June 18, 2019: T-2 before we head out. I brought the trailer home from storage yesterday to prep it for the trip. This not only includes loading food and clothes, etc., but also testing all systems for functionality, checking tire pressures, checking the wheel lug nut torque and a lot of other stuff.
Yesterday my wife Jeri made a grocery run and we’ve loaded that and started putting cold items into the fridge after it cooled down. And we started stocking the pantry. We decided that we tend to pack too much food (after all there are plenty of grocery stores), so are cutting back on how much food we pack.
I drained, flushed and refilled the freshwater tank yesterday, too. I am also going to replace the flaky 50 amp breaker for the hydraulic pump that runs the leveling Jack’s and two of the slides with a Keystone recommended 80 amp breaker. Getting ready for a major trip is a LOT of work, but so worth the effort and quickly forgotten once we hit the road on another adventure. More later today.
Later today: Wheweee, it’s hot and muggy today in NE Florida and the bit of rain this afternoon doesn’t help!
I have accomplished the following items today.
Replaced the 50 amp cheapy breaker Keystone put on for the hydraulic pump with a quality 80 amp breaker.
Used some small screws to better attach some trim in the front walkin closet.
Hung another of Jeri’s paintings in the hallway. This one is kind of an colorful abstract that she didn’t really like, but I do.
Loaded more food and drinks into the pantry and fridge.
Brought most of our trip clothes out. This is always somewhat difficult when you live in the hot south and are traveling to the upper northern states and the Colorado mountains because we need hot weather and cooler weather clothes.
Turned on one of the 30 lb propane tanks and tested the stove. 5×5 (any old military comms guys know what this means).
Well, that’s about all for today I think. It looks like we are about to get a thunderstorm and we are going to our daughter’s for dinner.
I am looking forward to getting on the road, but still have more maintenance checks on the trailer to do tomorrow.
6/15/2019: Thursday, 6/20, we plan to head out on our Summer Western trip (we did a Spring trip to NM, AZ and TX in March/April). On our Summer trip we plan to head up to South Dakota via mostly non-interstates through western Georgia, Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa/Nebraska. After SD we will drop down through Wyoming to Colorado where we will spend some time visiting and camping with three of our grown children and their families. When we leave CO the plan is for our two youngest grandsons to travel back to Florida with us. We plan to take them to the Great Sand Dunes and Carlsbad Caverns and maybe to see the Marfa Lights in Marfa, TX and maybe some other interesting places on the way home.
We recently purchased a Roku streaming device and will use it instead of the Amazon Firestick we currently have on the TV in the trailer. We recently switched from DirectTV back to Spectrum (10 times faster internet) and the Firestick does not support the Spectrum app, thus the Roku. The Roku seems to me to be much more sophisticated than the Firestick.
This coming Monday I will bring our new fiver home so I can do some pre-trip maintenance and systems checks and we can get it packed for the trip.
Our first stop Thursday will be at the Flying J in St. Augustine to fill up with diesel fuel and weigh the rig on the CAT Scale. I have downloaded the app on my cell phone and set up my account with them so the weigh should be quick and easy.
My plan is to do a daily update with pictures and videos to this blog, so I hope you follow along with us.
During September and October of 2018 we traded our F150 Ecoboost for a new 2018 Ford F350 Lariat 4×4 Diesel and our Bullet for a new 35′ 2019 Keystone Montana 3121RL 20th Anniversary Edition fifth wheel trailer using a new 20,000 pound rated B&W Companion Slider hitch.
During the PDI it was discovered our oven did not work and it had to be replaced under warranty. That was completed in November of 2018.
The model, 3121RL, designates this trailer has a residential refrigerator. It is a double-door, 18 cubic feet unit with a built-in ice maker. We really like it. No more worries about trying to keep stuff cold. We set the fridge to 38 degrees and the freezer to -2 degrees and that is where they stay. Since a residential fridge runs on 120 volts AC, the trailer came with a 1,000 watt Pure Sine Way (PSW) inverter, so when we are not plugged into shore power the fridge runs of the inverter that converts 12 volts DC to 120 volts AC.
The trailer has a one-button 6-point hydraulic leveling system and I love this feature!!! Unhook from the truck and push one button and several seconds later the trailer is nice and level. No more levelers to drive on and off, etc. Simple and fast. If not unhooking from the truck I can still manually level the trailer, too.
As of May 2019 we have completed several fairly short trips and one extensive, 5,000 mile round trip out West. We have had no major issues, but I have had to do some minor repairs inside the trailer on things like the roll down shades, the bedroom barn door and a piece of trip that came loose. These, sadly, are fairly normal issues with most RVs these days.
We are really loving the new rig. The big turbo diesel pulls the trailer wonderfully, whether up or down mountains, whatever. It is a very relaxed tow for me. No more push/pull when a semi-truck and trailer blow by us. Very solid rig.
I have made some major improvements to the new trailer.
Installed a hard-wired Progressive Industries EMS-HW50C 50 amp electric management system with remote readout (in the cabin).
Installed a remote switch for the fridge inverter so it can be turned on/off from inside the cabin.
Installed a 300 watt solar system to power the trailer and charge the batteries and modified the 100 watt portable panel so it can quickly be connected in parallel to the 300 watts if needed, for a total of 400 watts. The three 100 watt panels are mounted flat on the roof of the trailer (see pictures below).
As part of the solar install I mounted a Trimetric monitor inside the cabin to keep track of charging/discharging and the batteries state of charge.
Installed a new battery box and two 6 volt (in series for 12 volts) GC2 true deep cycle batteries.
Installed a second 1,000 watt PSW inverter with a remote switch and electric outlet in the cabin. This allows us to run some AC stuff inside if we want or need to.
Installed MaxAir vent covers over the two MaxAir vent fans to allow for air circulation in the trailer when traveling or in storage. We can leave the vents open and the covers allow air, but not water to enter/exit.
Some photos of the inside:
EMS remote (upper right), remote fridge inverter switch (upper left), second inverter remote and outlet
Some more outside photos:
Some additions:
Second 1,000 watt PSW, solar charger and wiring I installed
New battery box with two 6 volt deep cycle batteries300 watts of solar on the roof–wiring held down with Eternabond tape and Dicor lap sealant.
June 27, 2018: The reefer (absorption refrigerator) in our trailer is a Dometic DM2652 and many times when the outside temperatures are 80+ degrees it has struggled to keep the inside refrigerator temperature at 40 degrees or less, even with the thermistor control slid up as high (Cold) as it will go). In order to solve this problem I have made a couple of modifications.
I use electronic sensors inside the reefer and freezer with an outside monitor to keep tabs on the status of cooling. The monitor also records minimum and maximum temperatures.
The first thing I did was install two 12 volt DC fans to the outside lower section of the reefer. I bought the Valterra one with the thermistor switch and another computer-type one. I wired these in with three switches. The first is the master on/off switch and it is mounted inside the trailer. This switch also has a small red lamp inside to indicate the switch is on. The other two are micro switches mounted on the back of the reefer. Using these switches I can run one or both fans either controlled by the thermistor or with the thermistor bypassed. Actually, I need to test the thermistor because I have never observed the fan/s running with the thermistor controlling them. The purpose of these two fans is to force air up over the coils in back and out the top vent.
After using them for several days of camping I cannot say for sure they really have helped a whole lot, so the next thing I did was buy one of those small battery powered fans that go inside the reefer. I initially put this on the bottom shelf, but again this did not seem to really help much with the overall temperature inside, although it may have made it more equal throughout the interior.
The next thing I tried recently on a June trip down to Key Largo (with some pretty warm temperatures during the day) was to reorient the little battery powered fan to the very top shelf and aimed at the fins near the inside thermistor. Even though the air output of this little fan is very low this, in conjunction with running both the fans in back really seemed to help keep temps lower. I observed low temperatures as low as 33 degrees, but primarily the temperature tended to hover in the 37-39 degrees (F) range.
So, I figured that if this little bit of air blowing on the fins made a positive difference, a lot more air would make an even better improvement. I bought a small two fan assembly with LED light unit off eBay for $35 including shipping and installed it a few days ago right on the fins.
The unit has two switches; one for the LED and another for the fans. The instructions mention several different ways of wiring it up, but I sort of did my own thing with the installation. I only want to fans to work if the reefer is turned on, so I pulled the interior light switch and after confirming the wiring with a multimeter I soldered the power wires to the correct wires going to the interior light. Worked great.
Here are a couple of pictures.
Mounted with the LED off.LED on.
Since we have an interior light (LED) already I doubt we will ever use the LED on the fan assembly. I used Gaffer tape to dress the wires inside the reefer and left the entire length of the wires intact since there is a built in fuse near the free end. I want to see how the Gaffer tape holds up inside the cold reefer.
At this point I have not tested to see if this new fan setup will do what I hope and have read that it should do, which is to lower the temperature inside substantially to the point I can move the controlling thermistor down a bit and keep the inside temperature at 35-37 degrees (F). But, in another week or so we will be leaving for a few weeks out West to Colorado. It will get a thorough test and I will edit this to report the results.
Update 9/10/2018: After using this setup for a few days camping, while the cooling was better, it was still not as good as I wanted it to be, so I moved the interior double fan over as far to the right as I could so it would blow a bit more air onto the thermistor. This really helped.
On our last trip a couple of weeks ago from Florida to update New York and back the refrigerator temperature was normally staying around 35-39 degrees and we were encountering outside air temperatures of 90+ degrees F. A few times overnight it got down to 33 degrees and only rarely got above 40 degrees briefly if the fridge door was left open for awhile while someone looked for something inside.
I think this has solved our reefer cooling issues.
On or around July 9, 2018 we will be heading to Colorado, where we used to live, to do some camping and visit with our two of our sons who live there and their families.
Our initial plan is to head to Crested Butte, C0 and meet up with our son Jimmy and his wife Rachel there for some boondocking in the mountains. They bought a new trailer in March and we met up with them in Moab, UT in March while we were doing our Spring Southwest trip, for a few days of boondocking.
After Crested Butte we will head to Bear Creek Lake Park on the west side of Denver where we have four nights reserved. While there we will also visit our youngest son Billy and our Granddaughter Sofia.
I am not sure what we will do or where we will go after that, so stay tuned.
We just returned from a few days of camping down in Key Largo with our two youngest grandsons a few days ago.
Bill & Jeri RV Travels 