October 25 - November 10, 2026 - Voltmeter Project - Campout at St. Francois State Park

My Blog Reflection

Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us that do.

I. Asimov

October 25, 2026:

There is a solenoid on Homer that when activated engages to have the converter charge the house batteries when he is plugged into electric. I have had trouble with this solenoid on several occasions over the years. A couple of years ago I purchased a new solenoid and it worked correctly for a while. Now, for whatever reason, sometimes it works and sometimes it does not. I have thumped this solenoid several times to no avail. (This is a legitimate fix with solenoids.) Sometimes they just get stuck, particularly if not used much like Homer.

A few days ago Homer was plugged in and I noticed the house batteries were not being charged. I unplugged Homer from electric and then plugged him back in and I heard the solenoid engage. Weird.  It should either work or not work.

The only way I can tell if this solenoid works is if I go inside and look at the battery meter or put a multimeter on the batteries. Upon plugging Homer into electric it is quite inconvenient to have to go in and out to see if the solenoid is working correctly. For convenience I decided to add a voltmeter in the outside electrical compartment. Here is a picture of the compartment which contains all of the solenoids, electrical connections, and the two house batteries. (The yellow thing laying in the picture is my flashlight.) There is not a lot of room to add anything in this compartment. While I know that batteries have to be vented, I have always been surprised that the electrical components are not in some way sealed off from road dirt, etc. In the following picture you can see the gap on the bottom and side of the batteries which is open to the road below. All of the electrical components are to the left of the batteries.

When I ordered a voltmeter for this project I wasn't thinking and did not order one with a switch on it. I do not want the meter to be on all of the time so I need to install a switch. 

When driving the coach there is another solenoid that should engage to charge the house batteries from the alternator. This also was not working on Homer so I purchased a new solenoid. With John's help a couple of months back I installed it. The new solenoid would work but it wasn't getting a signal to engage. After some fiddling John and I found that we could add a wire from this solenoid to the hot on the battery, essentially hot wiring it. I do not want this solenoid on all of the time because when camped it could pull down the chassis battery and then the engine wouldn't start. We installed a plug in the line. When I didn't want it working I would just unplug it. I immediately found the plug to be a problem and did not like the fact that when unplugged one end of the plug was still hot. I decided to replace the plug with a switch as part of this voltmeter install.

I purchased a shallow plastic house receptacle box to hold the voltmeter and two switches. It was a little too shallow so I glued on a spacer. I painted the entire box yellow because: a) I had some yellow paint and b) I wanted to be able to see the box in low light. I made the lid out of a scrap piece of masonite. Here is a picture of the box and lid while I wait for the paint to dry.

As I said, there is not a lot of room in the outside electrical compartment to add things. My initial plan was to mount the box on the compartment door, which swings down when opened. I immediately determined that this mounting was not going to work due to the long electrical wires that would have to fold back into the compartment when the door was closed. 

There are not a lot of options for mounting the box in the compartment. I ended up fashioning a bracket out of a piece of scrap metal I had on hand. This bracket allowed me to mount the box to the 1/4 inch x 1 1/2 inch metal strap on the top of the compartment. Drilling through this metal proved to be too much for me.  Alexa came by and drilled it for me. I just don't have any arm strength anymore.

I was now ready to make all of the electrical connections inside the yellow box. Installing the meter and its wires was a piece of cake. I had bought two cheap toggle switches, one for the voltmeter and one for the solenoid. When installing the first switch it literally fell apart in my hands. The switches were cheap and I guess I got what I paid for. 

I was able to find a replacement switch at Tractor Supply for twice the price. I purchased it and installed it with no issues. When when I went to tighten the connections on the second switch IT FLEW APART AS WELL! I knew I should have bought two switches. Back to Tractor Supply. Upon installing the second switch everything tested out fine. I then mounted the box bracket to the top of the compartment with a self-tapping bolt.  Here are a couple of pictures.

This two hour project took about eight hours total. LOL. This is par for many of my projects it seems. In any event it is up and running and an improvement to Homer.

November 5, 2026:

I don't remember ever camping in November before but on Thursday afternoon we headed in Homer to St. Francois State Park. We easily reserved a spot because not too many people were crazy enough to camp in the cold. We arrived at 3:00 pm and the sun was out so we built a nice fire with wood Alexa brought. 

It was warm enough to sit around the fire and enjoy it until almost dark. We then went in for a supper of Steak n Shake canned Chili. It hit the spot. We turned in early, around 7:30 pm. 

November 6, 2026:

We had a lazy, late breakfast. Alexa had to leave to go to work but before she did we took a ride through the new 50 amp, full hookup campsites they just put in this park which will be open this spring. They are quite nice but there are absolutely no trees nor a pavilion. Still it might be a good place to have an RV club campout next summer.

Early afternoon I put together a slow cooker recipe using pork blade steaks and potatoes. While it was cooking Kelly and I then took a nap. (Old people do that.)

After our nap we decided we could tolerate sitting around a campfire even though there was absolutely no sunshine and it was 53 degrees with a little wind. We built a fire and it was quite nice to sit around.

Several years ago I bought this little Lasko ceramic heater for Homer. 

We set the heater on the table and it did a great job keeping Homer comfortable during the day but needed a little help from the furnace at night. I wanted to exercise the furnace anyway. I found that the furnace thermostat may need adjusting or replacement. The room temperature on the thermostat does not jive with the room temperature we have. I'll have to look into that next spring.

My pork blade steak and potatoes came out great. We will have a second meal from it once home.

After supper I went to bed really early. I was cold and tired from doing nothing. LOL. We sleep above the cab and since heat rises, Kelly had gotten hot the night before. Tonight we moved the ceramic heater to the back of the rig. Around midnight we turned it off but around 3 pm we turned it back on. It was 31 degrees outside and campers aren't insulated very well believe me.

Saturday morning the sun came out, which was great. In the early afternoon with the bright sun engulfing us, we made a campfire. I got the last two big chunks of wood burning and just kept feeding it with the smaller stuff to keep it going. We burned every stick Alexa brought plus the kindling I brought and what we found. 

Around 4:00 p.m. we went in and soon after that had supper of microwaved "Pad Thai", which Kelly bought at Costco. She liked it. I ate it but I wouldn't want it again. After supper we challenged each other to a round of Boomer trivia. Before we started we agreed that Kelly would win so we wouldn't have to keep score. We bundled up for bed and had a good night's sleep. 

November 7, 2026:

I was up at six thirty. It was 32 degrees outside and 59 degrees in Homer. The furnace and ceramic heater were both turned on to warm me up since now I had no covers on me. It takes quite a while to warm Homer up. The only bad thing is all seating is next to the windows where it is the coldest.

November 8, 2026:

We headed home fairly early. It is sixty-six miles from our house to St. Francois State Park so we were home within an hour and half. Upon getting home we unloaded everything from Homer to prepare him for winterization. I have learned from experience over the years that I need to remove all food and anything that could possibly freeze. I drained the water heater and the hold tank in preparation for the winterization project when I can get to it. The rest of the day was for watching football.

Despite the cold we enjoyed the campout. Hopefully next summer will not be so hot and we can camp during the summer months., Time will tell.

November 9, 2026:

I spent most of the day helping to put up a garage door opener for Alexa. Alexa and Aaron did most of the work. I did most of the bossing. It is working but isn't quite finished. We will get back to it in a day or so.

November 10, 2026:

Driving home from walking at the Perry Park Center this morning I caught the odometer in my truck with this mileage.

I will never own another vehicle with this kind of mileage. While it is a lot of mileage, on a twenty year old truck that is only 11,311 miles per year.Keep on trucking my Toyota Tundra.