September 19th-21st - Camping at Rend Lake, an Electrical Issue, etc.

Alexa and Aaron met us at Rend Lake Thursday afternoon. It was getting pretty warm by the time they arrived so I pulled out the fan and plugged it into the outside outlet, no power. I went inside and checked the outlets nearby. The one on Kelly's vanity and the one in the bathroom did not work either. I knew the bathroom outlet was on a GFI Circuit Breaker in the panel box so I checked it. I flipped it several times but it would not reset. I called my "electrical" friend John and he said there was no good way to check a GFI Circuit breaker but he had one. When we got home we could swap it out and see if we got power. A new GFI breaker is over $45.00. I didn't want to buy one if that wasn't the problem.

Not long after that Kelly told me that the microwave was not working. Strangely it was on a different circuit breaker. I reset the microwave circuit breaker. It appeared to be setting properly but still no power. These problems would have to be dealt with at home. Fortunately the air-conditioner and refrigerator were working.

Several weeks ago I purchased a cheap basket to sit on the floor of the shower to corral the shampoos and conditioners while on the road. Kelly said she liked the size of the basket but it needed to have holes in the bottom to let the water drain out. If we didn't do that about a half inch of water would accumulate in the bottom and it would get moldy between uses. Here is a picture of the basket before I drilled nine holes in the bottom. It should serve the purpose.

Friday Kelly took a shower and dropped the handheld showerhead. The showerhead is plastic and it broke off where it screws into the metal shutoff valve on the hose. This showerhead was advertised as one of those "super-duper" jobs that increase the power of the flow of the water so you use less. This is always important in an RV where you often have limited water supply. I must say it did work as advertised and we both loved it. Here is a picture.

Fortunately I had in a cabinet the old "super-duper" showerhead which we used before. It is an Oxygenics showerhead which also mixes air with the water to increase the flow. I was going to put it in Homer but never got around to it. I'm glad I didn't because we needed it this trip. Here is a picture of it.  It is metal so it should never break off like the other one.

Now I could take my shower.

Saturday after Alexa and Aaron left we packed up the camper and headed home. We did not have water or sewer hookups while there so we had to dump the tanks at the dump station before leaving. When I pulled up to the station and went to unscrew the cap off the sewer drain I saw that it was missing. Here is a picture.

The cap was on the pipe at home so apparently on the way over to Rend Lake it fell off somewhere. These caps are tethered to the pipe by a rubber cord. The rubber cord on this cap had broken a couple of years ago so I tethered it with the white wire tie you can see in the picture. I guess it broke off as well due to old age. The cap was old and did not fit tightly over the nubs so I'm not surprised it fell off. I'll order a new one. An easy fix. It has to have a cap to be legal going down the road.

After getting home and unpacking the camper I decided I had to find out why the microwave wasn't working. I was sure it had to be that the internal fuse had blown. I pulled it out and took the case off to get to the internal fuse to check it. IF I HAD BEEN THINKING, before going to all the work of pulling the microwave out, I would have just unplugged it and plugged something else into the outlet to see if there was power.

Once I had it out and apart I checked the fuse and it was good. Now what? I then ran an extension cord from the house directly to the microwave, plugged it in, and it worked. At that point I checked the microwave outlet and found it was dead. I put the microwave back together, unplugged the extension cord, and plugged the extension cord into the camper.  I then went to the fuse box and again flipped the microwave breaker, it seemed fine. I then flipped the GFI Circuit breaker for the other dead outlets and it "reset" just as it should. It hadn't done this yesterday. I checked the outlets that were dead before and they were all hot now.

What I then realized is that there had been nothing wrong with the breakers at all.  I had plugged the RV into the 50 amp receptacle at the campground and assumed that it was all working properly. It was not. One leg of the 50 amp outlet was not working so I was only getting electric to half of the camper. Luckily it was the half with the air-conditioning and refrigerator.

I then thought back to when I plugged the RV into the park pedestal. I used my Surge Protector and it showed a green and blue light, which means correct wiring. But it only showed it on one side. I had to get the manual out to refresh my memory that for two good lines of 110 volt power for a 50 amp connection it should light up green and blue on both sides of the surge protector face. I was only getting power to one leg, i.e. half the camper outlets. If I had been paying close attention when I plugged it in I would have noticed that and would have moved the RV to a different site. Oh, well, problem solved and we survived. I will definitely be more observant next time.