At the Factory

After living in Rover for three years, we were very happy with his storage and functionality. The nice thing about living full-time in an RV, you know what you like and what you don’t like. While watching Tiffin build R2, we noticed a few things we really wanted to have changed. Customer service is a top priority for Tiffin so they happily obliged making some modifications for us right at the factory.

Our first major ask invovled the pop-up “power tower” in the dining area. The tower contains power and usb outlets and pops up in the middle of the countertop to allow easy access the ports. It’s a good idea in theory, unfortunately the implementation leaves much to be desired. When the tower is closed, you can’t use the outlets so you have to be willing to plug and unplug your equipment as needed (we leave our laptops connected 24/7). Worse, when closed it does not sit flush with the countertop, making that space (where my laptop usually sits) unusable.

Before: power tower installed in dinette countertop.

We asked Tiffin if they could just pull out the tower and cover the hole, figuring my laptop would hide the patch. They far exceeded our expectations and the patch they placed was virtually invisible! They also added two small holes & grommets to the sides of the countertops so we can permanently run our own cables down to the outlets and keep them out of the way.

After: tower removed, hole patched, and new holes with grommets installed.

Another 40IH customer a few days behind us on the line had asked to lower the clothes rod in the back closet as she found it difficult to reach. Since the reinforcements to hold the rod can’t be moved, Tiffin instead added a shelf where the rod was, and attached the rod under the shelf. It worked out so well that we asked for the same modification. While the plant manager playfully stated, “You customers have to stop talking to each other!”, they made the change for us and it sounds like they are considering making that modification to all new 40IH coaches. We find that upper shelf is perfect for keeping our shoes out of the way. The lower rod means clothes in the back of the closet above the electrical cabinet have less space, but we bought some “Higher Hangers” which helps in that area.

Shelf installed in rear closet.

Last, our new wet bay is much smaller than our old one, and its cover extends almost all the way to the bottom of the bay, making it near impossible to get to the plumbing if there is a leak. I understand Tiffin does that to keep the wet bay looking neat but as we prefer it to be functional we asked them to cut off the bottom section of the metal cover. It’s now much easier to get to the pipes and connections, we can see our tanks to get a visual on our fresh water level, and it makes it much easier to install our See-Level tank sensors (see below). The guy who did the modification liked it so much he kept bringing his co-workers over to our rig to show them!

Before and after our wet-bay panel trimming

The Little Things:

After we moved into R2, I spent a fair bit of time grumbling about the weird storage spaces, towel rack/bar placements, and lack of time to organize the basement storage to my specifications (ya, I’m a little rigid about storage). Poor Mike had to listen to me mutter a lot until we had finally had time to make the changes.

Our back bathroom has two sinks (yay!) and the bathroom cabinet extends across the entire sink area (yay again!). Unfortunately the placement of the towel holders meant the cabinet doors opened only halfway (to a 45º angle) and stopped at the most inconvenient spot (i.e. right where I would knock my head into them EVERY.TIME). We removed and repositioned the holders to allow full access to the cabinet. We also raised the towel rack by the shower so our towels would actually hang from the bars instead of resting on the back of the toilet. Lastly, we added a towel ring in the mid-bathroom and moved the toilet paper holder since you had to be a contortionist to reach it.

Several towel holders moved to better locations.

While the majority of the coach has ceramic tile floors, the front slides are covered by carpet (including the cabinet under the sink). I’m not a clean cook, I drop things everywhere. That means the little strip of carpet in front of the kitchen would get gross quick and since we put our trash can and dog food into the sink cabinet, that carpet would get gross too. I bought some plastic carpet runner, cut it down to size and covered those areas, so now I can mess to my heart’s content. We also have carpeting under our dining area. Opie loves to lay under the dining area and since we also use it as our main area when working, that carpet becomes matted and dirty fast. In Rover, even with regular shampooing, it looked terrible after a couple of years. I didn’t want to carry the shampooer around for that little spot, plus I hated the way the carpet wore down so quickly, so I added more plastic runner in that area. Now it’s easy to broom away the mess and I no longer need the shampooer.

Some of the areas we’ve protected with plastic carpet runners.

Tiffin adds rear and side cameras for increased visibility when driving and changing lanes. When using our turn signals, the screen switches to the side view, but we’ve found that the side cameras provide very little benefit over our side convex mirrors. More importantly, the rear view is far more helpful to check whether there’s clearance behind our tow car when merging or changing lanes. In Rover, Mike modified the wiring and added a switch so we could turn the side views off. In R2, the camera monitor is configurable and has a setting to allow us to disable the turn signal triggers without cutting into any wires!

These triggers are connected to the turn signals, and normally enable the side camera views.

Aftermarket modifications:

Our first week in Rover we had Ultrabreeze vent covers installed by Camping World over two of our three Fantastic Fan vents. Now that we are more comfortable with working on our RV, we just bought the covers (on sale!) and installed them ourselves. It allows us to keep the vents open and fans running running even if it’s raining and it greatly reduces the chance of bugs being splattered by the spinning fan (a super-plus for me).

Before and after: Fantastic Fan Vent covers installed.

In the Open Road and Phaetons, the water, gray, and black tanks are monitored with three sensors so the tank readings are either 0, 33, 66, 100% which often makes it a (not so fun) guessing game when we’re close to the limit for our gray or black tank. Since we’re keeping R2 for a long time, I really really wanted the See-Level monitor. It allows much more granularity, reading in increments of 3% which means better visibility into the real level of each tank. The monitor is in the wet bay so we can see the levels when filling fresh, dumping, and flushing tanks. Inside the coach, our Spyder control panel shows the tank levels. Now I can see exactly how much one load of laundry takes and know our tank limits when we don’t have sewer connections (which is often).

Left: a new See-Level sensor strip installed; Right: accurate readings on the Spyder panel.

For Rover, we installed a hardwired Progressive surge protector but we heard that Progressive recently changed their policy so that hardwired units must be installed by a professional to qualify for their lifetime warranty. So instead, we opted to buy a portable Progressive protector that plugs into the campground pedestal. Our future plan will be to cut the power line inside of the coach, add outlets on the ends, and plug the portable unit in inside R2. That way we still have the warranty but don’t have to worry about portable unit growing legs and walking away.

Portable Progressive EMS plugged in.

Tiffin coaches come with one built-in water filter. In Rover we added a water softener as well as a second stage water filter. The first filter caught sediment, then the water passed through the water softener. The second filter was a finer carbon filter but only cold water passed through that filter (per Tiffin’s design). We wanted the same setup in our new coach but the wet bay is tiny in R2. There is no space for a second water filter or water softener. We’re holding off on the water softener for now, but we really wanted a second filter. The sediment filters are a lot cheaper than the carbon so we can change those out every 2 months and change the carbon every 6 months. Since we can’t install the second filter in any good spot, this one is just an ugly hack. We simply attached the filter to a hose outside of the coach. It does need to be removed, drained, and stored before every move but at least it does the job.

It ain’t pretty but at least we have two-stage water filtering now.

Lastly (and this is probably Mike’s favorite change), we bought CoachProxy for R2. This little box plugs into the RV’s network and lets us control our lights, thermostats, floor heat, fans, and monitor our tanks and batteries from our laptops and phones, from anywhere! If we’re out, we can monitor the interior temperature and turn on fans or AC/Heat to keep Opie comfortable. If the coach loses power, we can remotely start the generator as needed. CoachProxy also sends email notifications regarding tank levels and various other alerts. It’s pretty awesome and Mike will be posting more soon about the whole system regarding technical details, blah blah blah.

CoachProxy!

Organization is good for the soul:

R2 has some HUGE cabinets but we ended up with a lot of wasted (and very disorganized) space. While others have used pull outs and wire shelving to organize their space, we wanted the ability to adjust our shelving as needed. So I found metal shelving hardware online, bought some 3/4” plywood, and stain. Did lots of measuring, made Mike cut the plywood (saws and I do not get along well), stained, installed the hardware, and appeased my organization demon. I could finally take advantage of my mad Tetris skills to pack the cabinets full of stuff.

Before and after: cabinet above the passenger seat

Before and after: Double cabinet above the main sofa.

When the shelves were finally installed and I was happy with the inside of R2, I focused my attention on the mess we called the basement. Since we moved into R2 rather quickly, there wasn’t time for any semblance of order. With some time, I finally removed everything out of the basement and organized it to my satisfaction.

The basement has a lot of space, if you can use it efficiently.

Yes, we are probably the only ones who did not get the sliding trays added to our storage bays. While the trays make it more convenient to get to items, I did not want them for two reasons. The chassis rail passes right down the middle of the coach from front to back which lowers the usable storage quite a bit in the center. Since the sliding tray pulls out completely on either the DS or PS, you cannot place any items higher than the chassis rail or the tray won’t be able to slide out (see photo below). Without the tray, we can stack cargo much higher along both sides of the coach since we can stack higher than the rail. The sliding trays also (obviously) can only be as wide as the compartment opening, so with trays we’d lose some useful storage space in between the two trays (and under the trays). Since I need to use every square inch for my crafts… *cough cough* I mean our stuff…, I felt the sliding trays weren’t the right answer for me. Plus if we ever decide we want the trays, we can always install them at another time.

Basement close-up.

With all the changes we’ve made to R2, I’m really happy with how he’s been doing so far. With the organization complete, there is a lot more storage space than I originally realized, plus the spyder/coachproxy systems makes it easier for me to be lazy (eg don’t have to get off the couch to turn on lights or ac/heat). I have come to the realization that we were glamping in Rover. In R2, we’ve far surpassed glamping and gone straight to ludicrous….I love it.

Knowing that we had a firm trade-in offer, we decided to clean up Rover, take some pictures and videos, and put him up for sale. Mike put together a fancy “For Sale” page with photos, a video, and lots of details. But before we could even post Rover online, Facebook interfered: Susan and Ken on the Tiffin FB group were looking for a used 36LA to start full-timing. Another FB friend referred them to us and we started a conversation. Before we knew it, we had an offer on Rover! The best part was the flexibility of Susan and Ken. They were willing to wait a few months until we received our new rig and they would fly to Alabama to pick up Rover and drive it back home to Oregon.

They had bought airline tickets to dealership in Alabama based on when R2 was to be completed. Unfortunately due to the unexpected issues with our rear slide-out, our delivery was delayed by a week which means they were stuck in AL waiting for us. They were incredible and so patient during the whole process! They even came out one day to visit Rover in Red Bay while we were still waiting on R2. We were finally relieved when R2 was complete and we could complete the paperwork for R2 and Rover (I believe they were just as relieved/excited as we were!).

Susan and Ken are huge music fans (especially Beatles) and told us that Rover would be getting a name and sex change, Rover became Helen Wheels (Paul McCartney homage). We do keep in touch with them (and they have a black lab too) and so far Helen has been treating them really well! They love the full-time lifestyle and it’s fun to see their adventures.

Farewell Rover (Helen)!

After two days in R2 making sure everything was working ok, we were really ready to hit the road! The evening before, we decided to head to the dealership’s dump station so we could get an early start the next morning. We closed up all the slides, and then it happened: the problematic slide would come in most of the way, slow down for a fraction of a second, make a BANG sound, then come in the rest of the way. The dealer looked at the slide and decided they could not fix the problem and we would have to go back to Tiffin in Red Bay to get it fixed!

With no other choice, we packed everything up and our very first drive in R2 was back to the factory. Our salesman at Marlin Ingram called Tiffin right away to apprise them of the situation. Normally, after a coach is sold, any repairs are considered warranty work and are completed at the Tiffin service center. However, since this slide problem was an ongoing issue, Tiffin called us and told us to take R2 directly to the main plant the next morning. Apparently after the initial drive to the dealer, the slide must have settled a bit because when the slide was coming in, the back corner would drag on the floor and catch on the grout line between two floor tiles, then “jump” over the tile as it continued to close, causing the bang noise. Tiffin added a roller under the low side to guide it over the tiles and the slide was good to go. While we were frustrated at having to go back to Red bay, we were very happy how responsive Tiffin was to our problem and the quick resolution.

You’re not supposed to see a “sold” coach back at the factory!

Since we were back at Red Bay, we did head over to the service center to get a few more minor issues resolved. October is high season which means a swamped service center. Since new coaches get priority, we were able to get in after only waiting two days. The service center has a good reputation for repairing problems, but in our case, several of our repairs ended up causing additional issues! After adding foam tape to our front TV’s mount to stop some rattling, we found that the TV reported no signal from the DVD player. After replacing an electronic panel to troubleshoot a battery voltage issue, our front passenger-side slide no longer would close. And one of the electricians had shut off (and taped over) our Aqua-Hot water heater circuit breaker due to a misunderstanding about how the Aqua-Hot works. That night, we had no hot water and didn’t understand what the issue was, until Mike looked at the circuit panel and realize the circuit was off. Mike also re-seated the wires to the replaced electronics panel and our slide started working again. At this point we were tired and just wanted to leave… we didn’t want Tiffin to fix any other issues because we were afraid they might break something else! To be fair, the service center is usually good about fixing typical issues but when it’s something new or different (2018 Phaetons had some drastic changes), there is a learning curve and unfortunately we ended up being that learning curve. They did do a great job repairing our shower door which wouldn’t close straight, repaired a water leak in our mid bathroom, and replaced an air conditioner that vibrated loudly.

Lots and lots (and lots) of Tiffins waiting for service at the Service Center!

We decided that our remaining issues were minor and could be fixed another time. We packed up our stuff and left early the next morning. We were so anxious to leave Red Bay that we decided to push hard and make it back to DC in two days, starting with a 500 mile drive from Red Bay to southern Virginia. After six weeks in Alabama (almost all of it in Red Bay). I don’t think Mike and I have ever been so happy to leave a place! We arrived in Reston VA and got ourselves set up at Lake Fairfax County Park, our “home base” for visiting friends and family in the area.

Ahh, our first real campsite in R2.

Wait a sec… is that another Phaeton next to us? It is, and Sonya (and later, John) from Itinerant Life recognized R2 and came over to say “hi” to us. We love meeting fellow techie RV bloggers!

Our chassis and engine in the welding shop, about to receive basement frame welding

When we watched Rover being built three years ago, we only had 4 days to spare; that was enough time to see Rover go from a welded chassis to a functional motorhome but no time to see the paint, QA, and final repairs. This time we planned to watch the entire three-week build and follow the new coach to our dealership 200 miles away. We also had no RV last time, so we were driving in from Russellville (closest town with a hotel) every day to watch the progress. Since we had Rover now, we stayed in Red Bay at one of the many RV parks in town.

Tiffin has its own campground, free to owners either watching their build, or getting warranty work done. Since it is a couple miles away from the plant, we opted to stay at Downtown RV Park, right across the street from the plant. That way, we could easily walk back to our RV to grab lunch and take care of Opie, plus the RV park had a fenced backyard and open yard where dogs were welcome to play. About a week into our stay, we got new neighbors, Paul and Laura, with a fantastic golden retriever named Wyatt Burp (yes, his name is very apropos).

They were here for some regular maintenance on their Tiffin. They’ve been full-timing for over 9 years and still love it! Wyatt and Opie became best buds and had a playdate everyday (sometimes more than once). It’s great to watch dogs wrestling, tearing after one another, and just being goofy. Plus seeing Opie passed out for hours is definitely the icing on the cake. Friday night at Hometown Pizza with Paul and Laura fast became an enjoyable tradition for us. We really enjoyed their company, Opie really loved Wyatt, and sharing misery/happy stories is always lots of fun!

So many wires and pipes! Kathie takes a break in the cargo bay while waiting to enter the main factory.

When we were watching Rover’s build, we weren’t quite sure what we were seeing (being brand new to the world of RVs). While we took a lot of pictures, we didn’t know what was important and what wasn’t. This time, we knew what kinds of photos to take which is good since the Phaeton contains much more complicated wiring and more plumbing. While watching the build, we often muttered, “How in the world are we going to fix stuff if it breaks?!” since most of the wiring and plumbing is trapped between the floor and chassis. I’m SURE nothing will break. <grin>

Getting ready for base coat

Since we documented our experiences during Rover’s build, I’ll skip over that part to talk about the painting and rest of it. While people say nothing is quite as boring as watching paint dry, I found it to be quite riveting! Ok, not the drying part so much but the entire process of painting claimed my full attention.

Silver base coat complete; stripe masks being applied before next three colors

Tiffin puts on 3-4 coats of base paint, then place giant masking decals on the coach so they can add the next 3 colors in the right patterns and layers. When all is done, they peel off all the masks and underneath is the perfect paint scheme! After that it’s into the clear coat booth and the oven (twice each) to give it a shine.

Blue layer finished and masked; white being painted next

By this time, we finally came up with a name for our coach (with some help from friends). We loved the name Rover for so many reasons: ROVER = Ruthlessly Organized Vehicle for Exploratory Ramblings; NASA color scheme on our motorhome, Rover (def) – person who spends their time wandering, and lastly Rover is a good dog name. So we wanted to find another fitting name for our new rig.

Peeling back the masks to reveal the final paint pattern

We spent a lot of time looking at names of gods/goddesses of travel, NASA spacecraft names, and other ideas, but still couldn’t find anything that clicked so we just kept calling our new rig “Rover 2” as a temporary placeholder, until a friend of ours suggested “R2”.

Paint is finished, but it’s still missing something… the clear coat!

After the paint was completed, we realized R2 seemed even more appropriate since the colors are similar to our favorite little droid. So we officially named our new motorhome R2-LR (Rover 2 – Life Rebooted), R2 for short, as an homage to the best droid in the galaxy.

Wow, the clear coat makes a big difference!

The schedule we received from Tiffin stated our coach would be complete in 3 weeks but many folks were receiving theirs a few days early. We were hopeful that would be the case for us too. It would allow us to clean up Rover before his new owners came to pick him up at our dealer in AL. Alas, that was not to be. During the build, we noticed the back bedroom slide on the passenger slide wasn’t flush when closed. The front of the slide would stick out slightly while the back of the slide was tightly closed. When we pointed it out a few times, the response was the timing on the electric motor was off and would be fixed during final finish. Unfortunately with a crooked slide, Tiffin was unable to do a rain test (deluge the motorhome with water in every direction to look for leaks) since water would obviously leak into that slide. They postponed the rain test and sent us back to the main plant to get the motors re-timed properly.

Do you feel a draft?

In most cases, retiming the motors would fix the crooked slide but not for us (we like being special). The slide experts started to investigate further. They pulled out the plenum (the channel for all the wires/plumbing that enter the slide) to see if that was preventing the front end from closing properly. They replaced the rails and motors, and even added another steel roller to support the slide. Unfortunately the more Tiffin messed with the slide, the worse it got. By the end of day 3, the Tiffin folks were stumped and the slide was in pretty bad shape. The plant manager made the call to pull out the entire slide and replace it with a new one. Tiffin would build an entire new slide box, transfer all the furniture, wires, and plumbing and install the new box into R2 – all in one day! We were doubtful but by the end of day 4, R2 had a new functioning (albeit non-painted) back slide. That meant taking R2 back to the paint factory to get the slide painted to match the rest of the rig.

No one will notice that our slide’s been replaced… will they?

For Tiffin to complete 13 units/day, they have to stick with a very strict schedule. Unfortunately that means problematic rigs like ours fall off the production schedule and any work done on R2 has to be squeezed into overtime or spare spaces. Thankfully the paint plant manager understood our frustration and did everything to speed along the paint and QA process on R2, managing to finish the work within 3 days. Tiffin finally finished all the work and R2 was ready to ship to our dealer (albeit a week late).

Painting the new slide

We packed up all our things, said good-bye to our fabulous neighbors Paul, Laura, and Wyatt and chased R2 to the dealership in Montgomery.

Opie vs. Wyatt

In case you missed it, we’re upgrading to a new motorhome! In our last two blog posts we discussed what we’re doing and why, and how our new diesel chassis differs from Rover’s gas chassis. In this post we’ll talk about some of the ways our new house (the box we live in, sitting on top of the chassis) differs.

House

Probably the biggest difference in our new house will be more space inside. While we’re pretty comfortable in Rover, a little more breathing room will go a long way. Our new Phaeton will be four feet longer (41′ 4″ instead of 37′ 6″), but more importantly will have slide-out rooms on both sides, making the inside a couple feet wider. It may not sound like much, but when your house is eight feet wide, an extra two feet makes a big difference! Below are the floor plans for our new 40 IH Phaeton (top) and our current 36 LA Allegro (bottom):

New 40IH and old 36LA floorplans.

While those two slide-outs on the passenger side will cut into our outdoor campsite space, they provide some great indoor space. We also like some of the floor plan changes, such as having our dinette on the passenger side so we can see our campsite (rather than our neighbor’s campsite) while eating, and a more unified living room area in the front (which includes the swiveling front seats).

The extra space, and the ability to carry lots of additional weight, also translates into quite a few extra “luxury” amenities. While none are really necessary, we have to admit we’re looking forward to quite a few of them! We’ll soon have a king size bed (Opie takes up a lot of space), a dishwasher, separate clothes washer and dryer, a big kitchen pantry, a larger wardrobe, a pull-out kitchen counter extension, induction cooktop, and more.

2018 Tiffin Phaeton 40 IH main living area – catalog photo

We’ve learned over the years that in the summer an RV is basically a big solar oven that’s difficult to keep cool (though Yuma in July was probably an unfair test), and in the winter it can be drafty inside, with a very cold floor due to being up off the ground with cold air flowing underneath us. We’ll now have three air conditioners with three heat pumps (vs. two and one in Rover), a diesel-fired AquaHot hydronic heat system that also provides unlimited instant hot water (no more involuntary cold showers), and double-pane flush-mounted windows. Oh, and heated floors! Yep, now we’re really roughing it!

If you know me well, you know I have a thing for home automation. In our old “sticks and bricks” house we could control all our lights, thermostats, and music from a web page or iPhone. This is one area where RV technology has lagged far behind. Our thermostat in Rover is a bit of a dinosaur, and because RV HVAC systems work differently than normal homes, it’s not been possible to replace it with a Nest or similar “smart/programmable” thermostat. That’s why I’m really excited that the 2018 Phaetons have a new in-wall touch screen system that can control practically everything in the coach! Here’s a look at our current thermostat (top) and the Phaeton’s new HVAC controls (bottom):

Now that’s an upgrade!

The touchscreen can control the lights (which are now dimmable), fans, water pump, generator, slide-outs, electrical system, and more. Best of all, some clever Tiffin owners have built a small device called CoachProxy to tap into this control system and provide WiFi access, remote access via cell phone, and programmability. I can’t wait to get my hands on it to start automating! Here’s a look at the touch screen showing the Phaeton’s electrical system monitoring and management:

Monitoring and controlling the RV electrical systems.

All this extra technology does come at a cost – increased electrical consumption. Fortunately, the Phaeton’s house battery bank is much heftier than Rover’s: 900 amp-hours (Ah) of AGM batteries, vs. 400 Ah of flooded batteries in Rover. In real-world usage that’s three times the capacity, since we can safely draw the AGM batteries down further than the flooded batteries, which we try to never draw below 50%. We also ordered an upgraded solar pre-wire package from Tiffin so we’ll have nice heavy solar wiring from the roof to the battery compartment for when we decide to add solar panels again.

Of course, one of the most important (and toughest) decisions is always what color to get! Typically each model RV only comes in eight or so different color schemes, where each scheme comprises four different colors arranged in swirls and swoops. When we ordered Rover in 2013 we got a tip that there was a secret “unpublished” color scheme called “NASA” which was monochrome. Since nearly every motorhome we had seen was a combination of brown and gold, we opted for NASA. Fast forward to 2018 and NASA is an official color scheme and we see monochrome motorhomes everywhere now!

Tiffin’s wall of color schemes

For the 2018 Phaeton, there were two color schemes that we liked: Maroon Coral and White Mahogany, which is pictured at the top of this blog post. But while we were visiting the Tiffin paint factory we spotted an Allegro Bus (a higher-end motorhome than the Phaeton) with a beautiful deep blue stripe across it. We haven’t really seen any blue in motorhomes before, with reds, browns, and golds still being in almost every scheme, so it really caught our eye.

The elusive Pacific Blue color on an Allegro Bus.

None of the Phaeton color schemes have any blue in them, but we spent some time at the paint shop office and they helped us design a custom color scheme for our rig (for a fee, of course) using white, silver, blue, and grey. Unfortunately, their printouts really look nothing like the final product (there’s only so much a color laser printer can do), so we expect our new rig to look quite a bit better than the printout from the paint shop, below:

A poor representation of our future paint scheme

To try and get a better feel for it, I took a Phaeton render from the Tiffin web site and tried to “photoshop” our two color changes onto it (below). I think it’s a bit closer to reality, but we won’t know how it will really look until it’s done. We’re taking a bit of a risk, but hoping it works out for the best! Either way, we’ll have a unique color scheme and will never “pass ourselves” going down the highway…

My attempt to mock up the final result in a paint program.

We’re really looking forward to watching our build in September! When we watched Rover’s build in early 2014 we often had no idea what we were looking at or what to pay attention to, being new to RVs and motorhomes. This time around with all our experience living, driving, customizing, and repairing Rover, we think we’ll get a lot more out of the build process. Plus, instead of only having three days in Alabama we’ll be there for three weeks and will see far more of the process, including the chassis, painting, and final inspections and quality checks.

Check back in with us in September for progress on our build. Hopefully by then we’ll also have chosen a name for our new traveling companion!

Note: “Roughing it… smoothly” is Tiffin’s corporate motto.

If you read our last blog post, you know that we’re in the process of upgrading to a new motorhome! While our upcoming Tiffin Phaeton has DNA in common with our current Tiffin Allegro, there’s quite a lot that’s different. These differences fall into two main categories: the engine & chassis (the stuff that moves us around), and the house (the box we live in). In this article we’ll talk about the some of the engine and chassis differences.

Engine and Chassis

There are two conflicting sentiments in the RV community about diesel motorhomes. One says: “You drive your motorhome 10% of the time, and live in it (parked) 90% of the time, so don’t waste money on a diesel engine and chassis that only benefits you 10% of the time.” The other sentiment says: “Don’t test-drive a diesel motorhome unless you’re prepared to buy one.”

When shopping for our first motorhome in late 2013 we avoided any opportunities to drive a diesel pusher. We’d been told over and over that the difference is like night and day, and we’d never be satisfied with a gas rig if we’d driven a diesel. Well, we’ll soon have a chance to put that assertion to the test!

Tiffin PowerGlide Chassis

Rover is built on a Ford F53 chassis with a Ford V10 gas engine in the front. Think of him as a really long and fancy U-Haul truck! He’s never failed to get us over a mountain or across the country, but he doesn’t always do it in comfort. With the big engine roaring right in front of us it can be hard to carry on a conversation while climbing hills. With all his weight resting on springs, the ride can be bouncy and jarring. With a zero-to-sixty time measured in decades (slight exaggeration), it can be stressful merging onto busy highways. His chassis is rated for a maximum of 24,000 lbs. but he weighs almost 21,000 lbs. completely empty, so we can only carry 3,000 lbs. of “stuff” with us. That sounds like plenty until you consider that a full tank of water weighs 650 lbs., a full tank of propane weighs 80 lbs., Opie weighs 80 lbs., and Kathie and I weigh <REDACTED>! We’ve gotten weighed a few times and we’re usually close to our limit. Below we weighed in at 23,500 lbs., and that was with a mostly-empty fresh water tank:

Does my tow car make me look fat?

The Phaeton is a “diesel pusher”: diesel because of the engine type, and pusher because the engine is in the rear, not the front. While most diesel motorhome chassis are made by Freightliner, ours (called a PowerGlide chassis) is custom made by Tiffin for a subset of their motorhomes. This lets them integrate the design of the house and chassis to provide a better overall solution vs. working around a 3rd party chassis design. The PowerGlide chassis provides taller and more spacious basement cargo compartments, an independent front suspension, improved electrical wiring, and more.

The front of a Tiffin PowerGlide chassis.

The Cummins L9 turbodiesel engine in our new rig will provide 1,150 ft-lbs of torque (vs. Rover’s 420 ft-lbs) for better acceleration, easier mountain climbing, and includes a significantly better Allison 3000 transmission. Air brakes and the two-stage compression brake easily keep speeds under control while descending big mountains. The air suspension is reportedly much more comfortable than springs, and with the engine in the back, it’s essentially inaudible from the cockpit. And while the diesel chassis weighs a ton more (6 tons more, actually), it can also carry a lot more weight. Our new cargo carrying capacity will be 6,000 lbs., double Rover’s. Now, whether to fill that extra capacity with 3,000 lbs. of Coke (me), fabric (Kat), or treats (Opie) remains an open question.

Bright red makes it go faster!

There are a lot of other benefits, some big (for us), some small. For example, buying fuel will be much easier now… no more checking Google satellite view for every single gas station to find one that we can fit into! With Rover’s fuel fill on the rear cap, 38′ behind the front of the rig, we’ve found plenty of gas stations that we’d not be able to fit into, or at least wouldn’t be able to get out of once we filled up (since we tow our car, we can’t back up to get out). To pull up to the pump, our nose would be through the store’s window or we’d be blocking the whole parking lot. From now on it’s the big rig diesel truck lanes at Flying J truck stops!

When getting fuel, Rover’s nose is 38′ in front of the pump

We expect the diesel rig to get at least 25% better fuel economy, but diesel gas is often 10-15% more expensive, and now we need to buy DEF (Diesel Exhaust Fluid) to neutralize our emissions, so we expect fuel costs to be a wash. Oh, but don’t forget the air horns – actually, that’s the only reason we’re upgrading. All shall hear our air horns and despair!

What could possibly go wrong?

Pretty much the only disadvantage (and it’s a big one) for a diesel chassis is the cost. Apart from the much higher initial purchase price, annual maintenance will be higher as well. We’ve gotten spoiled paying $125 twice a year (i.e. $250/year) for oil and filter changes (7 quarts) and chassis lube. I’ve been told we should plan for $600-$1,000 for our annual diesel engine service, including a 24-quart oil change (gulp!) and various filter replacements. Then every few years the additional required services are even more expensive.

Coming up in our next blog post, a look at our new floor plan and some of the many improvements to the house we’ll be living in for the foreseeable future!

Part 3 – Roughing it… Even More Smoothly

Just a block away from our dentist’s office.

Since these last appointments involved just adding a crown to the implant, we were finally able to eat some street food in Los Algodones. Every time we’ve been here, I’ve been so hopped up on Novocain that unless I wanted to lose my tongue or lips to chewing, food was out of the question. We stopped at a nearby taco stand and it was worth the wait. Four Mexican-style (cilantro, onions, avocado, salsa) soft tacos with carne asada, and a bottle of Mexican coke (sugar, not corn syrup) cost less than $6 and had us coming back to visit a few days later for more.

Lunch in Mexico!

We stayed at a typical RV park close to the highway with little opportunity for Opie to play so we visited the Yuma Bark Park multiple times. The dog park has a lot of grass, a concrete walkway and water available, plus there were always dogs there in the afternoons and evenings. Opie had a grand time and made friends (actually he tried to be really good friends) with a young golden retriever, Gohan, who we saw a few times. Between the playing, chasing ball, and wrestling, we were able to expend a fair bit of Opie’s energy.

Opie enjoying the Yuma Bark Park.

We left Yuma and headed back to Tucson since Mike planned ahead and snagged an 11-night stay at Catalina back in October. Back in Catalina, we were able to give Opie much longer walks through the park. Surprisingly there was still a little bit of water left in Sutherland Wash from the recent rains and Opie took full-advantage of what was left. Opie’s superpower is the ability to get completely soaked in less than 3 inches of water and he uses this power as often as possible.

Since we had a fair bit of time in Catalina, we were able to deal with the down and dirty side (literally) of being full-timers. Folks we meet on the road often tell us how awesome and amazing our life seems and most of the time we agree with them but every once in a while it’s not so glamorous. Since we’re always on the move, when something breaks we usually can’t just bring our house in for repairs. There’s a lot of google-ing and youtube-ing involved as a full-time RVer! A few things had been causing some minor issues in Rover, but we were unable to get the right parts until we landed in Tucson. A friend’s mother was happy to receive packages for us so we had been sending them her way and were finally able to get started on our repairs.

Back in Texas, we noticed that our toilet would sometimes lose water. It didn’t happen often, but a dry toilet is not normal and indicates that the seals are no longer working properly. We ordered some new seals for our specific toilet and finally got down to replacing them. Originally we had only planned to replace two seals (one between the toilet and floor opening and the toilet gasket seal) but the kit came with 4 of them and directions so we figured we should replace all of them. I did take photos during the work but after I saw them, I realized that absolutely no one wants to be exposed to that kind of yuck. You’ll just have to believe we did the replacement, without any visual aids. It isn’t a difficult job and the directions provided in the kit were good so it only took us about an hour to complete the work.

Tow bar rust, before and after.

After three years of full-timing, our tow hitch on Rover and Red were looking a bit ragged. A lot of paint was flaking off and rust was building up on both hitches. Plus the electrical tow connector on Red had always had a loose pin, so sometimes our brake lights and turn signals in the car wouldn’t sync with Rover’s while we were towing. Mike replaced the electrical wiring harness while I cleaned up the rust and repainted the hitches. My original thought was to sand off the rust and repaint, but with all the cracks and crevices, it was near impossible to remove all the rust so I went with an easier option, the rust neutralizer. Rust neutralizer reacts with rust and changes it into a neutral compound which you can then paint over. You do need to scrape off any loose rust and paint, and clean the area of all dirt and grease before using the stuff but it’s a lot easier than sanding down to the metal. After the neutralizer dries, then I just used some Rustoleum as a topcoat. I’m cautiously optimistic but I’m also realistic that the constant friction between the tow hitches will probably strip the paint and cause it to rust again.

Car baseplate rust, before and after (and new electrical connector).

Driving Rover, it’s always been a little challenging when we need to change lanes or merge with traffic. We’re 55-feet long including Red, our tow car, and since Rover is wider than Red, Red doesn’t show up in either of our side-view mirrors. Figuring out when it’s safe to change lanes takes a lot of practice. Luckily, Rover has rear and side cameras to help with visibility. While driving, the dashboard video screen shows the rear view and we can easily see Red behind us and the spacing of the cars around us. But when we use our turn signals, the video changes to the side view to help you see if there are any cars next to you. Since our side mirrors already show almost the exact same view as the side cameras, we find the rear view to be much more helpful. So, Mike bought a switch and did his handyman thing to hook it up to the various camera wires. Now if we want to disable the side cameras, we just flip the switch and the rear view will stay on screen even when we use our turn signals. If we need the side cameras, we flip the switch back and everything is back to normal. It’s brilliant and makes changing lanes and merging so much easier!

Our new side-camera on/off switch.

Lastly we had one unscheduled fix while in Tucson. One day our water pump would no longer shut off even if we weren’t using any water. I immediately panicked and thought we had a water leak somewhere so I’m running around/inside the coach with a flashlight looking at all the pipes and hoping that I don’t find puddles of water anywhere. No leaks, no water puddles but the water pump still wouldn’t shut off. We tried lots of troubleshooting steps, each getting more and more drastic. Eventually we removed the pump entirely and hooked it up to a hose in a bucket of water, and it still wouldn’t shut off. At least that told us the problem wasn’t with anything in the RV, it had to be the pump. I figured the diaphragm inside the pump must be damaged and it was time for a new pump. However Mike, with his google-fu and engineering/analytical mind, was able to track down the heart of the problem.

Our water pump, removed for troubleshooting.

From the pump’s instruction manual we learned that it has two adjustable settings (see yellow arrows in photo above). One is the pressure shut-off switch, normally set to 55 PSI. Once the water lines reaches that pressure, the pump shuts off. Usually this happens after you turn off the faucets and the pump finishes building pressure back in the water lines. If you turn on a faucet, the pressure drops, and the pump turns back on. The other switch sets the bypass pressure range, which was something we weren’t previously aware of. The bypass lets some water circulate within the pump, rather than being pumped through the pipes. This is done to prevent the pump from turning on and off a lot when you’re using just a little bit of water. If you’re using a lot of water (like taking a shower), the pump will run continuously and everything’s fine. But with a faucet on just a little (say, brushing your teeth), the pressure would drop a bit, the pump would turn on, but a second later it would reach 55 PSI and would turn off again, over and over. Instead of a steady stream of water from the faucet, you’d have alternating high pressure and low pressure as the pump turns on and off. The bypass lets some water flow within the pump so that it doesn’t reach 55 PSI and doesn’t shut off until you turn off the faucet, so you get a nice steady stream of water.

The instruction manual mentioned that if the bypass pressure is set below the shut-off pressure, the pump will never shut off since it’ll never reach the shut-off pressure! To see if this could be our problem, Mike started adjusting the two screws (there are no gauges, he just has to turn each screw a bit and see what happens). Eventually he got to a point where everything was working normally again, which means no new water pump for us!

Meeting up with Steve and Mona Liza for lunch in Tucson.

Between all our chores, we were lucky enough to meet up with some old friends. A couple of years ago, we met up with Connie and Lisa and their super-cute dog, Pepper. This year they were in Catalina for a few days overlapping our stay, so we were able to meet up again and hang out while they were testing their new solar panels and lithium battery system. I’m pretty sure Mike left a trail of drool while admiring their systems (1800+ watts of solar and 900+ Ah of lithium batteries). They have enough power to run one air conditioner just from battery, which is pretty unusual for an RV! We also had lunch with Mona Lisa and Steve of Lowe’s Travels to catch up since we met them at Bryce Canyon last year. After three years full-timing we’ve hit that tipping point where we’re regularly re-meeting friends on the road which has been great for us!

Since our house issues have been resolved (for now), hopefully that means we’ll do more of the fun stuff in Phoenix and Sedona!

Coyotes were frequently stalking through the campground at Catalina State Park.

Source of the water leak.

After pulling into our site, we went to hook up our water and saw that the wet bay was flooded with water dripping from one of the PEX connections at a plastic elbow (photo, above). Due to the positioning of the blue pipe, the elbow has been under constant stress and could finally no longer hold a proper seal. We’d need to cut out the bad section and replace it, while relieving the stress.

After searching Lowes and Home Depot and not finding much of a PEX selection to choose from, we bought a pipe cutter, a one-foot PEX “push-to-fit” flexible pipe, and a push-to-fit removal tool.

PEX piping repair supplies.

The PEX pipes are clamped onto the elbow with copper crimp rings that require a special (expensive) tool to remove, so we just used the pipe cutter to removed the bad section entirely:

Bad elbow section removed with pipe cutter.

Attaching the new flexible pipe in place of the elbow was simple. There are quite a few different types of PEX connectors, and the “push-to-fit” we bought just gets pushed over the end of the PEX pipe and the connection is made! Pulling back only tightens it… you need a special removal tool to disconnect the pipe in the future. We wrapped one end with a blue paper towel to check for leaks. After 12 hours with no leaks, we considered the new flexible hose to be a success. The finished product (photo, below) is working perfectly.

New flexible pipe section installed in place of elbow.

A few days later while up on Rover’s roof we noticed that where the fiberglass roof meets the passenger’s side wall, the paint was bubbling, peeling, and in some places badly deteriorated (photo, below). We did quite a bit of research online, and took a look at our photos from when Rover was built, and came up with a repair plan.

Caulk and paint peeling where the RV side wall meets the roof.

The deteriorated paint is along a metal strip (which also acts as a rain gutter) covering where the two sections of fiberglass meet up, and extends the length of the RV. The metal strip was glued on with adhesive, screwed into place, painted and caulk was used on top. The paint began bubbling away from the adhesive and over time the weather caused the paint to dry and crack away from the fiberglass.

Using a screwdriver and knife we scraped off as much of the cracked and bubbled paint as possible (left side of photo, below). Since we had to remove the paint, we couldn’t use clear silicone due to the visible white fiberglass. Instead,we purchased some black Permatex silicone adhesive sealant at a local auto parts store and installed a bead of the new silicone sealant (right side of photo). It looks great and so far seems to be working well. Unfortunately the driver’s side of Rover is showing the same symptoms of bubbling paint (silicone caulk is healthy) but the paint hasn’t dried and cracked yet. We’ll need to keep an eye on it and repeat the same routine once we start seeing problems.

Paint and caulk stripped off, new sealant installed.

The next problem we ran into was ANTS! We had read several reviews of this campground before reserving, and some had cautioned about ants, but others said it wasn’t a problem. Maybe it depends on the time of year, but in any case we had ants all over our site and eventually they started making their way inside. Yuck! To get a feel for how many ants live in the camp sites, here’s a photo of our water post one morning:

Ants, ants, ants on the water pedestal.

To keep the ants out we purchased food-grade diatomaceous earth and sprinkled it around every part of the RV that touched the ground. The powder stops ants and prevents them from building trails across the line. There were quite a few other RVs that already had white outlines around their tires, jacks, etc. so we joined the club. It was a constant battle (both inside and out) and made us question whether or not we’d return to this otherwise nice campground (drone photo, top of page).

Diatomaceous Earth sprinkled around everything that touches the ground.

After many more trips to the dog beach we left the wonderful San Diego weather and headed back to Yuma to complete Kathie’s dental work. The temperature in Yuma, as expected, was around 115°F during the day and in the high 80’s at night. The weather made it a pretty unpleasant week, especially for Opie, so we won’t dwell on it here! Saying good-bye to Yuma we started day one of our two-day trip to Colorado.

Temperatures dropped quickly once we got close to Flagstaff.

Most of our seven-hour drive north was incredibly hot, but once we were well north of Phoenix and approaching Flagstaff the outside temperatures finally started dropping. The photo above is a screenshot of a weather app showing the current temperatures during our drive. The black line is our route north on I-17. From Camp Verde to Flagstaff (around 50 miles) the temperature dropped from 113° to around 70°! We could finally turn off the air conditioners and open some windows. Flagstaff’s high altitude makes it a pleasant oasis during hot Arizona summers.

Unfortunately, during the drive our kitchen countertop came apart! The back half of the recessed propane cooktop separated from the main countertop:

Before: recessed cooktop separated from main countertop.

We had seen a small gap in the back for a while, but during our drive it separated completely. We noticed it during our lunch stop so we removed the cabinet drawers and propped up the cooktop with a cardboard box for the rest of the drive. Once in Flagstaff we took a closer look and found that the recessed counter was glued to the bottom of the main counter, with nothing else supporting it underneath. Once in Flagstaff we headed right out to Home Depot to get some supplies: a 1×2 board, screws, and some epoxy.

Repair: wood support blocks installed.

We scraped off all the remaining glue, cleaned the area, and used epoxy to re-glue the countertop into place. We also cut some small blocks out of the 1×2 board and screwed them into existing support posts under the cooktop. The cooktop now rests on these new wood blocks (one on each side) in addition to being glued back in place, so hopefully this problem is solved permanently. The final product looks as good as new:

After: countertop glued in place with support blocks.

With our emergency repair complete, we finally relaxed after our long drive, and prepared for the rest of our drive to Colorado the next day.

Every RV’er knows that minor repairs are pretty much a constant, especially when living full-time in the RV and driving to new locations frequently. Every time we drive, it’s as if our house is in a five-hour long earthquake, and some things eventually go wrong. We’re glad that almost every problem we’ve had so far has been relatively minor, and that we’ve been able to fix them ourselves. It’s reassuring to see that our handyman skills are getting better all the time!

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What’s an Inverter/Charger?

This nifty device hooks up to the battery bank and serves two purposes. First is the “inverter” feature. If we’re not plugged in to “shore power” at an RV park (and our gasoline-powered generator isn’t running), the inverter takes 12 volt power from the batteries and turns it into normal household 120 volt power for appliances like our refrigerator, toaster, microwave, laptops, TVs, Xbox, etc. Since Rover has a regular household “residential-style” refrigerator, it needs 120 volt electricity to operate, unlike many other RVs that have refrigerators that can run on propane. The “charger” feature does the opposite of the inverter: when we are connected to shore power or our generator is running, the charger converts the 120 volt electricity into 12 volt and uses it to recharge our batteries.

Rover came with a decent inverter installed during construction, a Tripp Lite RV1250. It could output 1,250 watts of continuous 120 volt “modified sine wave” current (and up to 1,875 watts surge current for up to an hour) and the charger could recharge our 12 volt batteries at a rate of 55 amps. But what do those numbers really mean?

Let’s look at the 1,250 watts from the inverter first. Watts are simply volts multiplied by amps. For example. our toaster oven operates at 120 volts (like most appliances) and consumes around 13 amps while it’s running, so that means it uses 1,560 watts of power (120 x 13). Since our inverter could provide 1,875 watts in its “burst” mode, we could operate our toaster oven with our current inverter… as long as almost everything else is turned off.

Now let’s look at the 55 amp charger and what that means. In one hour, a 55 amp charger will add 55 amp-hours of charge back to the batteries. Rover has a 430 amp-hour battery bank, so if our batteries are at 50%, it means we’ve used up 215 amp-hours and have 215 amp-hours left (side note: since it’s bad for lead acid batteries to be discharged more than 50%, we’d never actually use those remaining 215 amp-hours). If we started our generator and let it run for one hour, the charger would put 55 amp-hours back into the batteries, bringing the batteries up to around 63% full, or 270 amp-hours of power available.

Why We Upgraded Our Inverter

For our upgrade we chose to install a Magnum MS2000. It outputs 2,000 watts of continuous “pure sine wave” power (2,800 watts of surge current for up to five minutes) and has a 100 amp charger.

The higher inverter output means we can safely run more appliances at the same time. From the factory, Rover’s inverter only supplied power to our refrigerator, two TVs, and one wall outlet. When we installed the new inverter, we added the rest of our wall outlets, our kitchen GFCI outlets, and our microwave to the inverter! The 100 amp charger means running our generator can charge our batteries almost twice as fast, bringing them from 50% to 73% in the example above instead of just to 63%. When boondocking, this means we only have to run our generator for about half as long when recharging our batteries.

The other difference between the inverters is “pure sine wave” vs. “modified sine/square wave”. 120 volt alternating current (AC) is normally a smooth curve (red line, below) where the voltage and current gradually increases and decreases, reversing direction from positive to negative. It’s difficult (i.e. expensive) for a small consumer inverter to create this smooth curve. It’s much easier to create a “square wave”, where the voltage and current just alternate between positive and negative (green line, below) but this isn’t what’s needed to run appliances. Instead, many inverters create what’s called a “modified sine wave” or “modified square wave” (blue line, below). Instead of a smooth curve, the voltage increases and decreases in small intervals, approximating the shape of the sine wave.

Sine, square, and modified square/sine waves.

This is good enough to run many 120 volt appliances, but some sensitive electronics don’t work properly with a modified square wave current. For example, our microwave oven requires a pure sine wave, so we couldn’t use it while boondocking until we installed the new inverter.

The Install Process

For our inverter upgrade we got some professional help from Eddie of Mobile Homestead Solar Services. We met up with him in the California desert near Yuma Arizona and spent a couple days getting everything set up.

Since our new inverter could handle significantly more power than the old one, it unfortunately meant we’d have to replace all the existing inverter wiring as well: transmitting more amps and watts requires thicker wires. Since the inverter/charger is a bridge between the RV’s 12 volt and 120 volt systems, it needs to connect to both systems, and both sets of wires needed to be upgraded.

We decided to place the new inverter in the storage bay where we installed our solar controller. That would place it much closer to the batteries than the old inverter, saving us a lot of money on 12 volt wire, and making for more efficient operation. It would also make the 120 volt wiring run a little shorter and easier as well.

Our 120 volt electrical panel is in our bedroom, near the rear of the RV. We’d need to run two sets of 10-gauge wire from there to the inverter near the front of the RV. Fortunately, there’s a wiring channel behind the wall along that side of the RV, and while it would be tricky, we knew we could make it work. The red line in the floor plan below shows where we would be running the 120 volt wire, from the bedroom on the left to the kitchen on the right, just above the storage bay where the inverter would be installed:

Floorplan showing our new 120 volt wiring run in red.

In the bedroom we started fishing the thick cables behind the wall after removing some dresser drawers to get access to the existing wiring channel. The electrical panel these will hook into is visible on the right in the photo below:

Starting the 120V wiring run in the bedroom.

We had a pretty long “blind spot” behind the bathroom and the refrigerator where we couldn’t access the wires, so we had to do lots of wiggling and guessing and shoving (and maybe a little cursing), but eventually the wires emerged in the kitchen! We drilled a hole through the floor behind the kitchen cabinets into the storage bay below, and ran the wires down. We also replaced the 20 amp circuit breakers in the bedroom with 30 amp breakers, since the new inverter and thicker 10 gauge wires could support so much more current.

Work in progress!

Next we worked on the 12 volt wiring. Eddie cleaned up and simplified some of the wiring I had done for the solar controller install, moving the battery monitor shunt out of the battery compartment and installing it in the storage bay with our other components. This and a few other tweaks made the battery wiring runs as short as possible, which is important for reducing resistance in the wires. We used 2/0 gauge cable from the inverter to the batteries, which is surprisingly thick (and expensive) wire. If the inverter were further away we would have needed 4/0 cable, the largest (and most expensive) available. When all was done, we had a very clean and functional install (see photo, top of page) although we did lose some space in our front storage compartment:

The completed inverter installation.

The last step was setting up the ME-ARC remote control panel for the inverter. Like our solar controller, we installed the Magnum control panel in the kitchen at the top of our growing stack of gadgets:

The new Magnum ARC panel at the top of the stack.

The Magnum control panel lets us turn the inverter or charger on and off, configure the charging profile, monitor the inverter or charger output, and much more. Combined with the BlueSky solar controller and battery monitor just beneath it, we have much more insight into (and control over) Rover’s electrical systems.

Our kitchen is starting to look a little hi-tech!

With all the boondocking we’ve been doing so far this winter, we’ve been able to give the solar panels and inverter a pretty good work-out. It’s been great to be able to use things like the microwave and to have all our wall and kitchen outlets working while on battery power. We run our generator for far less time than we used to, usually just for 45 minutes in the morning to give the batteries a big boost before the solar charger takes over for the rest of the day. We’re loving the extra freedom our new setup gives us, especially here in the southwest deserts where there are so many places we can spend time without checking into an RV park!

Boondocking with Eddie and Ray near the American Girl Mine in Winterhaven CA.

Given the large amount of work involved in the project, I broke our solar install into a few different parts:

1. Route the solar wires from Rover’s roof down to a storage compartment near the battery bank.
2. Mount the solar panels on the roof and connect them to the aforementioned roof wires.
3. Install the battery monitor and solar remote panel in the kitchen and route the wires to the storage compartment.
4. Mount the solar controller, breaker, and switch in the compartment we ran the roof wire to.
5. Connect the solar controller and battery monitor to the existing battery bank.

Unlike some of our other DIY blog posts, this one will be a bit more “high level”, showing what we did in general but not necessarily detailing every single step. Since every RV is different, our steps probably won’t work for everyone, and would make this article extraordinarily long! Hopefully the overview will provide enough detail to help other DIYers get started on their own installs.

Part of “The Plan”

1. Route Wires From Roof

Even though this turned out to be one of the less time-consuming steps, it was the one that gave us the most anxiety. Drilling a hole in Rover’s roof was one of those “measure 15 times, cut once” moments. Since our refrigerator is in a floor-to-ceiling cabinet with access to a wire run along the side of the RV, we decided to try to drop a wire down from the roof next to the refrigerator.

Fortunately we had photos and videos from our visit to watch Rover being built which turned out to be immensely helpful. We were able to figure out that even though we didn’t have a propane refrigerator, Tiffin still installed a vent duct (see blue arrow in photo below) in the insulation above the refrigerator for one—they just didn’t cut through the roof or install a roof vent:

Rover’s roof construction

By drilling through the roof in the right spot, we avoided hitting any wires or metal plating, and didn’t have to drill through a few inches of styrofoam insulation. It was a bit nerve-racking, but our hole was as close to perfectly placed as we could have hoped for:

After a nerve-racking drilling session, we confirmed that our hole was in the right spot!

After drilling through the roof fiberglass with a 1-inch hole saw, we were in the four-inch tall (or so) unused propane vent. Since the vent was unused, we also had to drill through the interior ceiling of the RV, directly above the refrigerator. Fortunately a long 3/4-inch spade drill bit was able to reach the ceiling and complete the cut. The last part was tricky: pushing the dual #4 solar cable through the roof hole and then the ceiling hole, and finally getting it to bend the right direction around the top of the refrigerator.

Wire successfully routed through the roof and ceiling.

After several frustrating failed attempts, the wire finally went the right direction! It was then a simple matter of grabbing it from the refrigerator access panel on the side of the RV. In the photo below, the solar wire is right next to the back of the refrigerator:

Grabbing the solar wire via the refrigerator access panel outside the RV.

From the refrigerator access panel we could push the wire into the wire chase that runs the length of the RV behind various cabinets and drawers. We removed all our kitchen drawers and fed the wires along the inside wall of the RV behind the kitchen cabinets:

Routing the wires behind the kitchen cabinets.

The last step was to drill a hole up from the storage compartment next to our battery bank into the kitchen floor behind the cabinets. Again, measure many times, cut once!

Routing the solar wires through a new hole into a storage compartment.

After pushing the solar wire through the new hole in the kitchen floor, we finally had it where we needed it—in the storage compartment where the solar controller would be mounted. Whew!

From the roof to the storage compartment.

We had one last step to complete before calling it a day. Back on the roof, we fed the rest of the solar wire through our holes to the storage compartment, saving just a bit to connect to the solar combiner box. Each solar panel will connect into the combiner box, and the big solar wires we just ran will carry the current down to the solar controller. We followed AMSolar’s video tutorial on installing the combiner box and it went pretty smoothly. With lots of Dicor lap sealant around the box and inside the hole we drilled, we should have a nice water-tight seal.

Combiner box mounted on roof and wires attached.

2. Mount and Connect Solar Panels

Mounting and connecting the solar panels was one of the more straightforward but time consuming parts of the project. Since this part is pretty much the same for everyone (unlike the wire routing described above), AMSolar has it documented perfectly on paper and in video tutorials.

As shipped, the panels are just mounted in rectangular aluminum frames. To mount them on the roof it’s first necessary to install mount adapters (via bolts and nuts) and feet (via plastic knobs). It’s very simple and AMSolar’s Installing the Rocker Foot Mounts to a Solar Panel video walks through the step-by-step process.

Installing the mount adapters.

Next comes connecting the short output wires from the panel to the long rooftop wire supplied by AMSolar. The required cutting, stripping, and crimping are all explained in the Installing the Output Cable to a Solar Panel video, as well as the final step of using a heat gun to seal the heat-shrink glue connectors to the wires.

Connecting the panel’s output wires to our rooftop wires.

Our first attempt at this failed as our small wire crimper just wasn’t up to the task. After crimping, we gave a good tug to ensure the connection was solid—but it wasn’t. We crimped enough to make the yellow connector unsalvageable, but not enough to hold the wire securely. We had to cut the connector off, make a Home Depot run to buy new heat-shrink connectors, and borrow a heavy duty crimper from a friend (thanks Warren!) for the rest of our work. With that lesson learned, the rest went very smoothly.

The next step was mounting the panel to the roof. Rather than using screws (we didn’t really want another 24 holes in our roof) we used the 3M VHB tape AMSolar has built-into the panel feet. The tape creates an extraordinarily strong bond which should last forever. This time we followed the Sticking the Panel to the Roof video, paying special attention to the roof preparation steps. We thoroughly cleaned the mounting locations on the roof with alcohol, and since it was a cool day, warmed the roof surface briefly with the heat gun before sticking the first panel down.

First panel mounted to the roof.

We used the provided sticky pads and cable ties to secure the rooftop wire in several places along its route to the combiner box, again cleaning the roof and adding some heat before sticking the pads. After routing the cable for the first panel we realized just in time that we hadn’t left enough slack near the panel to allow us to tilt the panel up! We’d purchased tilt bars to let us point the panels towards the sun, so it was lucky we caught this oversight before cutting the wire and connecting it to the combiner box! We fed a little bit of extra wire back to the panel and learned another lesson!

Rooftop solar cable secured in place.

With the wire now in the right place we cut the other end to the right length and connected it to the combiner box, following the Installing the Roof C Box video (wiring the panels start at around the 7-minute mark):

First panel connected to the combiner box.

We mounted a second panel to the roof, but called it a day before wiring it into the combiner box. In fact, with one panel completely finished, we moved on to the other parts of the installation instead of continuing with more panels. I wanted to get everything set up and tested with one panel first, then add each additional panel one at a time to ensure they were all working and wired correctly.

Two panels mounted, one panel wired.

3. Install Remote Monitor

The BlueSky IPN ProRemote serves two functions. It allows for remote monitoring and configuration of the solar controller, and it is a high accuracy battery monitor. Rover came with a very basic battery monitor that reports the surface voltage of the batteries, which can then be compared to a chart (e.g. 12.2 volts means the batteries are about 60% charged) but that’s considered a very unreliable method of determining capacity. The new monitor measures all energy going into and out of the battery to report exactly how much remains. For example, if a 400 amp-hour battery bank has had 200 amps drawn out (say, by the refrigerator and lights) and 100 amps put in (by the solar panels), it can report that the battery is 75% charged.

Our first step was to pick a location for the monitor. Following the example of others, we placed it with our other controls on the wall adjacent to the refrigerator:

Cutting a hole in the kitchen for the remote monitor and wires.

The monitor requires two wires: one goes to the solar controller to allow communication and configuration, and the other goes to the battery bank for the battery monitor function. We taped the wires together and dropped them into the space between the wall and refrigerator. Moving outside, we were able to grab the wires through the refrigerator access panel and route them behind the kitchen cabinets and down into the storage compartment in the same way we routed the roof solar wire. After that it was a simple matter of mounting the remote panel:

Remote monitor panel installed.

4. Mounting the Solar Controller

The BlueSky SB3024iL MPPT controller is the brain of the system. It takes the energy coming from the panels and modifies the voltage and amperage to charge the batteries. Our goal was to install it close to the batteries, so we chose the first storage compartment behind our entry stairs. The four batteries are located under the first inside step:

The solar controller will be installed right next to the existing batteries.

The center of the compartment wall already had a pre-wire setup for an outdoor TV (which we don’t have) so we first had to move those outlets and wires up much higher on the wall to make room for the solar gear. Then I cut out outlines of the new components to figure out where to install them in the compartment (I like planning things visually).

Deciding how to arrange the components.

Once the equipment was mounted it was time to hook up the wires, with another piece of specialized and borrowed equipment—a hammer lug crimper tool. This, along with a heavy metal mallet, crimps the lug connector to the end of the wire. Since I had never done this before I was glad to have help!

Installing lug ring connectors on the cables.

Our first attempt turned out pretty good (photo below), and for the rest we stripped a bit less insulation to make it perfect. All the connections then got heat-shrink insulation around them for a tidy and water-tight seal.

First two lugs attached.

With everything wired up in the compartment (photo below), all that is left is to arrange the wires and secure them to the wall with some fasteners to keep everything nice and neat.

Cables attached but not yet secured.

5. Connecting to the Batteries

The last step, and one that made me a bit nervous, was connecting everything to our battery bank. The battery monitor requires installation of a shunt, a small metal block with two connectors. All the electricity runs through the shunt, and with a battery monitor cable on each end of it, it can tell how much energy is flowing through. Fitting the shunt in our battery compartment was a very tight fit, but we made it work.

Many new wires to the batteries!

With everything wired up we turned on the system and saw 3.6 amps of power coming in from our one connected solar panel! All that was left was to install the rest of the panels.

Finishing the Panel Installs

Over the next few days we worked more on the panel installs, getting better and faster with each successive panel. When we were done, we had all six wired into the combiner box:

All six panels wired into the combiner box.

We closed up the box and finished securing the wires from the six panels. One panel would be mounted right over the combiner box, providing an additional layer of weather protection.

The finished combiner box and secured panel wires.

We had all six panels securely mounted to the roof, and started running our final tests. In the afternoon in mid-November in Northern Virginia we saw about 16 amps of power coming into the batteries from the panels. Very cool to see, but not exactly amazing.

Six panels mounted and connected.

Ah, but once we tilted the panels towards the sun, we saw double the power: a full 32 amps, and sometimes a little more, coming in! Since our controller can handle 40 amps maximum, this was more like what we expected, especially given the sun’s low angle in the sky. In the summer when the sun is more overhead we should see even more power.

Tilting the panels toward the sun doubled their power output.

Besides being able to see how much power we’re generating from the sun (32.3 amps in the photo below), the remote/battery monitor has also been really helpful in figuring out what’s using up our power. With everything in the RV turned off (or so we thought), we were still using over 10 amps of power! Most of it appears to be due to devices that appear to be turned off but are really in “standby” mode, like our TVs, Xbox, or printer. By turning off the circuit breakers to those devices we got our “all off” usage down to 0.4 amps. Being aware of how much power we’re using will go a long way to making it through the night (and day) just on solar power.

The remote controller/battery monitor tells us how much power we’re generating and how much we’re consuming.

With the project finally wrapped up, after a month of (on-and-off) work, it was time for a little celebration and relaxation! Well, as soon as Kathie un-tilts all the panels back to flat/travel mode that is!

Finally finished. Kathie says “hooray”!

Why Go Solar?

If you’ve been following Life Rebooted on Facebook you’ve probably seen many photos of our installation progress recently, but without much insight into what we hope to gain from this upgrade. Here’s a few of our primary reasons:

1. We want to be able to stay in campgrounds that don’t offer hookups. When we visited Big Bend National Park in southern Texas last year we camped at the Rio Grande Village Campground inside the national park. It’s a paid campground but has no electric, water or sewer. We really enjoyed our stay, but had to run Rover’s generator for 2-3 hours each morning and evening to keep our house batteries charged up. While this is perfectly allowable (our section of the campground allowed generator usage from 8am-8pm), it seems a shame to ruin the peace and quiet of such a beautiful place with the noise from a generator. There are many beautiful and amazing places we’ve been hesitant to visit due to the lack of electrical hookups. Hopefully that will become a thing of the past!

Rover at Big Bend National Park

2. We want to do more boondocking. Boondocking generally refers to camping in remote locations outside developed campgrounds. This usually means finding a place on BLM (Bureau of Land Management) land or in national forests, and setting up camp for a while. Since there’s no campground, there are no utilities. While we’ve gotten pretty good at camping without water and sewer hook-ups, electricity is a necessity for our refrigerator. Our stay in the Arizona desert near Quartzsite last winter was our first time boondocking, even though it was with tens of thousands of other RVs (usually boondocking is a bit less crowded). Like in Big Bend, we had to run our generator for a few hours each morning and evening.

Boondocking in Quartzsite AZ

For a while we went back and forth thinking “we don’t need solar since we don’t do much boondocking”, followed by “we don’t do much boondocking because we don’t have solar.” We’ve decided to end that chicken-and-egg problem once and for all!

3. We want more flexibility in our travel plans. Several times since we started RVing we nearly got stuck without a campground during holiday weekends. Thanksgiving, Christmas, Memorial Day, Independence Day, and Labor Day are all big camping weekends throughout much of the country. Even though we usually plan and reserve campgrounds a few weeks in advance, we found ourselves getting told “sorry, we’re sold out” over and over when trying to book during these holidays. This past Labor Day weekend we made it to the 13th campground on our list before we found someplace with availability, and the campground was well off our planned route. Even if we can find an RV park, they often charge higher rates on holiday weekends. With solar, we hope to shrug off these situations and just find someplace out of the way to park for a few days.

What’s NOT on our list is “to save money”. Some RVers spend half, most, or even all of their time boondocking. Some serious money can be saved by not staying in RV parks and campgrounds, but that’s not one of our driving factors. I’ll be shocked if we boondock 10% of our nights in 2016. If we did though, the savings would pay for more than half our solar install.

Take a look at some of the amazing photos on Love Your RV’s Most Scenic Camping Spots of 2014 or Wheeling It’s years of boondocking site reviews to see why we want to do more boondocking and national park camping!

Just A Piece Of The Puzzle

One of the most frequent questions we’ve been asked is “can the solar panels power your whole RV?” The answer is a resounding “no”, but with careful use of electricity we should be able to power most of what we need. It’s important to realize that when we’re “off the grid” we’re actually powering everything from our house batteries, and the solar panels are used to recharge the batteries. Since we only get five or so hours of good “solar power” sunlight per day in the winter, the solar panels need to put enough energy back into the batteries to get us through the other 19 hours of evening, night, and morning.

Rover’s four 6V batteries located under the entry stairs

Although some RVers with huge solar arrays and massive battery banks have had success running their air conditioners, that’s not on our roadmap. If it gets so hot that we need air conditioning, we’ll need to start up the generator (which will then also help recharge the batteries) or move to a campground with electric hook-ups.

The other “gotcha” for us is our awesome “residential refrigerator” that’s just like the fridge in any house. Many RVs have special ammonia absorption refrigerators that can run on propane, using no electricity, allowing almost unlimited boondocking. For a variety of reasons we opted for the residential fridge and haven’t regretted it one bit. However, that means even if we turn off everything else in the RV, we need to keep the fridge running 24/7, which consumes a fair bit of energy from our batteries. Note: some boondockers turn off their residential fridge overnight to save power, and report that the inside of the fridge only drops a couple degrees. We may have to try this with a thermometer.

Big fridge = energy drain (brochure photo; our kitchen isn’t quite so tidy!)

After looking at our electrical consumption (mainly driven by the refrigerator) and Rover’s gross vehicle weight rating (the panels and wires aren’t exactly light-weight and Rover was already close to his weight limit) we decided we would add 600 watts of panels. With careful use of electricity on our part, they should give us enough power to mostly recharge our batteries each day. If we hit cloudy days or we boondock more than a few days in a row we may need to run our generator for an hour or two to add a lot of energy back to the batteries and then let the solar top them off during the day.

Choosing Equipment

There was a lot to learn about solar and RV electrical before we were comfortable enough to move forward. As in many fields, there are many options and opinions, including some seemingly conflicting information. Panels come in different voltages, can be wired together in different ways (parallel or series), and there are different types of solar controllers, battery monitors, and other related equipment.

Once we decided that we wanted to tackle the solar installation ourselves, we settled on a 600 watt kit from AMSolar in Oregon. AMSolar has an excellent reputation in the RV world, and they’ve been personally recommended by several people. While an all-in-one kit is more expensive than buying all the components individually and assembling them ourselves, as complete amateurs it helped build our confidence that we could do this ourselves and AMSolar’s great how-to videos show step-by-step how to install the equipment. With the federal 30% tax credit for solar installs (including RV solar) we felt the net cost was very reasonable.

The system core part of AMSolar’s kit

Since we were planning to be in one campground in Northern Virginia for all of November, it was a perfect time to work on the install at a nice slow pace, learning as we went. Even better, local friends were able to loan us some of the tools we needed to do the install.

It’s time to open the boxes and get started. Stay tuned for the next blog post detailing the actual installation!

Time to get started!