Tag Archives: RV Systems

To Brake or Not To Brake. RV Down!

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Yesterday as I was driving to Whistler British Columbia to do a job for the Canadian Military, I stopped in a town called Squamish for a Starbucks coffee.

As I was adding cream and sugar to my coffee I noticed someone walk into the coffee shop who really looked familiar. As she got closer I realized that this was Rae, who writes the Travels With Miranda Blog. I met Rae at the RV park where we have been spending most of our time for the last few years. Rae is a young Canadian lady who travels full time in an RV alone, except for two cats.

As I started to talk to Rae she told me about her very recent near escape from tragedy when the brakes on her rig failed on a very steep hill north of Whistler. From her description, she did everything right, including gearing down. As it turned out there was a run a way lane on the hill, but a vehicle was blocking it. She had to go on to the next run away lane where she finally managed to stop. With the result that her brakes where so hot that a tire caught fire and was destroyed. She describes the incident very well in her blog.

Cover PDF to JPG SmallIn my book I write about learning to gear down, and how to use the brakes when you are driving a larger vehicle. This incident underscores the importance of this information. An RV is not a get in and drive vehicle like a new or rental car would be. There are some things that have to be learned.

When you follow a large truck down a hill, you will notice that they are going slow, and that their brake lights rarely come on. This is because they have geared down, and are letting the engine do the braking for them. Very large trucks also have some thing we know as engine brakes, or exhaust brakes, but even if we do not have those, we can still use the engine for very effective braking.

To use the engine as a brake, first use the regular brakes to slow down to about 40 mph or 60 km. Then shift the automatic transmission into 2nd gear. You will notice the engine starting to hold you back. If this still is not enough, use the regular brakes to slow you down to about 20 mph or 30 km and then shift into 1st or low, depending on how your shifter is marked. If you are driving with a standard transmission, you probably already understand how to do this. You will have to do a bit of experimenting with your vehicle to determine the best speed for downshifting. You want to make sure that you do not over rev the engine. If you have a tachometer this will be easy. For effective engine braking you will want to run the engine fairly fast. Usually about 20% below red line. So if your red line is 5000 rpm, about 4000 rpm would be a good engine speed.

Once you are down in 1st or low you may find that you still have to use the regular brakes to some extent if the hill is very steep. But at this point it should not be a problem since the engine will now be doing most of the breaking, and the brakes will not heat up near as much.

But then there are hills such as Rae descended. In cases such as this sometimes the only option is to stop occasionally, and let the brakes cool off. The problem is that many times you are into brake failure, before you even realize what is happening.

Sometimes it takes having an incident like this shown to you to make you aware of just how dangerous it can be to take a large RV down a steep hill. Now that you are aware you will think of it the next time you start to decend that hill, and you will make it safely to the bottom.

An RV especially the size of RV that most Full Time RV’ers use can be very heavy. If you have one of these large units, or are considering buying one, it is really in you own best interest to take the time to really learn to drive it properly. The live you save may be your own.

RV Connections At a Friends or Relatives Home Continued

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In my last post I mentioned that you can have full RV hookups at a friends or relatives home installed. I only talked about the electrical and water connections in that post. In this post I will talk about sewer connections.

When you think of sewer you are probably thinking of the normal 3 or 4 inch sewer lines that you have to dig into the ground, and connect to the city sewer system or to a septic system. Well if it happens to be a very easy thing to do at the particular friends or relatives home where you are attempting to do this, there is nothing wrong with doing it this way. But in most cases you will be dealing with a paved driveway, or the fact that the sewer lines for the property are at the opposite sides of the house, and in that case you will have a problem.

So what to do in this situation? Well I am going to show you a solution that will make it as easy as running a water line. The solution involves something called a macerator pump.

Macerator pumps can be bought preassembled for RV use. The main problem is that most of the commercial units are one piece, and sometimes a bit to long to fit the sewer connections on a particular rig. In my case I built my own using a pump from a marine supply store, and a few fittings from a hardware store, and an RV store. The price came out to less than half of the commercial versions.

Home Made RV Macerator pump.

Home Made RV Macerator pump.

My home made macerator pump set up. This unit fits in the sewer compartment of my motor home, yet can be disconnected so that I can use a regular sewer hose instead.

The output of the pump can be connected to a regular 3/4 inch garden hose and pumped up to 150 feet. If you do not want to install any permanent connections, the garden hose can be inserted into any toilet. If you do this make sure the hose goes down around the bend in the toilet, and then stays put when you turn on the pump. The other easy way to go is to find the sewer clean out cap on the property, and insert the hose there.

But if you want to make a permanant connection that you can connect your pump to whenever you are parked you can cut into a sewer pipe inside the home and install a T fitting that has a 1 inch line off the side. From here you run 1 inch plastic line to where you want the RV connection to be. You can terminate the plastic line at your RV parking spot with a small adaptor that has a female garden hose fitting on the end. When you go to connect your RV you only need a short 3/4 inch garden hose to connect from the pump to this fitting. You can put together an appropriate length of hose with parts that you can find in any hardware store.

As with dumping at a sani dump, you want to dump your black water first and your grey water second in order to clean out the pump, garden hose, and the 1 inch sewer line.

In my book I give full instructions for building this pump set up, along with building it into your rig. There are pictures of the parts you will need, and some notes on wiring. I also talk a lot about how this pump will help you in boondocking situations.

Find my book at www.fulltimeinanrv.com

RV Hookups at a Friends or Families Home.

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In a previous post I alluded to the fact that one can add hookups at a friends or families home with not to much difficulty. In most cases if all you need is 15 amp power and water, most homes already have these installed outside. You may just have to run an extension cord or extra hose to get to the existing installation. You can also dump gray water by bucketing a few bucket fulls into a toilet or laundry room sink.

A set up like this is great if you are only staying at a friends, or relatives place for a few days or so and then moving on.

But in some cases you will want to do extended RV stays, or make regular returns to particular friends or family with your RV. Especially in such cases where you have to stay to help care for a loved one. In this case it may be a good idea to put in some hook ups. You may have to look into the legal side of this if you want to get really fancy, but there are ways around some of those things also.

If you are going to wire in an outlet for the RV it is prudent to get the proper permit, and have a certified electrician do this. You may not always be able to get a permit to install an outlet for an RV, in that case get a permit to put in an outlet for an Air compressor, a welder, a canning stove, or what have you. Some of these type of outlets will be 220 volt outlets, but if they are at least 30 amps, you can get the electrician to make you an adapter plug that will only supply 110 volts from the jack, but still have 30 amps available. 220 volt outlets are just 2 opposing 11o volt outlets, so the adapter that the electrician will make you will just leave one of the 110 volt circuits disconnected. You will not be able to inadvertently plug your RV plug into these 220 volt outlets since they are a different pin configuration. While the electrician is there, he should also be able to put in a cable vision, and possibly a telephone outlet for you.

Unless the water tap is a long ways away, it is usually not a great problem to run a water hose. But if this is a problem, it should be no real problem to get a permit to put in an extra tap. It is usually also a good idea to get a reputable plumbing company put in the water connection. The reason I mention permits, electricians and plumbers is the fact that you do not want to do anything to compromise your friends or relatives home insurance in case something did happen. You may have the skills to do these jobs yourself, but just for this reason, it is best to contract it out. In most cases it should not be a very expensive proposition.

The sewer connection I will leave for another post. As I mentioned in an earlier post there are ways to do this that do not involve digging in a large 3 or 4 inch sewer pipe. But more on that later.

I personally have put in hookups in two sites. One on a friends farm, and the other at a small restaurant on a beach in Mexico. It is not hard to do or get done. And when you are not there, your friends can use the hookups for their own RV or to have other RV’ing friends visit them.

Full Time RV’er Luck to be Alive.

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Today Fred, one of the people who works in the RV park where I am staying, came to my door to ask me if I could have a look at the rig of one of the parks other occupants. Fred said that this person was getting shocks off his RV when he touched it. Fred knew about my understanding of RV’s and RV systems, that is why he asked me.

Well I grabbed my digital volt meter, and my outlet and GFI test plug, and I headed over to see what I could do.

You can see an out

AC Test Plug with 30 Amp Adaptor

let test plug in the picture. These can save your life. You plug this arrangement into the Post at an RV park when you first arrive, to make sure it is wired right. Then you take just the test plug and check your RV outlets. The light combination’s will tell you if the wiring is safe. You usually only have to test the rig once. And then again if you make any wiring changes, or you are using a new 15 to 30 or 30 to 50 amp adapter, or any other new gadget that you place in the circuit.

When I connected my meter between the frame of the Rig, and the water tap at the post, I got 120 volts AC. I thought I would try a current reading and see if there were was enough current available to be dangerous. Well I got a loud crack and an arc where the lead touched the frame. I quickly unplugged the rig.

The only reason that I can see why the owner was still alive, was the fact that it had been very dry for a number of months, and the ground was not as conductive as it normally would have been.

Testing with the outlet tester showed that the park outlet was wired properly. We then did some measuring with the ohm meter, and determined that the hot wire on the plug was directly connected to the frame of the RV. A a bit more checking showed that the problem was in the 30 to 50 amp adapter that was connected between the 30 amp outlet at the post, and the 50 amp plug on the rig. It was at

Cross Wired Plug on Home Made Adaptor. Note the Burnt Parts.

Cross Wired Plug on Home Made Adaptor. Note the Burnt Parts.

this point where the RV owner mentioned that another RV’er had wired up the adaptor for him. I asked him if the other RV’er had something against him and wanted him dead. (Bad Joke)

Well the RV owner went to the RV parts store and bought a new adaptor cable. It only cost him $40. Cheap insurance.

The jist of this is that just like in your old home, you want professionals to work on your electrical systems. I might also throw in Propane systems in this statement.