fonda and walked around for a couple of hours in the Tyson Wells Show grounds north of Kuehn Street and west of Central Avenue (US-95). This particular market area had really filled up with vendors in the last few days. Linda bought a nice white apron and really nice Hammer Stahl 5.5″ Santoku knife. She checked online when we got back and she paid about 55% of the MSRP on the HS website. She bought it from Cutlery by LeClaire, which also has a website, and has it on sale for $20 more than the price on the HS website, marked down $20 from their “regular” price. The point is, she got it for what appears to be a good price of $59 and it came in a nice box with a ceramic sharpener thrown into the deal.

We drove farther west on Kuehn Street and pulled into the Desert Gardens show grounds. It was getting near sunset, so we did not stay long, but Linda and I walked enough of it to get a feeling for the place. It was a “rougher” setup than Tyson Wells and many of the booths were selling large, rough rocks and gemstones. The vendors also had a lot more equipment set up and were using it to process materials. We’ll be back, probably more than once, and earlier in the day so we can spend more time.

When we got back to our motorcoaches Fonda came over and worked with Linda for a little while on their business records. We then had a nice salad and some of the spicy bean and pasta soup (that Linda made the other day) with crackers and sangria. I spent more time after dinner researching stuff on my iPad and working on this post.

We appear to be in one of the few places in the country that is not getting clobbered by bad weather. The temperature is not even supposed to drop below freezing overnight. It will still be cool tomorrow, however, and we did make specific plans before going to bed.

A view of “Q” Mountain from the Desert Gardens Show area.

2015/01/04 (N) Our Village

We had vegan pancakes for breakfast which prompted me to suggest that Linda invent some recipes, even if they are interesting and successful variations on existing ones, and feed them to our grand-daughter. Linda could put them on our website using the WP Ultimate Recipe plug-in and, if they met with her approval, name they after “Bitty” (youngest grand-daughter’s latest nickname, although I think I will always prefer “Schmoo”). Perhaps Pancakes Madeline; Sautéed greens a la Madeline; Pasta Madeline; or Madeline’s vegan mac and cheese. Being retired gives me a lot of time to think.

Joe’s brother, Jim L., finally returned from Nevada today and was able to get the park model trailer unlocked. Barb has been wanting to get in and clean it since she and Jim (different Jim) arrived. Barb is a keep busy kind of gal. She is responsible for maintaining the apartment and laundry room while she is here and told Connie she would also do some deep cleaning on their house trailer, so it’s been bugging her that she could not get in to do it. As for my part, all I did was lock the door on the trailer the way Connie asked me to. Barb and Jim (husband) had lots of keys but could not get any of them to work.

Today was shower day. This is always more of a production than we would like because we keep the cats’ litter tray in the shower. Most of the time that works really well—it is out of the way and contains any mess they might make—but it is inconvenient when we want to use the shower for its intended purpose. Besides pulling the tray out into the hall by the bathroom door we have to clean up any stray litter in the shower to make sure it does not end up in the gray water waste tank. Litter tray or not we still have to spray the shower walls when we are done, squeegee off the glass door, let everything dry, and then reassemble it as a giant cat litter box. But it works and it’s one of the compromises we willingly make to live with our cats in so few square feet.

Once I was dressed I went outside to chat with Jim L. (Joe’s brother) and we discussed the possibility of upgrading the electrical service at our site to “50 Amp” (240VAC, 50A, 4-wire, the equivalent of a 120VAC, 100A residential service). It’s not an issue for us right now as the cool weather has us burning diesel fuel to make space heat, but once the weather turns warm we may need our air-conditioners. We have three but can only run one on a “30A” service and still have enough power to run other things. A 30A service is just what it says; 30A of current at 120VAC. A “50A” RV service is slightly more than three times that amount of power.

The electrical hookups here are very interesting. Perhaps all RV park power pedestals work the same way, but I have never looked inside one so I don’t know. The meter is at the top and the area below it has a top-hinged cover. Under the cover are three panels about 3″ wide and 15″ tall. The panels have an outlet towards the bottom and a circuit breaker near the midpoint. Behind the panels are busses for the hot, neutral and ground with male blade connectors. The panels have female blade connectors that engage their male counterparts when the panel is slipped and then hinged into place. It is secured with a single screw. If Jim L. can find a 50A panel all we will have to do is unscrew and remove the 30A panel and plug in the new one, once we verify that 240 VAC (L1& L2) are present in the box and wired to the distribution busses.

Instead of her usual morning walk Linda setup her laptop on the dinette table and worked on accounting and tax issues for Butch and Fonda. I set my laptop there as well to work on the roster for our FMCA Freethinkers Chapter and Jasper got in between us, so we had a nice, cozy computing session. When I placed my order with B&H Photo yesterday I checked a box to receive shipping status information via TXT message. I got one this morning letting me know that my package had shipped from NYC. Cool.

With accounting chores done for now Linda prepared vegan hot dogs with mustard, onion, and relish for lunch. She then went for a long walk while I stayed at the coach and worked with a new feature on the RVillage website. I was posting a lot of suggestions to the topic thread on the Ambassador forum and got a phone call from Curtis, the founder/CEO of RVillage. We had a long chat and I was still on the phone with him when Linda got back. I worked with the website some more and at 5:00 PM we connected to an Ambassador meeting using GoToMeeting on my computer. This is a very exciting new feature and I think RVillagers and RV-related businesses are really going to like it once they know about it and see how it works.

Linda made mock (vegan) stroganoff for dinner. She normally uses Basmati but the only rice she had enough of was Texmati so she used that. Although I did not care for the texture of the Texmati in this dish (a bit crunchy), the taste was still very good. This dish requires real cooking, which means it makes a real mess. By the time everything was cleaned up and put away it was 8 PM and we were both tired. I continued to research engine and transmission gauges while Linda read and played word games. I also revisited the SonyAlphaRumors website but there was absolutely NO new information on the a99-II. I went to bed wondering if this camera will ever actually exist. Based on the comments I see online I am not the only one wondering if this camera will ever be a reality.

One of the hundreds of vendors at the Tyson Wells market area in Q.

2015/01/05 (M) VSWR 1.0

Yesterday we finished up the coffees we have been using since we left Michigan at the end of November so this morning I had to open new bags and transfer the contents from their vacuum sealed bags to our metal storage canisters. I had Teeko’s roast Ethiopian Yirgacheffe regular and decaffeinated separately, so I opened 1/2 pound bags of each. I also opened a 1/2 pound bag of our special Sweet Seattle Dreams, which is 1/2 Sweet Dreams (decaf) and 1/2 Seattle Blend (regular). I then made a pot of Ethiopian Yirgacheffe 1/2-n-1/2 while Linda prepared our granola with fresh bananas and fresh blueberries.

Linda went for her morning walk while I continued to do online research regarding the enigma known as the Sony a99-II DSLT camera and the supposedly discontinued, but apparently still very much available, Sony alpha a99. If I did not already have a nice assortment of compatible Minolta A-mount lenses and flash equipment I think I would stop wasting my time with Sony cameras. But I do, and so I continue to wait and be frustrated along with thousands of other “enthusiast” (sub-professional) photographers. Because Sony builds the image stabilization (anti-shake) feature into the alpha bodies instead of the A-mount lenses the feature is available even with older Minolta lenses and the new lenses are slightly less complicated and less expensive than the Nikon and Canon lenses, which have the image stabilization built into each lens. I think this was one of Sony’s best innovations.

I also continued to look at automotive gauges and sending units and decided to call Bill Gerrie (in Ontario, Canada) to follow up on his reply to an e-mail I sent a few days ago. We had a great chat and he was able to clarify some things and add quite a bit of specificity to his written reply. As a result I have a pretty good idea of what I am looking for; now it’s just a matter of finding it and deciding to place the order.

I was starting to work at my computer when Linda returned from her walk. She eventually fixed a couple of vegan hot dogs wrapped up in tortillas with mustard, onions, and relish. As I was finishing my meal I got a call from Gary Hatt at BCM. He recently acquired an Eagle bus conversion and had some questions about the air-conditioners and the Aqua-Hot. He plans to be in Quartzsite next to week and we are looking forward to finally meeting in person since I have been writing articles for the magazine for almost two years.

Linda has been having a problem with the brightness (or lack thereof) of the touch screen on her 19 month old Windows 8.1 Samsung laptop. It will go very dim for no apparent reason and cannot be adjusted. There was a driver update available for the Intel HD Graphics processor so we downloaded it, installed it, and re-started her computer. The screen was now bright, which was more useful than dim, but still not adjustable. That could be a coincidence or a fix, we will have to wait and see. Even though it was working (for now) I drove to the local Family Dollar and bought an HDMI cable and some lightly carbonated water. (The water had nothing to do with Linda’s laptop computer display, we were just low on sparkling water.) The cable will allow us to connect her computer to one of our two flat panel LCD (LED) TV/monitors if needed. (We did that after dinner and it worked, mirroring the built-in display to the monitor and setting the resolution to match the monitor’s 1900x1080p native mode. But it also caused the built-in monitor to dim, although not as much as before. When we turned off the monitor and unplugged it the built-in display did not return to full brightness.)

Mid-afternoon I saw Butch working on his Tarheel screwdriver antenna so I inquired as to what he was doing. He had connected his MFJ VSWR meter to it through a six foot length of coax. He had also unplugged the control harness for the tuning motor and rigged up a temporary switch to extend and retract the antenna. He had done this because he was getting meter readings when connected through the installed coax that indicated the antenna was not resonant at any frequency or that the meter was not working correctly. I climbed up on his ladder to have a look and saw VSWRs that were often greater than 31:1, and never fell below 10:1, with complex impedances that were rarely 50 ohms and with both resistance and reactance values that were all over the place. Clearly something was not right. It was not his installed coax and I was fairly certain I was not his meter, which I had used back at their house to check the VSWR on his CB and 2m ham antennas.

I climbed onto the roof of their bus so it would be easier to reach things and I could work sitting down. We tried adding a ground strap as a counterpoise but it didn’t help. Butch then grounded the strap to the chassis at the motor but that did not help either. Our concern was that the antenna was not sufficiently bonded (grounded) to the roof but nothing we tried made any difference. I decided to set the antenna to its shortest length (highest operating frequency), set the meter to a lower frequency, and then slowly lengthen the antenna, thereby lowering the operating frequency, while looking for some sort of response on the meter.

I got no change on the meter and finally realized that the antenna (via the meter) was behaving as though it was not grounded. I noticed what looked like a thick washer between the SO-239 antenna connector and the base mounting plate of the antenna. The mounting plate is the ground reference for the antenna and is connected to the base of the antenna through a coil of insulated wire (an inductor) known as a base loading coil. The spacer was a plastic insulator that was, indeed, preventing the case of the SO-239 antenna socket from making contact with the mounting plate. As a result the antenna was not grounded through the coax cable shield, preventing the meter from obtaining meaningful readings.

We removed the antenna connector, removed the insulated spacer, reassembled the connector to the antenna, reattached the coax and meter, and took additional measurements. This time we got excellent readings that made very good sense. We checked the upper bound, lower bound, and the midpoint of most of the high frequency (HF) ham bands and were always able to obtain VSWRs of 1.3:1 or less, which was excellent. Butch had been considering redoing the mounting of the large motorized fold-over base so it was a good thing we figured this out as it saved him a lot of unnecessary work. If I can solve one problem without creating others I figure it’s a good day. BTW: VSWR stands for Voltage Standing Wave Ratio and 1.0 is not a beta version, it is shorthand for a ratio of one-to-one (1:1), which is the best SWR you can have. Anything below 1.5:1 is considered excellent, below 2.0:1 good, and below 3.0:1 usable if that’s the best you can do.

Chayote is a fruit that is a member of the squash family and is related to other gourds such as melons and cucumbers. Linda bought one last week when we went to Albertson’s grocery store in Blythe, California and decided to prepare it for dinner tonight. She sliced it into long thin broad strips and sautéed them with onions, oregano, salt, and pepper. She served it alongside the leftover mock (vegan) stroganoff with a glass of sangria. Our wine friends can cringe all they want; we find the Vella and Franzia boxed wines generally agreeable and the sangrias go surprisingly well with a variety of dishes. And it has me drinking red wine, so it’s healthy too!

We lost our WiFi connection this evening. Not sure why. The wireless gateway still shows up in the WFR list but won’t associate with the WFR. Butch had the same problem at the same time so something obviously changed. We will ask Barb to open the trailer tomorrow, or get Jim to do it if she is not comfortable, so we can reset the gateway. Hopefully that will do the trick.

The sunsets in Quartzsite are amazing almost every night. This shot was taken from our campsite in Q.

2015/01/06 (T) You’ve Got Mail (Maybe)

Our mail situation here is interesting. Remember that, per our Jamaican tour guide, we do not have problems, only situations, and situations are easier to deal with if I regard them as interesting rather than annoying. With regards to receiving mail, the “situation” is as follows. Although every structure in town has a street address—necessary for police, fire, EMS, trash collection, and other municipal services—the Quartzsite post office does not deliver mail to said locations. They have an annex building on the northeast side of town that is nothing but P. O. boxes and all of the locals, and a lot of seasonal residents (including Joe and Connie, who own the property where we are staying) have a P. O. Box.

Where things get interesting is that the main post office and the street addresses are associated with one ZIP code but the P. O. boxes have a different ZIP code. If something is coming to us via UPS or FEDEX we have to use the street address and associated ZIP code, but if it is being mailed to us USPS we have to use the P. O. Box number and associated ZIP code, or have it sent c/o General Delivery using the main ZIP code. To confuse matters further, Joe and Connie had to return to Nevada because of Joe’s health and are having their Quartzsite mail forwarded back to their home, so we cannot have mail sent to us “care of” them as we originally planned as it just gets forwarded to Nevada. Outbound mail does not appear to be a problem, but then why would it be?

The other situation that developed yesterday was that our WiFiRanger Mobile Ti disconnected from Joe and Connie’s WiFi (DSL) gateway and would not reconnect. The WFR is telling us that the WPA password may be incorrect, but that is unlikely as we have been using it since we arrived last month, as have Butch and Fonda who also lost their connection yesterday and could not reestablish it. The evidence suggests that the gateway needs to be reset. Why? Who knows? DSL gremlins perhaps. Or mischievous Internet fairies. Or a problem with the local DSL service? Or perhaps Butch keyed up his 600 Watt linear HF ham radio amplifier and blew out every wireless DSL router within a quarter mile? Whatever the cause, once we can get Barb or (brother) Jim to open the trailer we will power cycle the gateway and see if that restores our ability to connect to it.

In the meantime, in order to get online last night and again this morning, we turned on our Verizon MiFi. The Verizon signal here is strong and steady, and the data rate is much faster than the DSL/WiFi connection, but we only have a 4 GB data plan so we tend to use WiFi when available. It is not always available, of course, especially while traveling (and especially if we are boondocking at Wally World or other such locations) and when it is available it is not always reliable or is so slow as to be useless. This can be the situation, for instance, at larger RV rallies and even some RV parks.

So we logged into our Verizon Wireless account, looked at our current plan, and saw that for a mere $10 more per month we could increase our data plan from 4 GB to 10 GB. The cost for exceeding your monthly data plan limit is $15/GB, so the extra $10/month was a no-brainer. And VZW made it soooo easy to change our plan (once we were logged in); just click the data plan we want, review changes to our account, and click “Apply Changes.” Done; they have our money and we have more data allocation. Interestingly, they upped our data allocation immediately for the current billing cycle, which is Dec 20 – Jan 19, and added the $10 to the bill we will receive for that cycle. No pro-rating going on here, but then we can use the whole 10 GB if we want/need to.

Interestingly the cost to go from 10 GB to 15 GB was an additional $20/month, so the 10 GB plan seems to be a sweet spot after which you pay a premium for additional access. On the one hand Verizon wants to sell you data bandwidth but on the other hand there is a finite amount of data they can move through their network, so if you want to use a larger chunk of their capacity it figures that it would come with premium pricing.

Until a few months ago Millenicom was reselling 20 GB MiFi plans (on Verizon’s network) for $70. It was the best deal around; a sufficient amount of data for the same price we were paying Verizon for only 4 GB. Kind of unfair, when I think about it. Well, Verizon decided to stop selling bulk capacity to Millenicom (and other MVNAs?), took all of the accounts in-house, and Millenicom went out of business. Not really a big surprise when you think about it. Verizon also notified those customers (as I understand the situation) of their “options” which were not, apparently, as attractive as the deal they had with Millenicom. Not really a big surprise when you think about it.

Anyway, we will see how we do with 10 GB/month while we are on the road. We can change back to our 4GB plan when we get home, but I doubt that we will, and we can increase it to 15, 20, or even more GB per billing cycle if we need to, but that is unlikely. We have an AT&T landline at home with DSL service that provides an “always on” Internet connection (when it works). It has a 150 GB/month data allowance and allows us to monitor and control our whole house generator and WiFi thermostat. We have discussed adding a security system and a personal weather station linked in to Weather Underground’s Wundermap when we get home. I don’t think our DSL connection is fast enough, however, that we could use 150 GB in a month if we tried.

Linda went for her morning walk and I made a quick run to Barry’s Breads. Barry is a really nice older gentleman who has a small bakery stand on the north side of Kuehn Street east of Central Avenue. Just behind the stand, however, is a larger trailer in which he bakes all of his products. Those products include breads, rolls, savory items, and sweet goods. Most of his products use butter, cream cheese, cheddar cheese, or ranch dressing, but his Basic Bread is just that, flour, water, sugar, salt, and yeast. I have had some difficulty figuring out what time of day to stop by but this morning he finally had loaves of bread, and some hamburger buns made from the same recipe, so I bought a loaf and a pack of four buns.

When I got back I started working on another article for Bus Conversion Magazine. A little over a year ago I installed an RV-Critter Guard to seal around the shorepower cord and water hose where they enter the utility bay through the floor. I took a few pictures during the installation and have had the article on my “future” list ever since. By the time Linda got back from her walk I had the article mostly finished and was starting to look at the photographs.

She had stopped at the Salvation Army store, which was open, to use their facilities and ended up buying a grocery bag full of clothes for $1. Not $1/item, $1 for the entire bag. Most of the items were tagged with color codes indicating prices of one or more dollars each but they had too much inventory and needed to move some product. They told Linda that when that happens they have their $1 bag sale. Deal. She called Butch and Fonda to let them know and I think they headed there before going to check the post office box and then stop at the post office if needed.

Linda cooked a couple of our Boca vegan mock hamburger patties and served them with fresh sliced onion, lettuce, and pickles on two of the buns I had just purchased. Not an entirely WFPB meal, but very few of our meals are. Still, we try to get as much plant-based whole foods as we can every day.

Linda went for a second walk after lunch and headed down Central Avenue towards the Kuehn Street markets. She is so fond of her 5.5″ Hammer Stahl Santoku knife that she wanted to buy the 3.5″ paring knife if Cutlery by LeClaire had it for sale as an individual item.

While Linda was gone I finished working on the photos for my RV-Critter Guard article. When she returned from her walk she had both the Hammer Stahl 3.5″ Paring Knife AND the 3.0″ Birdsbeak Paring Knife. As we learned the other day from an Alton Brown video paring is actually a technique in which food is held in one hand and a knife in the other; no cutting board is involved. Paring knives are generally smaller with a shorter blade and most of the weight is in the handle, allowing very fine control of the cutting edge and tip.

The Birdsbeak is a particularly interesting and unusual knife. The bottom/cutting edge is slightly concave rather than convex like the classic chef knife. The bottom edge joins the top edge in a point with a shape that resembles certain types of curved bird beaks. In use, the knife is often held stationary and the food is pressed or turned into it, such as decorative peeling, pitting of fruit, or slicing strawberries. Linda is often reluctant to spend money on herself so I think it’s nice that she found something she wanted and made the decision to buy it. Like any high quality tool it will make the work it is designed to do easier and more enjoyable.

While I was uploading my article to our Dropbox Linda went outside to sit. Barb wandered over and I mentioned that the DSL wireless Internet gateway had quit working. She let me in the trailer where I found it sitting on the dining room table. I powered it off, waited 60 seconds, and powered it back on. All of the status lights came back on in the expected sequence and I was once again able to connect our WiFiRanger Mobile Ti to it. We ended up standing by their Country Coach Intrigue motorhome and having a long chat.

Butch and Fonda were gone for most of the afternoon so we only got to chat for a little while when they returned before the sun dropped behind the southwestern mountains and the temperature dropped along with it. Linda and I talked about going out to dinner, which we have only done once since we got here, but she remembered that we had a FedEx package scheduled for delivery today and that it might arrive as late as 8 PM. So we had leftover soup with crackers and sangria. This was the third and final meal we got out of this pot of soup and it was good to the last drop. It was a packaged mix but Linda thinks she can recreate it; getting the spices right will be the tricky part.

After dinner I read DSLR reviews on the Digital Photography Reviews website and continued to look at gauges and sending units for the bus. Around 8:30 PM I was having trouble staying awake but by 9 PM I had gotten my second wind and decided to write another short article for BCM. This one was on the failure of Butch and Fonda’s main engine air-compressor on the drive down, how he dealt with it on the road, and eventually ended up installing a rebuilt one here at our campsite in Quartzsite. I had the article written by 11 PM and decided to work on the photos tomorrow.

Sunset envelopes our coach as Linda prepares dinner.

2015/01/07 (W) Catch 22

My main pair of reading glasses broke yesterday; not the lenses or the frame, but one of the nose pads. Well, not the actual pad, but the small plate and mounting loop, specifically the mounting loop. I was cleaning them and the whole assembly fell out. The loop was split and had opened up. The loop was a very small and delicate piece of ductile metal so I squeezed it back into a circle. I removed the very tiny retaining screw, reinserted the mounting loop, and put the screw back in. I was able to do this using only the tools available on my Leatherman. The repair did not hold and it fell out again last night. This time a piece of the loop broke off so the only repair will be a new mounting pad if I can find one. There is a Wal-Mart in Parker that probably has an optical shop but I don’t know how universal this mounting system is.

I checked the level of the floor and counter in the kitchen last night and the coach appears to have settled slightly on the driver side. Not a lot, but enough that I can feel it and it registers on the level. I generally have to start the main engine and build up full air pressure in order to level the coach but I thought today would be a good day to finally pull the portable air compressor out of the car and see if the leveling system will work without the main engine running. As it turned out that did not happen today because we ended up driving to Parker, Arizona.

Our destination in Parker was the Wal-Mart. The store did not have an optical department but we found an eyeglass repair kit in the pharmacy area with a pair of screw-in pads and a pair of snap-in pads. They also had a repair kit with a tiny screwdriver, spare screws, and other parts. Between the two kits I was able to install a new pad in the car to replace the broken one. That saved us a trip the optical shop in town.

Parker sits on the Arizona side of the Colorado River which is the boundary with California. We decided to drive across and then take CA-62 over to US-95, follow it south along the River back down to Blythe, and then take I-10 back to Quartzsite. Butch called while we were in Parker to let us know that there was a Farmer’s market at Desert Gardens. It operates on Wednesdays from 8 AM to noon so we did not make it back in time but resolved to go in future weeks.

I worked on my “roadside repair” article for BCM while Linda went for a walk. Jim and Barb had gone to Blythe to buy a new faucet and Jim L. stopped by and helped Jim B. install it. They borrowed a caulk gun from us (we carry two in the bay) but had to go buy caulk. UPS showed up with yet another package for us, after which we had a long conversation about the inadequacies (incompetence) of the U. S. Post Office in Quartzsite. (The UPS driver told me that both UPS and FedEx have extra drivers and trucks delivering into Quartzsite during the peak season. What a novel idea.)

Back to the post office. We are waiting for a shipment of two bottles of water hardness test strips that we ordered through Amazon but were shipped via USPS by a swimming pool supply company in Elkhart, Indiana. I gave them the P. O. Box here in Q since the post office does not deliver mail to street addresses and it appears that they will likely get returned to the sender rather than delivered to us. The root cause of the problem (and it is a problem) is that Joe and Connie are having their mail forwarded to their home in Nevada. If their names are not on the mail the post office won’t put it in the box, but if their names are on the mail it still does not get put in the box, it gets sent to Nevada. So as of now the box is sitting there but cannot be used; a genuine “catch 22.”

Fine, we will just use General Delivery. The problem with that (and it is a problem) is that you can only pick up the GD Mail at the Quartzsite post office between 11AM and 1 PM, and there are untold numbers of people trying to do the same thing. That means ridiculously long lines and ridiculously long waits. Considering that the influx of seasonal “residents” to Quartzsite has been going on for over 30 years the postal “service” has had ample time to figure out how to handle the situation. I mean, Amazon practically runs its holiday operations with seasonal employees, many of whom are RVers. Gee, I wonder if there are any RVers around Quartzsite this time of year. While the post office is trying to figure out how to not deliver our mail we have two more UPS shipments scheduled to arrive on Friday.

Linda made a zoodle dish for dinner. She used her SpiraLife to turn a zucchini into long thin strips which she cut into 6″ lengths and then used like spaghetti in the dish. The other ingredients were onions, garlic, mushrooms, asparagus, and green beans. Everything got sautéed in a pan with a little olive oil, salt, and pepper. We had a glass of Lamb’s Valley Organic Sweet White wine and it was a lovely meal.

After dinner I put the finishing touches on my BCM air-compressor repair article and e-mailed it to Butch to proof-read. The only thing worse than writing an article that makes me look stupid is writing one that makes someone else look stupid, especially a friend.

I had an e-mail from Gary, the publisher of BCM, letting me know that the December 2014 issue was finally available online. I downloaded both the SD and the HD versions. I then clipped the cover from the SD version, pasted it into MS Paint, and saved it as a JPEG file. I opened it in Faststone Image Viewer, resized it to a thumbnail, and sharpened it. I then edited the BCM page on our website, adding the thumbnail image, the title of my article, and a brief description. I have a similar entry on that page for every issue in which I gave had an article, starting with the February 2013 issue. The December 2014 article was my 14th in 23 months.

The last glow of this sunset reflects off the passenger side of our motorcoach in Quartzsite, AZ.

2014/12/13-16 (S-T) In Q

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2014/12/13 (S) Ahhhh

Linda was very tired last night and was asleep by 10 PM. Although I was up until almost midnight we were both wide awake by 5:30 AM, so I got up and made a full pot of coffee. We enjoyed our brew while watching the slow but inevitable progression of night to day. It was very quiet last night; the only sounds I was aware of were the noises the coach makes (refrigerator and auxiliary air-compressor). The rain last night was gentle and a somewhat rare event for this area at this time of year, so Linda got online with her iPad to check historical weather data and forecasts.

The average rainfall for Quartzsite in December is 0.07 inches, the maximum is 0.7 inches (10 times as much) and the minimum is zero. The average high is in the mid-60s and the average low is in the low-40s. On any given day the forecast is sunny with gentle winds and no fog or rain. January is slightly cooler on average and February warms back up a tad. You can see why people spend the winter months here. Sunrise was at 7:32 AM. We are ~20 miles from the California border, as far west as we can go without moving into the Pacific Time Zone, so sunrise and sunset are later here relative to the local time.

Linda made fresh blueberry vegan pancakes for breakfast with real maple syrup and they were excellent. After breakfast we got out the vacuum cleaner hose and attachments and vacuumed the coach. This terrified the cats, who have limited places to hide, but it had to be done. Linda then mopped the tile floor. She wanted to dust but I suggested the all the cleaning did not have to be done the first morning we were here. She bundled up the trash and took it to the large garbage can and stopped to chat with Fonda and Connie (our landlady) on the way.

Our motorcoach set up in its winter home in Quartzsite, Arizona.

By 8:30 the sun was climbing in the southeastern sky and the coach was warming up a bit. We are parked facing east so we decided to deploy the passenger side awnings (patio and bedroom) which shaded approximately 65% of the upper half of the south-facing side of the coach. Linda then decided we should wash the front of the coach.

I got the step stool and Little Giant ladder out of the front bay while Linda got the collapsible water bucket. We started with the front of the bus using water directly from the tap but it dried too quickly in the sun and left spots. We switched to softened water from our fresh water tank and took a team approach with me scrubbing using a Microfiber sponge and Linda following right behind drying with Microfiber cloths. That seemed to work better.

After we finished the front we moved to the rear. The sun had not yet pulled around to west of south so we did not have direct sunlight on the rear cap. We hooked up our longest hose to the other water softener outlet and then wet the surface, scrubbed the cap with our soft brush, and rinsed it off without using the Microfiber drying clothes. We will clean the two sides of the coach over the coming week, doing a little bit each day. We also deployed the awnings on the driver (north) side of bus just to unwind them and let them air out and dry. We then set out our patio mat and welcome mat and our two bag chairs, completing our cleaning work for the day.

Butch spent some time emptying out their Suburban so we could explore Quartzsite in one vehicle. We all had lunch and then headed off to explore our winter home town. Fonda wanted to locate a church where she could attend services on Sunday mornings so we found one that looked like it might suit her. We drove down Main Street and Kuehn Street checking out the vendors and ended up at Big Market on west Main Street where we bought some grocery items and postcards.

Back at the ranch we settled in for a while before dinner. I worked at my computer and started checking up on e-mail, which I had not done in several days. I had a few from Gary, the publisher of Bus Conversion Magazine, and replied to those. I also spent a little time in RVillage and updated our profile. Jim Liebherr (Joe’s brother) came around to collect the first month’s rent and clarified access to the laundry room.

View of our motorcoach looking NE from Lollipop Ln. There are mountains in the distance to right of the rig.

For dinner Linda made a green salad using spinach, Mandarin oranges, and walnuts with a raspberry walnut vinaigrette dressing. She then prepared a zoodle dish using a tool called a “SpiraLife” that spiral slices vegetables with or without cross-cutting them. The cross-cut mode turns carrots, zucchini, etc. into long slender strips like flat pasta. She spiral sliced a zucchini and used it instead of wheat pasta in an olive oil sauté with mushrooms, onions, garlic, spinach, and sun-dried tomatoes. Some vegan “Parmesan” cheese on top, bread on the side, and a glass of Pinot Noir to wash it down made for a wonderful, healthy meal.

Linda found information online that suggested we should have anywhere from 11 to 21 over-the-air (OTA) TV channels. The Huffington Post even had the complete programming schedule for Quartzsite by channel and time-of-day. Our TV sets normally scan for standard OTA channels, both analog (very few left) and digital. We used both the front and rear TV to repeatedly scan for signals, pointing our amplified directional antennas around an entire 360 degrees, but did not find a single station.

The TV sets can also scan for QAM (Quadrature Amplitude Modulation) signals. We had to obtain an Access Code from the Westinghouse support website and enter it into the front TV to get it to scan for QAM signals, but it did not find any of those either. I called Butch to see if they had tried tuning in any stations. They had tried and got the same results as us. It’s not a big deal, the only TV we watch at home is streamed over the Internet, but it was puzzling as we saw lots of TV antennas around town. Most of them, however, where on top of tall poles.

The overnight low was forecast to be 41 degrees F and by 9 PM it had cooled off in the coach quite a bit. I decided to shut my computer for the evening and head to bed where we have a dual control electric heating pad to keep each of us in our own comfort zone. As sometimes happens, Microsoft decided that my computer needed to be updated. This often turns out be a recursive experience and tonight was no exception. Five updates were initially downloaded and installed, requiring a restart of the computer. After it rebooted and finished starting up I tried to shut it off again and there were six more updates, requiring another restart. I checked again after it rebooted and finished starting up and it appeared to be done, but I decided to leave it on overnight in case additional updates wanted to make their presence known.

I turned up the temperature on my side of the electric heating pad, got cozy under lots of covers, wrote for a while, and turned off the lights. It was a good first full day in Q.

2014/12/14 (N) Parker, AZ

The temperature in our motorcoach dropped below 60 early in the morning and the Aqua-Hot bedroom zone pump and heat exchanger fans came on even though we did not have a heat source turned on. That was because I had failed to turn the thermostat off before going to bed last night. With a 50 Amp shorepower connection I would have turned the three electric toe-kick heaters on, but with our 30 Amp connection I turned on the diesel burner and the electric heating element. Twenty minutes later the coach was warming up and I turned the electric element off so Linda could start cooking breakfast.

Linda made a tofu scramble using a different recipe that did not call for nutritional yeast as she forgot to pack any. We had sourdough toast with strawberry jam to go with the scramble, grapefruit juice, and coffee. Always coffee. After breakfast Linda went for a walk while I stayed at the bus. When she got back from her walk and Fonda got back from Church we discussed driving to the Wal-Mart in Parker, Arizona for groceries and sundry items. Butch left seating for four people in their Suburban so after lunch, he drove all of us to Parker.

See the mountains? Quartzsite is surrounded by mountains!

What we saw of Parker looked like a nice little town. The Wal-Mart had a reasonable variety and quantity of fresh produce and we got most of the items on our shopping list. We noticed when pulling out that there was a Safeway supermarket across the street with a CVS Pharmacy next door. Parker is located on the Arizona side of the Colorado River and is the county seat for La Paz County which includes Quartzsite. It is also the location of the tribal headquarters for the Colorado River Indian Tribes, a consortium of tribes with reservations along both sides of the Colorado River for many miles north and south of Parker. The Bluewater Resort and Casino is one of the attractions in town.

Back at our winter home base we unloaded our groceries and then sat outside to read, write, and surf the web. It was cool in the shade and warm in sun. We chatted with Connie for a while and then retreated to our coach as the outside air temperature dropped. Linda had picked up a guide to the Lower Colorado River region while walking this morning so I settled in to read it. As it got dark Linda assembled our dinner. We had another nice salad, a bowl of the left-over curry, some bread, and finished the bottle of Pinot Noir. We read for a while after dinner and then went to bed.

2014/12/15 (M) Hard Water

The outside temperature dropped to 38 degrees F overnight, colder than at our house back in Michigan, but the high there won’t make it past 50, which is above average for this time of year, while the high here will be in the low 60s, which is normal. Add in the warmth of direct sunshine here and you typically have shirtsleeve weather.

I turned on the Aqua-Hot at 6:30 AM and went back to bed for half an hour while the coach warmed up. When I got up I put on the new sweatshirt and sweatpants that we bought yesterday and made a pot of coffee. We got the sweat clothing yesterday to wear in the coach while lounging around in the morning. I only brought a lightweight robe from home, and Linda only brought a lightweight nightshirt, both of which proved to be inadequate against the morning chill.

After breakfast we took showers and then called the Escapees RV Club to register for the Escapade rally and clarify the process for ordering clothing. I got transferred to Kim’s voice-mail and left my information. Rather than hang around the coach waiting for a return phone call we walked to “downtown” Quartzsite. Main Street is only 8/10ths of a mile straight south of our location and is only two miles long from Exit 19 to exit 17 of I-10. The city is basically four square miles (2×2)—with most of it north of I-10—and is flat terrain, so it’s a compact, easy place to get around on foot or bicycle.

Our first stop was the post office so Linda could mail a few postcards. There was quite a crowd there picking up and dropping off mail. From what we understand mail does not get delivered to street addresses here so everyone has a P. O. Box. UPS, however, does deliver to street addresses. We went next door to the Chamber of Commerce trailer and picked up a couple more maps and some flyers and booklets on area attractions. We also bought a pair of Quartzsite 2014-2015 Snowbird commemorative pins. We then walked to the west end of Main Street and wandered through the Main Event warehouse building. They sell all manner of inexpensive (cheap) Chinese tools but we did not buy anything on this visit.

Joe & Connie’s park model trailer as viewed through the cactus garden by our coach.

We crossed Main Street to the McDonalds, had some French fries, and used the restrooms. We did not see any signs for “public” restrooms on our walk today, so the fast food places and truck stops were important pedestrian waypoints. We headed back east on Main Street and stopped at Big Market to check out the hardware portion of the store. Butch went through it the other day and said it was surprisingly good given its size. Having now seen it for myself I have to agree with his assessment.

Most north-south roads in Q are Avenues while larger E-W roads are Streets. Studying the map we got from the Chamber of Commerce it appears that Avenues and Streets connect to other roads at each end and/or at intermediate points. Dead end roads are usually named Lanes, but a few are Roads, Drives, or Trails. There are only four Avenues that run all the way from Main Street to the north end of town. From east to west they are Plymouth Ave., Central Ave. (AZ-95), Moon Mtn. Ave., and Kofa Ave. Tyson’s Wash runs north-south between Central Ave. and Moon Mtn. Ave. Perhaps because of the wash, or perhaps for other reasons, there are only three streets that run all the way through from east to west. Tyson St. is essentially the north edge of town while Main St. and Kuehn St. parallel I-10 on the north and south side respectively.

We got back to our coach a little after 1 PM. Cool air temperatures and cloudy skies made it a less comfortable day to sit outside so we gathered up our soiled clothes and Linda took them over to the laundry room. Because this is private property, not a large commercial RV park, the laundry room is just that, a room with a standard residential washer and dryer. They are not coin operated so usage is on the honor system; $2 per load (washed and dried). We are keeping a log of the loads we do and will add the corresponding cost to our rent or electrical bill next month.

Linda sliced an apple, got out the hummus, and put out some baby carrots, pieces of cauliflower, and broccoli along with pita chips. As we finished our late lunch/snack I noticed that Butch was working in his engine bay. That meant he was probably doing something with the air-compressor so I went over to find out exactly what he was up to and see if I could be of any assistance. He was unbolting the compressor from the engine block so he could pull it away from the back of the engine and check the drive gears and spline. It turned out that I had several socket wrench related tools with me that he needed, so that was my contribution to the process.

Once he had the compressor unbolted and pulled away from the block he was able to determine that there wasn’t anything wrong with the drive gear on the end of the camshaft or with the free-floating spline. The Bakelite gear was also still intact and the compressor was not seized. Based on a conversation he had with Bill at U. S. Coach the only thing that appeared to be amiss was a missing spring. The purpose of the spring is to keep the Bakelite gear engaged with the spline. Lots of grease packed behind the Bakelite gear can have the same effect as the spring, at least for a while. Since Butch had already done some of the hardest work required to remove the compressor he was still leaning towards buying a rebuilt unit and installing it. The “engine” in their bus was newly rebuilt when they bought it, but all of the accessories that attach to it, including the air-compressor, were not.

We did not fill our fresh water tank when we dumped our waste water at the Dream Catcher SKP RV Park on Thursday morning. After five days of heavier use, including showers, it was nearing empty and needed to be refilled. We try to fill it with softened water whenever possible and then use the water from the tank. On the road it is via our portable water softener. This approach keeps the water in the tank from going stale and also allows us to track how many times we have run a tank’s worth of water (100 – 125 gallons) through the softener. The number of gallons we can soften depends on the hardness of the water. We tested the city water in Q when we got here and it is very hard. It probably comes from very deep wells.

I borrowed a test strip from Butch to check the hardness of the water coming out of our softener. To my dismay, it was the same as the water going in. In other words, the softener wasn’t doing anything. That meant I had to recharge (regenerate) it before I could use it to fill the fresh water tank. It was near sunset, which meant most this work was done the dark. Bad planning on my part, but there it is.

I like our little portable softener but have never been satisfied with the recharge procedure. I followed the directions but without much success and with what I thought was way too much wasted water. After unscrewing the filter housing on the softener inlet and removing the filter I filled the housing ~3/4s full with non-iodized table salt. I inserted the special plastic tube onto the outflow port inside the head and then worked the housing up and screwed it into place. I tried using a trickle flow and also full inlet water pressure with a constricted outlet flow. I checked every half hour for two hours, but most of the salt was still there.

The view to the SW from our patio. Just over those mountains is California!

The problem was obvious to me. When a filter is installed in the housing it is sealed at the top and bottom by a post (bottom) and the outlet port (top). Water flows into the housing around the outside of the filter, through the filter media, and up the hollow center of the filter and out the port. What I needed was a tube that was exactly the same inside diameter and length as a standard filter, so it would seal on both ends, but with holes near the bottom. This would force water, under pressure, to flow down through the salt, through the holes, and up through the tube and into the softener where it could restore the ion exchange capability of the resin media. I jury-rigged just such a solution by taking the old filter and drilling 1/4″ holes around the bottom. Not my best piece of work, but it finally got the job done. I plan to make a better, more permanent, version of this solution sometime soon.

When all of the salt had finally been dissolved and run through the softener I removed the modified filter from the housing, rinsed it out, and installed a new 5 micron filter cartridge. The housing was leaking and I thought it was the plastic NPT nipple so I released any residual pressures and unscrewed the filter head from the threaded pipe. I cleaned the old Teflon tape out of the threads, wrapped new tape around them, and screwed the filter housing head back on the nipple. Fonda had wandered over by this time and was holding the flashlight which was a great help. It turned out that the problem was a missing O-ring; it fell out of the housing when I dumped it out. By chance I was walking around the back of the bus (with a flashlight), where I had dumped out the housing, and spotted it on the ground. I cleaned it off, put it back in, re-installed the new 5 micron filter element into the housing, and screwed it back onto the head. Valves open; pressure good; no leaks; good to go.

I opened the valve to fill the fresh water tank and went inside for a while. It took about 30 minutes to fill the main tank because the 5 micron filter does not pass water as quickly as the 20 micron that was in there. There is also a “whole house” filter housing installed in the water bay. As best I can tell, all of the water entering the coach goes through that filter, whether directly to the plumbing or into the fresh water tank (which is filled by opening a valve plumbed into the main supply line to the house). What I need to do now is replace that filter cartridge with a carbon element that removes chlorine and other such things. We also have a 1 micron drinking/cooking water filter under the kitchen sink that removes five or six different things. By the time I turned off the water, closed all of the supply valves, and went inside it was 9:45 PM so I grabbed my iPad and headed to bed.

2014/12/16 (T) Shopping In Q

Connie asked me last night if we would help her load her car today and of course we agreed. Our “landlady” for the winter is a truly delightful person. She has limited mobility but gets around without complaint. She’s picking Joe up from the care facility on Wednesday afternoon and bringing him here so we will finally get to meet him in person. Their sons are driving down from their homes in Nevada on Friday after work and taking the whole family back on Saturday.

Linda went for her morning power walk and I started working on cleaning up my e-mail inboxes. While Linda was gone Connie indicated that she was ready to start loading her car so I took care of that task. It was not a big or heavy job, but was more than Connie could do. I was close to being done when Linda returned and Butch/Fonda emerged from their bus. We all stood around chatting for a while and Connie invited us in to see the park model trailer she and Joe live in when they are here. It was not large but was more spacious than either of our buses.

Butch and I headed into town while Fonda and Linda stayed in camp. Linda wanted to work on her cross-stitch project and Fonda had things to do. We stopped at the Tool Mart at the Main Event on the west end of Main Street and each picked up some odds and ends tools. We then drove across to the south side of I-10 and headed west in search of the home where Fonda wants to attend a women’s bible study group on Wednesdays. The house we were looking for was in a development on the other side of the first ridge of mountains that lie SW of Quartzite. We found the development and the house without difficulty. Both were nice but the location was a bit surreal; I mean this development was in the middle of nowhere surrounded by low mountains. Butch captured the location in his GPS so that Fonda could find her way here and back tomorrow.

We drove back into Q, staying on the south side of I-10, and checked out the various vendors. We spotted the M & T Enterprises RV water filter store and pulled in to park. We spent some time there talking to the owner. They were one of the vendors selling an OTA TV antenna and had one set up on top of a 20 foot pole. The unit had a built-in rotator, and they claimed they were able to get 21 channels, but they said all of the signals were coming from the NNE to NE. Other folks have told us that the only signals in town are from Yuma, 85 miles away in a S to SSW direction. That seems unlikely given the terrain.

We walked down a few booths to the east to K & B Tool. Among many other things they sell the aluminum tent poles that are being used to get the aforementioned TV antennas up in the air. Our final stop was at Discount Solar at the NE corner of Main Street and Plymouth Ave. Butch bought all of their solar equipment from Discount Solar some years ago and thinks highly of the owners and staff. We were treated most cordially and they took time to talk to both of us. Butch is considering buying some Full River AGM batteries from them and I was just curious about what they had.

We have two humingbird feeders in the cactus garden by our coach. Look carefully to the right of the feeder.

When we got back to camp I had some of the leftover curry for lunch with some hot tea to help me warm up. Heavy clouds set in over the course of the afternoon and the air temperature was cool enough that I got slightly chilled. In spite of the chill, Linda went outside to continue working on her cross-stitch project. Butch set up their two-burner propane stove and made candy as he wanted to give some to Joe and Connie as a gift before they left on Saturday. With all that work going on around me I decided to take a nap.

Linda made a black beans and rice dish for dinner along with a green salad, both of which were very tasty. We bought a box of Franzia Sangria at Big Market the other day and finally tried it this evening. As with most of the Franzia wines it was not outstanding but also not offensive. Among inexpensive wines the Red Guitar Sangria is much fruitier and I like it better. While I would prefer a better wine, the Franzia boxed wines are around $13 for 5 liters, fit nicely in the refrigerator, can be consumed over a long time (at least eight weeks), and minimize garbage and recycling. All of those are positive attributes when living in the motorhome. We had fresh strawberries later for dessert, which are always a treat.

Our son (Brendan) sent a TXT message with a picture of our grand-daughter (Madeline) and the ornaments she had hung on their Christmas tree. She put five of them in a group at her eye level. She will be two years old in two more days and is fully aware that special things are happening and that she is a full participant in them, if not the center of attention. After dinner I resumed the task of cleaning up e-mails. I always promise myself that I will do better at managing my e-mails, but I never do.

2014/12/09-12 (T-F) On to Q

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2014/12/09 (T) Elvis Is Not Dead

No, indeed, Elvis is alive and well and living in Alvarado, Texas with his owner, Donn and fellow dog Lucy. Sweet animals both, we enjoyed their presence while visiting with Donn.

We heard Donn pull out a few minutes before 5 AM, in an attempt to beat the worst of the morning rush hour traffic headed into Dallas, but we were not ready to get up. I think we finally piled out of bed around 7:30 AM to find that the fog was so thick we could not see the road at the end of Donn’s driveway. We had targeted 9 AM as a departure time that would have us miss most of the morning traffic, and actually pulled out of our parking spot at 9:11 AM. The fog was still thick but it was bright enough that we could usually see at least a quarter of a mile in our direction of travel.

We worked our way back onto northbound I-35W towards Fort Worth and kept to the right in spite of entering traffic. We chose not to stop at the QT (Quick Trip) even though Diesel fuel was $3.08 per gallon, the least expensive we have seen in years. The transition to I-20 westbound was via one of the very high ramps that are used to connect intersecting freeways around the Dallas / Fort Worth metropolis, but it was not a problem. We continued to drive through fog for at least 90 minutes, so we could not tell you what Texas west of Fort Worth looks like if had to. We stayed on I-20 all the way to Midland, Texas only stopping to fuel up at the Flying J Truck Stop on the far side of Abilene, Texas by which point the fog had lifted and it was partly sunny with temperatures in the upper 60s. Eventually, however, the clouds closed back in, which made the last 90 minutes of the drive a bit less bright and easier on the eyes.

The bus ran well all day and I did better at getting on the accelerator in advance of climbing grades, spinning up the turbocharger and keeping the engine RPMs in the 1900-2000 range. The bus took 98.135 gallons of fuel at the truck stop and we had traveled 553.8 miles since the last fill-up for an average of 5.64 MPG. That included running our generator at the Wal-Mart in Texarkana, Texas on Friday. Our previous fill-up computed out at 5.45 MPG. In our previous use of the coach I figured we were getting 6.0 MPG, but we had not done as much dry-camping as we did on this trip. We have used the generator and the Aqua-Hot on this trip, both of which draw fuel from the main tank.

The only issue I had today was with the dual pyrometers, specifically the right one. Historically the right pyro has read 50 – 100 degrees F higher than the left one, which would often stick on “0” and then swing up if I tapped on the gauge. Both gauges have been tracking within 50 degrees since I rechecked the DDEC II connectors, but today the right gauge started lagging behind the left one, sometimes by a couple of hundred degrees. If that difference was real it would be a real problem, but everything else looked, felt, and sounded OK, so I think this is a continuing problem with the instrument, and/or sensors, and/or wiring and connectors, but I will have to keep an eye on it.

A half hour before the GPS said we would arrive Linda tried calling the Wal-Mart in Midland several times but never got an answer. We exited at Midland just before 3 PM and did not have any problem getting into the Wal-Mart parking lot which was very convenient to the freeway but relatively busy for that time of day on a Tuesday. Not surprising, though, as Midland is the epicenter of the current oil and wind boom in west Texas. The stretch of I-20 from Fort Worth to Midland is not desolate. Sweetwater is the wind power capital of the USA, and all along I-20 there are “RV Parks” on both sides of the freeway. Some of them were genuine, nice looking, RV Parks but most were makeshift looking places that appeared to have been created quickly to service (take advantage of?) a sudden need for places to park almost anything that might serve as shelter for energy workers.

As always, we checked with Customer Service to make sure it was OK to stay overnight. They said it was but twice told us to “be careful.” The warning had to do with leaving our vehicle for an extended period of time and risk having it towed. Apparently “extended” meant weeks, not hours, and I assured them we would be gone first thing in the morning. While we were in the store we picked up several bottles of PineSol and a couple of boxes of Calgon bath beads. We prefer the larger, cylindrical plastic containers of Calgon but rarely find them in retail stores and pharmacies. After we carried everything back to the coach I went for a walk to confirm our exit options for tomorrow morning. We looked at satellite images on Google Maps last night so I had a good understanding of the parking lot and access roads, but I wanted to verify that information while it was still daylight.

For dinner we had a nice salad, a fresh apple, and Tofurkey brand turkey and vegan cheese sandwiches. We were going to have the leftover chili from last night’s dinner, but the microwave and the Magnum charger are on the same leg, and the microwave acts like it is going to self-destruct if we try to use it while the charger is also drawing a large amount of current. I may try moving the circuit breaker for the microwave to a position in the sub-panel that puts it on Leg 2 and see if that helps, but I have to maintain a reasonable load balance between the two legs. It may be, however, that the microwave is more sensitive to a reduced voltage level than the other high power devices or things like lights or entertainment equipment, which just converts the AC to DC internally anyway.

I called Butch before dinner and they were still on the road in New Mexico. He called me back after our dinner to let me know they were in a rest stop on I-25 and had the place to themselves. By comparison, the Midland Wal-Mart was a busy place and most of the vehicles (drivers) seemed to find driving up and down the aisles to be a great inconvenience. Instead, they took straight line paths across the parking lot, driving between closely spaced parked vehicles (including buses) at surprisingly high speed and didn’t always stop to see if another vehicle might be driving in the lane (where it belongs). There was a Murphy USA filling station on the property, as well as a McDonalds, which contributed to the constant flow of traffic.

Butch had talked to Luke at U. S. Coach earlier today and got prices for the parts he presumes he needs to repair the main engine air-compressor (Bendix Tu-Flo 700 series) on their bus or replace it with a factory rebuilt one. Either way the work will wait until we get to Quartzsite, Arizona.

We had a good a Verizon 4G/LTE cellular signal so I sent TXT messages to Donn and Chuck letting them know where we were and ended up having brief TXT message exchanges with both of them. When we first arrived Linda sent TXT messages to both of our children updating them on our location. We received messages while we were driving that our older grand-daughter, Katie, had been accepted to Michigan State University. She applied to three state schools and Michigan Technological University was the first to accept her. She is waiting to hear about a scholarship from them but knows for sure that she will be going to college somewhere in the fall of 2015 and will have to make a choice as to where.

2014/12/10 (W) Dream Catcher

We went to bed early last night knowing we planned to drive over 400 miles today and wanted to get an early start. I was awake by 4 AM and finally got up at 5 AM. The parking lot had thinned out and quieted down overnight but even at that hour tractor-trailer rigs were coming and going. The house batteries were at 95% SOC when I turned the generator off at 8:45 PM last night and were at 70% SOC when I turned it back on when I got up.

Although I do not like to eat a big breakfast and drink coffee on days that I have to drive, I also do not like to travel too long on an empty stomach. I have also noticed that lack of liquids can lead to a headache or general feeling of unwellness. I was up early enough that I had a piece of raisin bread, a banana, and a small glass of grapefruit juice with time to digest it before we hit the road.

Linda got up at 5:30 AM and we started preparing the bus for travel at 5:45 AM. We pulled out at 6 AM, using the route I had scoped out last night to work our way around behind the Wal-Mart and onto the service drive for I-20 and get position for the freeway entrance. Once we were on the Interstate it was dark, of course, but it was also foggy. In spite of those conditions traffic was heavy until we were well past Odessa. Midland and Odessa are at the center of the current Texas energy (oil and wind) boom and between them are spread out along 30 miles of I-20. I was definitely not the most scenic part of our trip to date.

The fog stayed with us almost to where I-20 ends and merges with I-10. We drove through it for hours. The rest of the day was a mix of sun and clouds. The bus generally ran well but the turbocharger did not seem to be as responsive as it should be. I continued to do better at anticipating grades and getting the engine RPMs and turbo boost up ahead of time but noticed that the turbo boost was not peaking off the scale the way it used to.

The speed limit on I-20 yesterday between Fort Worth and Midland was 75 MPH. That continued through Midland and Odessa but once we were past Odessa it went up to 80 MPH. I usually travel 60 to 62 MPH when the speed limit allows it but for stretches of today’s trip I set the cruise control at 65 MPH and sometimes traveled at 70 MPH. Texas is a big place and west Texas is vast. The speed limits are this high because it is safe to drive that speed out here, and you just have to go faster if you want to get across west Texas in any reasonable amount of time.

Towards the end of I-20 and once we were on I-10 the terrain became rolling and then slightly mountainous and was very pretty in a southwestern desert kind of way. At some point we notice very large mountains off to the southwest. Just before reaching El Paso we were very close to the Rio Grande River and realized that the mountains were now very close on the Mexican side of the river and were very large and very rugged. I-10 through El Paso, Texas was an experience unto itself as there was road construction along its entire length for what seemed like endless miles. On the other side of El Paso we had to stop at a Homeland Security check point where we went in with the trucks by mistake but got waived through. Whenever I am unsure about overhead clearances I stick with the big rigs.

We continued on I-10W into New Mexico where it was joined by I-25 in Las Cruces and completed our run to Deming. We pulled into the Escapees Dream Catcher RV Park at 11:50 MST, just shy of 7 hours after we pulled out of the Wal-Mart in Midland, Texas. We had traveled 407 miles at an average speed of 58 MPH which was faster than our usual 50 MPH average.

Butch and Fonda were already checked-in to the RV Park and we took one of the sites next to theirs’. They had developed an apparent chassis battery problem and Butch was trying to sort it out. I got the shorepower hooked up while Linda prepared lunch. She made open faced chili cheese dogs with some tofu hotdogs and the leftover chili from Monday night.

Butch needed a new battery for their Suburban so I rode with him to the local Wal-Mart. He had them install it (no extra charge) but had to teach the “technician” how to do it. He was also scoping out batteries for the bus but Wal-Mart did not have the Group 31’s he was looking for. We stopped at both O’Reilly’s and NAPA auto parts stores and got prices then went back to do some additional diagnosis. Butch suspects a shorted cell but has not confirmed that.

Linda suggested that I connect the sewer hose and fresh water line while it was still daylight with comfortable temperatures so that is what I did. I decided to check out the two pyrometer sensors. In the process I “discovered” a metal plate with an electrical harness plugged into it and a fitting for a hose but with only a small piece of hose attached to the fitting. Butch identified the plate as the turbocharger boost sensor. I found the loose end of the hose and followed it back to turbocharger outlet manifold. That explained why I was not able to get the turbo boost and engine power I expected from the engine. The hose was incredibly brittle and had to be replaced; not good. We discussed options and appeared to have two: 1) Attach a new hose to the sensor tube and then try to splice it into the old hose, or 2) get a new barbed fitting for the manifold and run a new hose from there to the sensor. We drove back to the NAPA store and got the parts we might need.

Butch removed the old fitting from the intake manifold and decided we could re-use it. It took some doing but he got it installed. We routed the new hose (fuel injector rated) to the sensor plate and connected it. I could not figure out how to mount the plate so I left it sitting behind the computer on top of the engine where I found it. I do not know if the old hose has been broken for a while or if it finally failed this afternoon when I grabbed it, but either way it was certainly leaking and was another potential disaster averted.

For dinner Linda made a nice green salad and pan-grilled tofu slices with Bar-B-Que sauce and caramelized onions. After dinner we took advantage of our full hookups to take showers and get additional water in our waste tanks. We watched an episode of Nova on the local PBS station and then went to bed. Both sides of the air mattress were very hard. When we checked the settings, my side was at 50 and Linda’s was at 85, both much higher than we usually set them.

The thought crossed my mind that the cats might have stepped on the controls, but that seemed unlikely as the buttons are slightly recessed and have to be pushed in to activate the system. Besides, the odds of them stepping on the controls for both sides of the bed were very small. Linda made an off-hand comment about altitude and I realized immediately that this was the effect of having climbed from 765 feet above sea level (ASL) in Alvarado, Texas to 2,862 ft. ASL in Midland, Texas, to 4,300 ft. ASL in Deming, New Mexico. I also realized in that moment why the tire pressures were higher than I expected when I checked the PressurePro TPMS this morning before we pulled out of Midland. Sometimes that which should be obvious is not. We reset the air mattress pressures and drifted comfortably off to sleep.

2014/12/11 (R) RoVer’s Roost SKP CO-OP

I was up at 6 AM after a good night’s sleep and Linda got up around 7 AM. The overnight low was 38 degrees Fahrenheit, and we did not have any of the heaters turned on, so the front of the coach got a bit chilly. We were parked facing east so the rising sun lit up the front of our coach and helped warm it up. I checked on the house battery SOC and then settled in to write for a while. We had a light breakfast of oatmeal and juice around 7:30 AM. At 7:45 AM I turned on the engine block heater and Aqua-Hot pre-heat pump. Linda gathered up the trash shortly thereafter and went for a walk.

I failed to mention in yesterday’s blog post that our grand-daughter Katie called Linda yesterday to let us know that she had received a full academic scholarship to Michigan Technological University in Marquette, Michigan. We were, of course, very excited to receive this news. Katie has been an excellent student throughout high school and we are confident she will do well at MTU if she decides to go there.

Fonda was out with their two dogs, Rascal and Daffy, around 7:30 AM but there was no sign of activity beyond that until 8 AM when Linda returned from her walk and said Butch was outside looking at their chassis battery situation. I put on the hooded sweatshirt I use when I have to work outdoors in cool weather and joined them.

Butch had left the 24 VDC battery charger on the chassis batteries overnight. Both batteries seemed to be holding an adequate voltage so he decided to swap them rather than replace the one that seemed to be a problem yesterday (lower 12 volts). After disconnecting the cables we pulled both batteries out. These are 8D lead acid (wet cell) batteries and weight ~160 pounds each. Butch topped off the fluid level in all of the cells. He then put the batteries back in place, reversing their position, and reconnected the cables. We re-checked voltages and everything looked OK so Butch decided they were ready to travel today rather than spend another night in Deming.

Yesterday we had discussed driving to the Escapees Saguaro Co-op RV Park in Benson, Arizona. Called them just before 5 PM and they said they had plenty of spaces available. Linda was checking the details of the park online and discovered that they have a 40,000 pound weight limit, but no one at the park could explain why. Further research revealed that the last 0.3 miles into the park might be a weight restricted road.

Benson would have been a short drive of just over 180 miles, leaving us a longer drive for Friday if we wanted to get all the way to Quartzsite. Looking at the map it appeared that Casa Grande, Arizona, 280 miles from Deming, might be a better stopping point. As it turned out, the Escapees (SKP) RoVer’s Roost CO-OP RV Park is located near Casa Grande and did not have weight restrictions. Linda called to make sure they had space for us, and after consulting with Butch and Fonda decided that was where we would head.

Linda checked online for fuel stops and prices. The best price was $3.15 at a Pilot/Flying J just 10 miles shy of Casa Grande, but I wasn’t sure we could comfortably make it that far with adequate reserves as we were already at 1/2 tank mark on the fuel gauge. I dumped our waste tanks, stowed the hoses, turned on the chassis batteries, opened the various air valves, disconnected the shorepower cord, and stored it. We secured all of the bays and then hooked up the car for towing. When Butch and Fonda were close to being ready we fired up the bus engine and checked the exterior lights.

We pulled out of the SKP Dream Catchers RV Park at 10 AM with our first stop planned for a Flying J Truck Stop about 60 miles west of Deming. We had a good run on I-10 across the rest of New Mexico and into Arizona, exiting onto I-8 about 13 miles from the RoVer’s Roost RV Park. The bus ran like it had a new engine. The turbocharger was very responsive to the accelerator, producing more boost than I saw yesterday. The engine had noticeably more power climbing grades, with the pyrometers reaching 850 – 900 degrees F and the engine coolant temperature reaching 195 – 200 degrees F. Repairing the turbo boost sensor hose yesterday was clearly the right thing to do.

The scenery was beautiful and the largest city on our route was Tucson, which appeared to have a very nice downtown area. The city was spread out for 30 miles from east to west and was not nearly as hectic as the drive through El Paso, Texas yesterday. We arrived at RoVer’s Roost SKP CO-OP AT 3:15 PM MST with 3/4’s of a tank of fuel.

RoVer’s Roost is a very dense RV Park with closely spaced lots that are permanently assigned to co-op members and most of which were occupied. The lots were all perpendicular to the long, straight, narrow roads. All sites, including the boondocking area, were back-in which required us to unhook our cars. The sites were also limited to a 40 foot long RV maximum, but many of them were “developed” in such a way that they would not accommodate a rig that long. Registration took longer than it should have but eventually we were escorted to our site by a man in a golf cart who guided me as I backed into the site. He had obviously done this many times and knew how to get a 40 foot motorhome into a tight space with limited room to turn so we were glad to have his assistance.

Once we were in our spot he escorted Butch and Fonda to their site and helped back them in. Their bus developed an air problem after they pulled into the park, producing a squealing sound when Butch applied the parking breaks. Butch had to bleed the pressure down to 30 PSI to get the noise to stop. He re-pressurized the system and the noise did not reappear, so he put the Quadra Big Foot leveling jacks down.

I updated our recent locations in RVillage. The four of us then went for a walk around the park to check it out and scope out our exit path. We met a very nice lady resident who has painted a number of murals on storage sheds around the park and the ones we saw were very well done. We returned to our coach and had dinner. I had a TXT message from Chuck and called him after dinner to tell him about the turbo boost problem and solution. We turned in early and watched a football game for a while before turning out the lights and going to sleep.

2014/12/12 (F) RR to Q

Today was our 13th day on the road since leaving home on November 30th. We could easily have taken a month to do this repositioning, stopping along the way at more places for more nights and exploring each area, but we chose not to. In part this was because we were caravanning with friends, and in part because we both had bus issues along the way and we were all anxious to just “get there.”

Pulling in to 715 Lollipop Ln in Quartzsite, Arizona.

RoVer’s Roost has WiFi but we were not offered the use of it when we registered. We had an excellent Verizon 4G/LTE signal, however, so I checked RVillage last night and realized that I had not updated our location since Alvarado, Texas. In the span of just a few minutes I checked into Midland, Texas, the SKP Dream Catcher RV Park in Deming, New Mexico, and finally the RoVer’s Roost SKP CO-OP in Casa Grande, Arizona. I posted a comment about this and drew a comment about “…living in the fast lane” and several “likes.” RVillage is not only useful, it’s fun.

The park home page showed 11 check-ins, so I perused the list and discovered that Forrest and Mary Clark were apparently here. I say “apparently” because, like our situation, the information is only accurate if the person has kept it up to date. I sent Forrest a message and he replied that they were, indeed, at the park and provided their site number. I did not see the reply until this morning, however, so I messaged him back and said we would stop by before we pulled out. Like us, they are also headed to “Q” for the first time this winter.

I was up by 6:30 AM and made a half pot of coffee. We have not been making coffee in the morning and really miss it. We enjoyed our Teeko’s Cafe Europe Blend while watching a gorgeous sunrise, the first of many we expect to see. The temperature had dropped to 50 degrees F overnight from the high of 76 yesterday afternoon; warmer than normal for this time of year. RoVer’s Roost has recycling bins, so Linda gathered up the various packaging materials she has been saving and walked them over to the bins along with the trash. She likes to go for morning walks and has missed doing so while working on the software conversion project for the bakery since mid-September.

At 8 AM the house batteries were at 93% SOC. The last time they were at 100% was at the end of our stay in Alvarado, Texas where we sat for three night plugged-in to “50 Amp” shorepower. The Magnum ME-ARC remote was showing 116-120 VAC in, which more closely matched the main panel gauges than I have seen recently. I obviously have some investigating to do (voltage measurements) and need to revisit the manuals for the 4024 inverter/charger and its add-on modules. As with everything on this coach, there is no magic involved, just basic engineering principles. The problem comes when there is inadequate documentation on the construction of the systems, including their principles of operation and their specific interconnections. That’s when the detective work begins and I have to be particularly cautious about coming to premature conclusions regarding all of this. It is better to admit that I do not understand how something works than to assume that I do and turn out to be wrong (not that that has ever happened).

In my chat with Chuck last night he suggested that I might want to eventually replace the turbo boost (manifold) sensor hose with a silicon one. The two hottest places on the engine are the exhaust manifolds and the turbocharger and this hose connects to the latter. He planned to check the hose on his coach, which is the same type and age as ours, first thing this morning. His coach has more miles on it than ours (we think) so this hose is likely to be in bad shape on his coach too. At some point I would like to have the radiator re-cored and that would be the time to replace ALL of the coolant hoses, and anything else on the engine that is made of rubber, with new silicon parts if possible, or at least with new rubber.

Along those same lines we were discussing air-powered accessories last night. We do not use the bedroom pocket door and I will probably disconnect it or add a shutoff valve. The waste tank dump valves are also air-powered and I may do the same thing to them. That would leave the toilet and the shutters for the two front air-conditioner condensers as the only devices that needs air to work while we are parked. We like the air flush toilet—it is fairly water efficient—and we would keep it if we could eliminate air leaks to the point that the auxiliary air-compressor only runs a few times a day. The other downside to the toilet, however, are the difficulty and expense of getting spare parts. We are considering replacing it with a standard gravity flush “RV style” toilet when we redo the water tanks, hopefully next year. That would greatly reduce the need to run the auxiliary air-compressor while we are parked. It does, however, also help maintain the air pressure in the suspension system.

We walked down to Forrest and Mary’s site at 8:30 AM and they came out to greet us. Precision RV pulled up just as we got there. They are affiliated with AM Solar in Oregon and are installing a solar electric system on Forrest and Mary’s Foretravel motorhome. They wanted to see our bus so we all walked back to our site. Butch walked up and joined us and we had a long chat. Several folks walked by and were very friendly which help mitigate our first impressions of the place.

While we were standing there the man who parked us yesterday drove by in his golf cart and also stopped to chat. He and his wife have been coming to RoVer’s Roost since 2004 and help manage the park. With the co-op you obtain a leasehold on a specific lot which is then yours to use until you move to a different lot or sell your leasehold. The lots are not deeded; your leasehold buys you a fractional ownership of the co-op. Leaseholds are currently $8,500 with a $500 annual maintenance fee, and many leaseholders are full-timers; their RV is the only home they have. Under $10K for a place to live plus $500 in association fees and metered electric is not bad. In the last few years many of the original residents, who built the park, have given up their RV’s for assisted living or passed away. At the present time there are a few lots available and, for the first time in the park’s history, there is no waiting list. The hope is that a new generation of retirees will discover the Escapees RV Club and the Rainbow Parks and SKP co-ops.

RoVer’s Roost is an odd place when you first see it, a kind of “RV oasis” in the dessert. It’s a compact, low-walled, compound surrounded by endless miles of nothing; no housing, no industry, not even agriculture. It turns out that such places are not uncommon in the southwest but it got me wondering why it was built here and why it was built this way. I presume the reason for the location had to do with climate, land costs, and the willingness of local, county, and state agencies to allow it.

We learned that some of the reasons RoVer’s Roost is built the way it is had to do with it being the first SKP CO-OP and when it was built. Construction began in 1981 and Escapees RV Club Founders Joe and Kay Peterson helped build it with their own hands and had a lot there for a while. RV’s over 35 feet long were rare in those days. Although 40 foot highway buses existed, such as the Eagle, and some were already being converted into motorhomes, many conversions were based on the 35 foot Flxible and GMC buses. Pull-behinds (trailers and 5th wheels) were rarely longer than 30 feet, although there were exceptions. The size of the lots, the width of the roads, and the tightness of the turns all reflect the RV realities of the time and provide a living example of how difficult it is to see into the future.

Another reason, I presume, had to do with the costs associated with building RoVer’s Roost. Even if the cost of the land was negligible, doubling the size of each lot would have at least doubled the cost of the infrastructure. Roads, electrical wire, fresh water pipes, sewer lines, and the perimeter wall would all have involved at least double the material and the associated cost. The visit to RoVer’s Roost reminded me that I need to carefully consider the historical context of something before I can hope to understand it.

We targeted 10 AM as our departure time, but there was no urgency to our leaving as we had less than 180 miles to get to our winter home in Quartzsite. Butch discovered the digital dashboard on the Rand-McNally RVND 7710 last night and called to let me know how to access it. I vaguely recalled that it was there, having been to several seminars on the unit, but I had not developed the habit of using it. I decided I would try it out on this last leg of our journey to “Q.” One of its features is the display of elevation. On the downside, it does not display the current posted speed limit, which is shown on the map view.

We prepared the coach for travel and I fired up the engine at 10 AM. Linda watched to make sure I did not hit anything as I pulled out. Once I was out of our site (#77) I drove to the end of the street and around the corner to a spot where we could hookup the car, which Linda drove down and positioned behind the bus. I shut off the engine while we hooked up as the park is posted as a “No Idle Zone.” Several residents stopped to chat and all of them were very nice, wished us a safe journey, and invited us back. After a less than 100% positive experience yesterday when we arrived and registered we were feeling very good about the park by the time we left. That, however, did not change the fact that the park design is only marginally usable by a 40 foot highway bus, and not really a good choice for an overnight stay as they do not have any pull-through sites.

Butch and Fonda pulled out of their spot about 15 minutes after us and by 10:30 AM had their car hooked up and were ready to roll. We pulled out in the lead and 1.5 miles later pulled back onto westbound I-8. We exited I-8 34 miles later near Gila Bend and got on a connecting road leading to AZ-85. We came to a split and were not sure where the GPS intended to take us as it told us to turn left which would have put us on AZ-85 southbound whereas the signs clearly showed that AZ-85 N to I-10 was a turn to the right. Linda was double checking on her phone what we needed to do. We went to the right and that turned out to be correct.

The 39 mile run up AZ-85 to I-10 was a 4-lane divided highway, although the road surface was a bit rough initially. When we left I-10 for I-8 at Casa Grande yesterday the signage indicated that I-8/AZ-85 was the designated bypass route to get around Phoenix. Once we rejoined I-10 westbound there was noticeably more traffic even though we were already 70 miles west of Phoenix. The traffic eventually spaced out and we finished the 180 mile trip easily while enjoying the other-worldly scenery of the deep Southwest U. S.

We climbed over several small mountain ranges and stopped briefly at a rest area. We climbed over one last mountain range, reaching an elevation of ~1,600 feet ASL (on the RVND 7710 dashboard display), and finally saw the valley where Quartzsite sits at the bottom nestled against the next mountain range to the west. We then dropped 700 plus feet over the next 12 miles on a gradual but constant grade. As we descended and neared Quartzsite we saw the first RV’s parked on the BLM land south of the highway, which was very exciting.

In spite of studying satellite images I did not have a good picture in my mind of what I was now seeing. I did not expect the mountains to the east and west of town and I did not expect vegetation. I thought this area would be a vast expanse of flat, barren, sun baked desert. What lay before us was much nicer than that and we could see immediately why RVers have come here for years and returned year after year.

There are two exits for Q, one at either end of Main Street (B-10) which parallels I-10 on the north side. We took the second (west most) exit as that is where the Pilot Truck Stop is located. We both topped up our tanks and then pulled out of the way to disconnect our cars. We had 5/8ths of a tank but I wanted to add biocide and top it off to eliminate as much air as possible. With changes in temperature moisture in the air (in the fuel tank) can condense out. Water in the fuel then contributes to the growth of algae. I wanted to prevent that since we will be sitting for almost three months. I will run our fuel polishing pump as well, but the biocide and full tank will really help prevent fuel problems.

Butch had already called Jim (Joe’s brother) and he drove over to escort us back to Joe and Connie’s property. We made a little caravan with two buses and two cars following him there. I really did not know what Quartzsite would be like. My first impression was that it was a combination of the world’s largest RV rally with the world’s largest flea market. There are RV’s everywhere, and stuff for sale everywhere else. It is not an “upscale” place, but it is not trashy and rundown either. It’s a little funky and a bit alternative, a kind of 1960s meets the old west vibe, and I think it will be a great home base for the winter.

Joe and Connie’s property is on a small side street in the NNW part of the city. Butch pulled in first and I waited in the street while Jim got him backed into their spot facing due south. Jim then directed me into a spot parallel to the fence on the north property line facing east, which is how I had hoped we would be parked. It was much easier to get into than Butch and Fonda’s spot. Fonda and Linda pulled the cars in and parked them after I was out of the way. The property was smaller than I thought it would be from the satellite images, but large enough, and nicer looking than I expected as well. There was one motorhome here already, an older Country Coach, and it turns out that they will be the only other rig here. The owners had gone home for Christmas unexpectedly and will be back around January 1st.

We were pointing slightly up hill so I initially raised the rear end rather than drop the front. To get level, however, I still needed to drop the front and the Level Low system once again failed to respond. I checked the pneumatic solenoid valves in the bay under the driver’s seat but nothing seemed to be amiss. I switched the selector valve in the cockpit between its various positions and the front finally responded. I have replacement parts for one pneumatic solenoid valve but I am now wondering if the problem might be the selector switch? I have not checked the maintenance manual but I presume this is a strictly electrical switch that determines which pneumatic solenoid valve the “up/down” rocker switch controls. I presume the rocker switch is working correctly as it controls the left rear and right rear leveling valves and puts the suspension in driving mode without difficulty.

The easiest/cheapest fix is the pneumatic solenoid valve, unless that turns out not to be the problem. The next easiest fix is probably replacing one or both Norgren valves in the bay because they are somewhat accessible. I know the cost of those valves, so it is both a more expensive and more involved repair, especially if it turns out to be unnecessary. I have no idea what the selector switch costs and it appears to be in a difficult location to service, but if that is the problem then that is what has to be repaired. There are several possibilities besides the pneumatic solenoid valve. It’s possible that the selector switch connections for controlling the front height control valve have become marginal and intermittent. It’s also possible that the switch itself is failing and needs to be replaced. Another possibility is the electrical connections at the solenoid. Whatever it turns out to be it won’t be the first marginal/intermittent thing we have found on the bus.

I eventually got it leveled, and having the rear end raised and the front end lowered is not a bad thing as it makes it easier to get in/out of the front door and provides more clearance under the utility bay for the dump hose. We will be in this spot for the next 12 months, except possibly for a few days in February to attend an informal gathering of a few members of our FMCA Freethinkers Chapter at the Peg Leg Monument near Anza-Borrego State Park in Southern California. We will leave Quartzsite in early March for the Escapade rally in Tucson, Arizona.

Once I had the coach leveled I shut off the engine and went through my arrival routine. When I went to connect the shorepower cord I discovered that we only had a “30 Amp” RV service. A “30 Amp” service is just that; a single 120 VAC connection (line, neutral, ground) protected by a single pole 30 Amp circuit breaker (on the line). A “50 Amp” RV service, by comparison, is two 120 VAC lines (180 degrees out of phase) with a shared neutral and a ground. The two lines are protected by a 50 Amp double pole circuit breaker and are actually a 240 VAC, 50 Amp service. However, in most RV’s each line (leg) is used as a 120 VAC, 50 Amp service in conjunction with the neutral, so a “50 Amp” RV connection is actually used as a 120 VAC, 100 Amp service. That’s over three times the power of a “30 Amp” RV service.

We can manage on a 30 Amp service—we have before—especially if we do not have to run the air-conditioners. Our air conditioners are not working at present anyway, but we do not expect to need them while we are here, so that will help. We cannot use the Gaggenau cooktop, as it is a 240 VAC device, but that’s OK too. Linda prefers to use the portable induction cooker anyway; it is more efficient and doesn’t heat up the coach. Still, operating our coach on a 30 Amp service requires much more conscious management of our electrical usage and is thus a tad inconvenient. On the other hand, our electricity is metered so we pay for what we use. Having a 30 Amp service inherently limits how much electricity we can use.

Many (most) circuit breakers will only carry 80% of their rating on a continuous basis so we effectively have 24 Amps available to run things. That’s not a lot of power for a large, “all electric” coach. I adjusted the “AC Input” setting on the Magnum 4024 inverter/charger to 25 Amps before turning the power on. The unit limits the amount of current it uses to charge the house batteries to a percentage of that setting. Setting it to 25 Amps instead of 30 Amps gave us a bit more cushion to run other devices while the batteries were charging. Once they are fully charged I will dial this back up to 30 Amps.

I joined Linda, Butch, Fonda, and Jim and introduced myself to Connie. Joe and Connie own this place but Joe was not here today. He ended up in the hospital being treated for a scorpion sting and is now recovering in a care facility for a week. By his own admission he was careless; he took a pair of shoes out of a closet he had not worn in a year and put them on without checking to see if something had taken up residence therein. Not being from the desert southwest this would not even have occurred to us. We know there are snakes, scorpions, and other “things” here, but this scorpion was in their park model trailer living in a shoe in their closet just 60 feet from our bus. That certainly served as a heads up for us.

After chatting for a while I finished hooking up the water softener to the water supply and the coach. We had about 1/2 tank when we arrived and I brought the level up to 2/3rds. Butch had some test strips so we used one to check the hardness of the water. It showed 25 grains per gallon (gpg), the highest mineral content it could indicate. Our portable water softener has a capacity in grains which determines how much water it can soften before it needs to be recharged. A “1,000 grain” water softener will only treat 40 gallons of 25 grain hardness water (1,000 / 25 = 40) whereas it will treat 100 gallons of 10 grain hardness water (1,000 / 10 = 100).

Butch and Fonda have a 10,000 grain portable water softener but the information we got with ours did not include the grain capacity. Our softener is similar in size to theirs so I can probably safely assume that it has at least a 7,500 grain capacity. Given the hardness of the water here that means it can treat about 300 to 400 gallons before needing to be recharged. Our fresh water tank holds approximately 125 gallons. If we use most of the water before refilling it we will need to recharge the water softener after every third filling.

Recharging (regenerating) the water softener is simple and inexpensive but takes a little time. The filter is removed from the housing and the housing filled with crushed salt. Water is allowed to flow very slowly through the salt and then through the softener and onto the ground. When the salt is gone the unit is recharged. If this seems wasteful of water it is, in fact, how almost all water softeners work. The advantages of softened water are worth the little bit of added water use, especially since we have an Aqua-Hot hydronic heating system that specifies the use of softened water for optimum performance and reduced maintenance.

Rain had been in the forecast all day and we finally started to get an occasional drop so I closed up the bay doors and went inside. Once we were settled in Linda sent a TXT message to our children letting them know we had arrived. She attached a photo she took on her camera of our coach in situ. I took a few photos on mine and TXT’d one to Chuck to let him know we were finally here. I then laid down on the sofa and took a nap. I eventually woke up to the sounds and smells of dinner being prepared. Linda made a very yummy crushed lentil curry and opened a bottle of Barefoot Pinot Noir. It was a bit dry for my taste but she enjoyed it. It’s a good life.

The view to west (towards Lollipop Ln) from the east end of our “camp.” Our coach is to the right with the awning out.

Storm clouds gathered and shrouded the mountains to the west but all we got was light rain; nothing like the weather that swept through the Pacific coast from Los Angeles up into Oregon. Not that far north of us Las Vegas, Nevada, got rain, ice, and snow.

After dinner Linda signed-in to RVillage and updated our location. She indicated that we were not in an RV park as we are on private, non-commercial property that is not, and should not, be in the RVillage (AllStays) database. I will check tomorrow to see if the website shows us other Villagers in and around the Q.

I checked the house batteries at 9:45 PM. They were at 25.6 VDC drawing 0 Amps and showed “Full Charge” even though the BMK showed the SOC at 95%. Like our stay in Alvarado I suspect the SOC will be back up to 100% in a couple of days. I made note of the readings and headed to bed. It was good to finally be here and we are looking forward to an interesting, pleasant, productive, and enjoyable winter.

The Phase Place

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Tag Archives: water softener (H3-40)

2015/12/26 (S) Departure Preparations

2015/12/08 (T) Hudson and Back

2015/12/06 (N) Multiple Threads

2015/01/01-07 (R-W) Q 2015 W1

2014/12/13-16 (S-T) In Q

2014/12/09-12 (T-F) On to Q