June 2 - 10, 2024 - A Small Homer Repair - 110 Volt Problem in Homer - Trip to Cuba ---- Missouri that is!

Sewer Hose Holder Repair:

A couple of years ago the screws holding the sewer hose tube bracket to the fender of Homer fell out. I installed new screws.  A month ago I notice that both of the screws again worked loose and fell out. Here is a picture of each side with the screw missing.

So that this will not happen again, I got two bolts with washers, lock washers, and nuts, and attached the bracket to the fender flare. These won't come loose and fall out.

While I was working on the sewer hose tube I addressed another issue - the cap for the sewer tube. 

I have to get down on my hands and knees and push the sewer hose into the tube for storage. While pushing the hose into the tube I have to line up the tabs on the cap with those on the tube, and then twist the cap to lock in it place. In a nutshell - it is a pain. To help line up the tabs, a couple of years ago I painted a white arrow on the cap and tube to help make the alignment. 

There is never a lot of light under the camper to see. While the white arrow helped, as you can see in the picture above, the black paint on the tube bracket, which is white, is wearing off. This has made it more confounding to line up the cap. I painted the arrow yellow to see if this will help.

In the picture above it looks like the magnetic catch I installed years ago to help keep the cap from vibrating loose may need a little adjusting.

110 volt Problem in Homer:

This past Wednesday we were heading to Cuba, Missouri, to camp with my sister, Renee, and her husband, Jim, at their campground. The refrigerator in Homer is an RV refrigerator. They are different from a home refrigerator. They operate on electric or LP gas but have no compressor. It takes a long time to get these refrigerators to temperature. Because of this we turn it on at least twenty-four hours in advance. I plugged in the fridge Tuesday morning. I checked on it Tuesday night and it was cold so we loaded it with our food. Wednesday morning around 10:00 a.m. we would head to Cuba.

Getting ready to leave I went out to unplug Homer from the house. Before I did I went inside Homer I found that the electric was off. The voltage meter in the kitchen receptacle was black - no electric. I had electric at the receptacle on the house. I unplugged Homer and plugged him back in, no electric. I then started the generator. It started but no electric appeared on the voltage meter. Not good. I put the refrigerator on gas to keep the food cold and got to work looking for the problem.

I suspected something must have tripped when we lost electric briefly earlier in the morning. Since there was no electric from either the house plug nor from the generator, I suspected the transfer switch. The transfer switch is an electronic switch that makes sure you do not get electric from the generator and from the electric plug at the same time. 

I opened the transfer switch box and studied the diagram inside the box, which, of course, was mounted sideways. I disconnected the electric cord and the first set of wires coming into the box. Unfortunately at this point I didn't have the good sense to take a picture of the wires in the switch box before I disconnected them.

I wired them together in an attempt to bypass the switch. No electric. I disconnected those wires and connected the other set of wires, which appeared to be from the generator. It immediately tripped the house breaker. No electric.

I then opened the 110 volt electric panel and tried to find power there. No power. I popped out the main breaker and tested it for continuity. It appeared to be operating on and off correctly. I was now out of ideas and soaking wet with sweat from my efforts.

Kelly and I discussed the situation. If we went on our camping trip we would have no 110 volt AC - no air-conditioning, no outlets for fans, etc. The refrigerator would run on LP but would need 12 volt DC from the batteries for its circuit board. All of the lights are 12 volt DC and work off the batteries.

Homer has a built in battery charger but with no electric to the coach, it wouldn't charge the batteries. Three days of draw on the batteries would surely kill them. We would need an external battery charger to keep the batteries charged. I had an external battery charger. This would work. Kelly checked the weather and thought it would be cool enough for us to sleep at night without air-conditioning. We set off for Cuba.

Wednesday:

When we got to the campground I hooked up the battery charger by plugging it into the electric pedestal. Its fan did not come on. This was not right, the fan always comes on when charging. What are the chances that my battery charger wouldn’t work? Since I needed a working charger Jim drove me a couple of miles to Walmart where I bought a new charger. We brought it back to the campground and, upon getting ready to open up the box and hook it up, I noticed that the fan on the charger I brought was running and it was charging the batteries. At the time I didn't know what was up with that. We let it charge rather than hooking up the new charger.

The charger worked fine throughout the campout but it would periodically kick off and not come back on. I would have to unplug it and restart it for it to go into charging mode. It may engineered to operate that way, i.e. once the batteries are at full charge it shuts off, I don’t know. If that's how it operates it made sense that it wouldn't charge when we first got to the campground because the batteries were fully charged. I ran an extension cord through the window from the electric pedestal for a box fan to keep us cool while sleeping. We were comfortable andboth slept well.

Thursday:

We cooked a huge breakfast and enjoyed our morning coffee. It was a beautiful day so Renee and Kelly went to the pool to work on their tans. Jim and I just hung out at the campsite. We had a nice campfire in the evening. It cooled down in the evening such that we didn't even need the fan to sleep.

Friday:

After breakfast we took the new charger back to Walmart for a refund. I told the clerk there was nothing wrong with it, it had never even been opened, and showed her the sealed box. She said she had to open it anyway to make sure the charger was in there. She said people often take things out of the box, seal it back up, and return it for a refund. Really? I guess in their minds that is not stealing. Sad.

Friday evening daughter Annie and her family drove out for dinner from St. Louis. They are visiting in Missouri from California for the month and are currently staying in an AirBnB in St. Louis for a couple of weeks. We had a nice steak dinner with baked potatoes, corn on the cob, salad, and bread. Annie and Adam then left the granddaughters, Violet, age seven, and Wren, age four, to stay with us overnight. While Grandma and Renee took them swimming, Jim and I built a fire for making smores when they returned. We rarely make smores because Kelly and I don't care for them. The girls loved them. Here are a couple of pictures.

Wren wanted hers without the Graham Cracker on top so she needed Kelly's help eating it without getting melted chocolate all over herself.

Here is Wren looking at me saying "I ate the whole thing!" while Grandma was making her another.

Violet ate several smores, which is great, because the remaining ingredients will go to waste.

After the girls were finished eating smores they got a kick out of watching a marshmallow laying on a board in the fire burn to a black crisp. It took much longer than I would have guessed.

It was now bedtime. In Homer Kelly and I sleep over the cab. If you make the couch into a bed you can’t use the ladder to get up into the overhead bunk. A very poor design. We weren’t keen on putting the girls up in the bunk with us on the folded out couch. We decided to put Violet on the couch, not folded out, and make the table into a small bed for Wren. It worked out great. Kelly put them both down about 8:00 p.m. and told them they could talk for a while. Ten minutes later I went in to check on them and they were both out cold.

Annie warned us that Wren periodically wakes up during the night crying while she is still sleeping. Kelly and I weren’t asleep for an hour and Wren started crying and was sitting up in the bed. It was fun climbing down the ladder, getting her to lay back down to sleep, and then climbing back up. Two hours later, the same thing, three hours later, another incident. I was then sleeping soundly when about 3:00 a.m. Kelly woke me up saying she heard thunder. With that there was a major flash of lightning.

The car seats were outside, the girls' swimming suits were outside, and the windows were all open. As the rain started I went outside and brought in everything while Kelly closed the windows. I got back inside and saw that the batteries were depleting. I was using a CPAP on 12 volt so it pulled down the batteries as well as the refrigerator. I went out in the rain and found that the charger had once again shut itself off. I restarted it, pushed it under Homer to get it out of the rain, and rushed back inside. It rained hard for quite a while. We were glad we reacted when we did. We were able to sleep until 6:30 a.m. when Violet was up and raring to go. Wren quickly followed suit.

We all got dressed, teeth brushed, and headed to Renee's camper for breakfast. Renee and Jim had their awning out all night, which provided a dry area, but most of the chairs got wet anyway. We were able to dry off an area on the picnic table large enough for all of us to enjoy a nice breakfast.

We didn’t hang around long after breakfast because everything was wet and the campsite muddy. In Homer I put the table up, put the car seats in place, and buckled the girls in for the trip back to St. Louis. We met up with Annie and Adam around 12:30 p.m., dropped the girls off, and then headed home. The whole gang will all be at our house for the last week of June.

When I got home I messaged my friend Gary, who is a retired heating and air technician, for help on determining the AC issue in Homer. He readily agreed to look at it on Monday. This was great news because we have another campout next week and will definitely need AC by then I'm sure.

We unloaded the food and clothes from Homer. It was pleasant outside so I took some time to move things around in Homer’s storage compartments to make setting up Homer to camp a simpler process. Prior to going on this campout items were stored based on traveling more than staying in one place for a few days. While I did this Kelly did the laundry. We had weekend leftovers for supper and then we chilled out for the evening. I slept like a log Saturday night.

Sunday:

Sunday was truly a day of rest. After church the only thing I did was drill some holes in the yard to put in fertilizer sticks for the Elm trees, pull out the old Dish satellite pole for disposal, and work on this blog.

Monday:

Gary arrived in the afternoon to diagnose what was wrong with the electric in Homer. It was soon clear that I threw him a curve when I disconnected the wires in the transfer switch without taking a picture first. He studied it for a while and soon figured out where the wires should be reconnected. Knowledge and expertise is a great thing! We had power!

We then moved to the generator. It would not start. It would not even click. It wasn't getting power from the batteries. We opened up the battery compartment and found two fuses. The first checked good, the second didn't. We replaced the fuse with the closest replacement we had on hand. It fired right up and produced electric. Gary verified that the transfer switch was working properly. All is well for our campout next week. I appreciated his help and expertise immensely.

I made a trip to O'Reilly's to get the correct replacement fuse. The one that was bad was 5 amp; 250 volt, and numbered 313. O'Reilly's had a 5 amp; 250 volt, numbered 312. They had no idea if that was the same as a 313 so I decided to pass and see what I could out find on the internet. I came home and did a search and learned that the number 313 meant "slow blow". I'm glad I didn't buy the 312. I ordered a "five pack" of the correct ones from Amazon. They should be here in about three days. It will be easy to install and now I will have a spare or two.

Our campout next week is at Lake Shelbyville, Illinois, at a Corps of Engineers campground. We were there some years ago and are looking forward to going back.

Our hosts have a great week planned out.