Life in our RV – Part 10 – Water System

The water system in the RV is designed so that you can run completely self contained with no connection to the outside world for several days to several weeks depending on how good you are at conserving water.

Fresh Cold Water

Our RV comes with a 65 US gallon fresh water tank. When we are not connected to a water hookup there is a small pressure sensitive electric pump connected to the tank.

When you open a tap, the pressure drops and the pump will come on to try and re-pressurize the lines and this keeps the water flowing. It just so happens that the pump is located right beneath the bed. If you get up in the night to use the facilities, the pump will come on. It is not loud but in the middle of the night it is noticeable.

Some people add what is called an accumulator tank. It is connected via a T off any of the lines. It is just an air filled steel tank. The pump will run and add water to the tank compressing the air. When a tap is opened the compressed air keeps the water pressure up and the pump doesn’t have to run as often.

If the campsite has a water hookup (called city water), you run a hose from the outside tap to an inlet connection in one of the bays. I bought some of the quick-connect connectors so I don’t have to screw them on and off each time. The hose you use must be a special one made just for fresh water. They are made in a way such that you don’t get the rubber taste you normally get from a garden hose.

You can also see that our RV comes with a filter. It is just a particle filter to protect the pump and taps from sand and grit.

At the campsite tap you should always use a pressure regulator. The internal plumbing doesn’t like much more than 40 psi. Some campgrounds can be up to 100 psi. I also attach a Y fitting so that I can still get water from the tap for other things without having to disconnect the RV.

I assume there are some one way valves between the internal tank and the house plumbing and between the city hookup and the plumbing because attaching to the outside water does not fill the tank and the pump does not spray water out the city connection.

The pressure from the water in the city connection keeps the lines pressurized so that the internal pump does not come on. There is a separate switch to enable/disable the pump but I always leave it on.

There is a separate connection used to fill the internal tank. As a rule I keep around 1/3 of a tank of fresh water to be used when we are on the road. If I know we are going to a campground without hookups I will add more depending on how long we will stay. Since a full tank of water weighs about 625 lbs we don’t want to be travelling around with any more weight than necessary.

Fresh Hot Water

The RV comes with a 10 US gallon hot water heater. It can use either 120 V AC electric or propane. This size seems big enough because we have never run out of hot water even with the two of us having showers one right after the other. The water conserving shower head probably has a lot to do with it.

If you use the electric heating element you must always make sure there is water in the tank. Even running a few seconds without water would burn it out. The heater was a rocker switch with a pin in it to lock it off so that you must be very deliberate about turning it on.

That said I only turn it off in the fall when I drain the system because I always make sure the internal fresh tank has enough water to supply it.

We must be connected to an electrical hookup to use the water heater this way. It is not hooked up to the inverter because it would drain the batteries very quickly.

When we don’t have an electrical connection there is a switch by the sink in the kitchen to enable a propane burner to heat up the water. It gets hot in about 15 minutes.

When in electric mode we just leave the heater to cycle on and off and keep the water hot all the time. When running on propane we just turn it on as needed, for example to have a shower. The heater tank must be well insulated because it stays hot a long time even with the heaters are turned off.

Waste Water

Grey water is waste water from the sinks and the shower. Bad but not really bad. Our RV  has a 40 US gallon grey water tank.

Black water is the nasty stuff from the toilet. It goes into a separate 40 US gallon tank.

The tanks are connected to the single outside drain via a Y pipe. Each tank has its own knife valve to allow each one to be drained separately.

The drain is connected to the campsite sewer using a flexible hose with a bayonet connection on the RV side and a screw in L connection on the campground side. I have 2 10 foot sections of hose that can be connected together in case the sewer is far away.

Since the campground connection can be at different heights I have a slinky like support for the hose to always try and make sure it runs downhill. 

Even though the adaptor at the campground side can usually screw into their sewer pipe it is always a good idea to put something heavy on top. You NEVER want this one to pop loose.

As gross as it sounds, it is a good idea that the adaptor from the hose to the RV drain pipe be clear. This way you can see when the tanks have finished draining rather than trying to hear it.

The reason that there are separate black and grey water tanks is that when you are connected to the campground sewer you normally leave the grey tank valve open so that it drain out immediately. In this way high volume things like the shower don’t run the risk of filling the tank.

You should NEVER leave the black tank valve open. In order for the solid material to flush through the hose properly it needs a sufficient amount of liquid to keep it moving. It used to be said that you should never drain the black tank unless it was at least 3/4 full in order to get enough flow. These day ours and most RV now have sprayers inside the black tank. You connect a hose (not your fresh water hose) to the sprayer inlet and jets of water spray inside the tank to help clean it out. I also try to close the grey tank valve the day before I dump the black tank so I have some nicer water to clear out the hose.

One time after I drained the tank I did leave the black tank valve open. Guess what I saw in that clear piece of pipe when I went back to drain it again before we left a campground. Even worse when I turned on the tank sprayer nothing came down the pipe so it was completely clogged. Thankfully I had some water in the grey tank. I closed the black valve and opened the grey valve to clear the hose. I used the sprayer inlet to add a lot of water to the black tank and then, from a trick I learned from the internet, I dumped a bag of ice cubes down the toilet. Driving to the next campground they bounce around and scrape things clean. Then they melt so they flush easily. You can imagine my relief when the tank flushed properly when we got to the next site.

Once you have emptied the black tank you should add about 5 gallons of water so that the material you eventually add does not build up in a pile in the tank but gets a chance to dissolve.

Many campground do not have sewer hookups at each site so that when you leave the campground you empty your tanks at a dump station. The procedure I use to dump the tanks is to start the black tank sprayer, open the black valve, watch until the water clears and you see the water from the sprayer and it is also relatively clear. Close the black valve and use the sprayer to add some water to the black tank. Then open the grey tank to flush the hose. Disconnect the hose from the RV end and use a water hose to spray down the sewer hose to really clean it out as much as possible.

I store the sewer hose, its support and the water hose for the tank sprayer in a separate bay from the fresh water connections so as not to contaminate anything.

If you are camping without a sewer connection normally the grey tank will fill up much faster than the black tank because the toilet does not use much water to flush. Although some people think it is wrong, in our RV the washroom sink also drains into the black tank. I think it is good because it allows us to more easily balance the filling of each of the tanks.

Note that the grey and black tanks are vented out the roof of the RV. Some people add chemicals to their tanks to get things to breakdown faster and to prevent odours from entering the washroom. We have never had a problem so I don’t bother.

Another important note. You should really only use toilet paper designed for RV use. It is made to dissolve very quickly in water to try and not gum up the tank. Unfortunately, this means it is usually 1 ply or very thin 2 ply and you really should try to use as little as possible. It is not one of the more fun sides of being in the RV.

Gauges

There is a panel in the kitchen that is supposed to tell you the level of material in each tank. They are totally useless. They just have lights for full, 2/3, 1/3 and empty.

You can see the sensors in red on the fresh tank in the picture.

When they are under water they conduct and the appropriate light on the panel goes on. However, for example if the fresh tank is under 1/3 full you don’t know if you have 19 gallons left or 0 gallons left. I always just have to go to the bay and look at the tank.

The ones on the black tank don’t work at all. They just always say full even if I have just emptied the tanks. I imagine some of the toilet paper and “material” is just caked on them.

Fortunately for cosmetics, unfortunately for usefulness, the grey and black tanks are made of an opaque black plastic.  I just have to guess based on our usage as to how full they are.

There are after market sensors you can buy. Some just replace the ones I have and claim not to gunk up. There are fancier ones you apply as a strip to the side and they somehow sense and give a continuous reading of the water level from the outside.

I almost bought these but I have several problems. First, they expect the tanks to be rectangular so that the fill level is linear. My fresh tank is L shaped as you can tell from the positioning of the current level sensors. My black and grey tanks are short of mushroom shaped as they rest on a rectangular metal bracket all the way around. Second the sensors must be stuck to the side of the tank at least 1” from any metal. The metal supports all the way around rule this out.

So I am stuck with guessing.

Cold Weather Usage

If the temperature goes below zero of a length of time you should not leave any water or sewer hoses outside the RV. I just run on the internal tanks and fill/dump periodically.

The bays that the tanks are in also are wrapped in foil insulation and our RV has an optional system of heating pads on each tank. One is the black pad on the picture below.

If the temperature goes below 4C in the bay, the pads which are 12V heaters will turn on. I am not sure how quickly they would kill the batteries because so far I have only used them when we are connected to shore power.

Most of the pipes are inside the RV so they are kept warm in the same way we are.

We have been out in quite a few below zero nights but never where the days are also below zero. I am not sure I would want to be.

Winterizing

To winterize the RV you must make sure that all the water is out of the system.

1. Make sure the black and grey tanks are empty.
2. Make sure that the electric water heater is turned off.
3. Open the low point drain to drain the fresh water tank and lines as much as possible.
4. Remove the anode from the water heater to allow it to drain.
5. Drain the main water filter and the small one by the pump.
6. To really clear the lines some people use the pump to suck up RV anti freeze until it comes out all the taps and toilet.
7. I have an attachment to my air compressor. I just blow 40 psi air through both the tank fill and city inlet valves and then go from outlet to outlet (hot and cold taps, shower, toilet) until only air and no water comes out.
8. Pour some RV anti freeze down the toilet and sink drain such that it gets into the tanks and sits around their drain valves.
9. Pour some antifreeze into the sink and shower drains to fill their P traps.

Life in our RV – Part 9 – Heating and Cooling

The RV is fairly well insulated. The floors, walls and ceiling have about 2 or 3 inches of Styrofoam and all the windows, except the windshield, are double panes of glass and have a pretty heavy tint on them.

If it is very hot or very cold, we close the heavy curtains we installed behind the driver and passenger’s seat.  This stops some of the heat loss or gain from those large windows up front and also reduces the interior volume of the RV a bit so it is easier to heat or cool. It does darken the RV quite a bit though.

Cooling

The simplest cooling method is the roof vents. There is one in the bathroom and one in the kitchen. The bathroom fan is a very basic one that doesn’t move much air and is very noisy.

 

The kitchen  one is an upgrade called a Fantastic Fan. It is very high volume and fairly quiet. It has 3 speeds and can also be set be thermostatically controlled and only go on when it gets hot. You can even optionally get wireless remotes for them.

 

They come with a crank up lid to prevent the rain from coming in when they are not in use. Most people buy extra covers that allow you to leave the lid open and run the fan even in the rain. The Fantastic Fan needs a bigger cover because of the higher air volume.

 

The RV has two roof air conditioners to do the real cooling. A 15000 BTU unit on the front and a 13500 BTU unit in the bedroom. You need two because they don’t make a single one that is large enough for this much interior space.

The AC’s can each be set to just blow straight down or to blow through the set of ducted ceiling vents distributed throughout the RV. When you are hot it is wonderful to stand under it blowing straight down!

You need to be on a 50 amp electrical hookup to run both at the same time. They have a high startup current and if they both started at the same time they would blow a 30 amp breaker.

I replaced the simple thermostat that controls the front AC and the furnace with a programmable one. The rear one still has the simple thermostat.

Surprisingly, we have not yet been anywhere that we felt we had to run the air conditioners or fans at night. If we had to, we could probably leave the front one on and it wouldn’t be too noisy for sleeping.

We normally don’t spend much of the daytime in the RV so if it is going to be hot, we leave a side window open a bit and the kitchen fan on low, just to circulate the air. I also leave the front AC to come on at 29C so that it doesn’t get too hot. Once we get home the two of them can cool us off pretty fast. Even one does an OK job if we are only on a 30 amp hookup.

We have noticed that, if the side of the RV is facing the sun, having the awning extended greatly reduces the amount of heat coming in the window by Jennie’s desk. I think I am going to have to buy some small awnings for the window by the dining table and for the one by my desk.

We replaced the curtains on most of the windows with insulated, light blocking versions. They help quite a bit with the heat but they make it very dark inside the RV. We will probably switch back once we get the awnings.

Heating

The RV comes standard with a 35,000 BTU propane furnace that blows the heated air through ducts in the floor throughout the RV. We almost never use it. For one thing the 12  volt fan used to blow the heat through the ducts is very loud. For another they are very inefficient. The furnace uses a lot of propane and if you feel the outside exhaust vent you can tell that a large percentage of the heat is being blown away.

We bought two 1500 watt electric box heaters ($20) to use as our main source of heat. We can only use these when we have an electrical hookup because they would quickly kill the batteries. Normally we only use one of them and it can maintain a very comfortable temperature even if the outside temperature gets down around 0C. I only use the second one if we want to heat things up quickly and if we are on a 50 amp connection. We also have a small desktop fan that helps distribute the warm air around the RV.

Another advantage of the electric heaters is that we don’t pay extra for the electricity as it is included in the nightly campground fee.

We never heat the RV when we are out or when we are sleeping. We have a thick comforter on the bed and that has kept us warm even on some below 0C nights. Jennie has worn a toque on a few of those nights though. When we first got the RV we bought an electric blanket but we have never actually needed it. The one time we used it we nearly roasted even though it was very cold inside.

If it is really cold out I do leave the furnace to come on if the the inside drops below about 5C to protect things from freezing.

On those cold morning I usually get up about 1/2 hour early, turn on one or both of the electric heaters and then run back to bed. By the time we get up the temperature has usually risen by about 10C to an at least tolerable level for us to get ready before we leave for the day. I have a heavy duty timed outlet at home that I will bring next time to turn the heater on for me in the morning.

The only time we do use the propane furnace is when we are staying without any electrical hookup and even then very sparingly. Maybe first thing in the morning or a few time during the evening. We would rather dress warmly than listen to the racket from the fan. The fan also uses a lot of battery power.

Propane Usage

The appliances that can use propane are the cooktop and oven, the refrigerator, the water heater and the furnace.

Normally we run the refrigerator from the 120V AC. If the power goes away it will switch to run on propane. You can also force it to always run on propane even if power is present. We use this setting when we are without hookups because if I turn on the inverter I don’t want to power the frig from the batteries. It draws about 35 amps. When we are on the road I do let it be powered by the inverter because the engine’s alternator is keeping the batteries charged. I also like to turn off the propane when driving for safety’s sake.

Jennie hardly ever uses the oven as you have to manually light it each time and she would rather just use the toaster oven.  She also stores all her pots and pans in there.

I will talk about the water heater in another post on the water system.

The RV comes with a 24 US gallon propane tank.

In the 4 1/2  months we have been out we have used a bit more than 1/3 of a tank mostly by the cooktop.

We do have a portable BBQ. I bought a I fitting that allows me to run it off the main propane tank. We don’t seem to use it much though, as it is a pain to take out, use, clean and put back. Also, the tank and the space big enough for the BBQ are on the far side away from the door. If we start staying longer at each place we will use it more often.

The fitting also allows you at add an external propane tank. If you were at a site for a long time and didn’t want to move the RV just to fill the main tank you can just buy a portable tank, connect it up and use it as though it was the main tank. Though from the amount of propane we use and the amount we move around, it will be a while before I need this feature.

Life In our RV – Part 8 – Electrical System

Another really long involved one… I hope it is correct but if  any electrical engineers out there (Harvey) find any errors, please let me know.

There are really three separate but interconnected electrical systems in the RV.

Chassis Battery

The 12 volt chassis battery is the same as the battery in your car. It is mainly used to start the engine and power all the electrical components as in a car. It is charged by the alternator when the engine is running. This type of battery is good for providing short bursts of high current such as is needed to run the starter motor. They are not good for powering things for a long time and like to be kept fully charged and can get harmed or ruined if you run them down too far without charging them.

House Batteries

The 12 volt house batteries are what are called deep cycle batteries. They don’t like to provide high current but are very good at providing low to medium current for a long time. They can also be discharged to almost 80% of their total capacity without harm, although most people never go below 50%.

A batteries capacity is measured in amp hours. With a 1 amp hour battery you could power something that required 1 amp at 12 volts for one hour before the battery is completely discharged or 2 amps for 1/2 hour, etc.

Batteries like to be drained slowly. The higher the current you draw the less total amp hours you get out of the battery. The rating on most batteries is determined with a load of 25 amps. For example the batteries I have are rated at 225 amp hours so I could run the 25 amp load for 9 hours but if I tried a 50 amp load it would not run for 4.5 hours but much less.

I actually don’t have 12 volt batteries but 2 6 volt golf cart batteries connected in series to get 12 volts. The 6 volt batteries are physically about the same size as the 12 volt ones but have much thicker plates to more easily withstand the deep discharges.

The house batteries power all the lights in the house part of the RV. They also power the control board in the fridge, the fan and control board in the furnace and they power the inverter I bought to provide 120 V AC (as in your house) when we are not connected to electrical hookups.

The batteries are in the open under the steps.

120 Volts AC

This system powers all the normal things you have in your house. The wall outlets, the microwave, the fridge, the air conditioners, water heater, etc.

When I get to a campsite I pull a very heavy power cord out of a compartment to plug into the campsite electrical system to power all my appliances. This is called “shore power”, taken from the boating world.

The RV is designed to be plugged into a 50 amp outlet. Since volts times amps equals watts I can power 50 amps * 120 volts = 6000 watts of appliances. So I could easily run a 1500 watt space heater, an 1800 watt hair dryer and the 1000 watt microwave without blowing the breaker.

A lot of the public and some of the older private campgrounds only provide 30 amp outlets. I have an adaptor for my 50 amp cable but we have to be more careful with the things we try to run at the same time.

Surge Protector

A the end of the shore power cable I installed a heavy duty surge and voltage protector.

Campground electrical system are sometimes a dangerous thing to connect your RV to. There could be hundreds of RV attached and who knows how well they are all wired. Also the wire runs to your outlet from the distribution panel could be very long or have undersized wire which causes the voltage provided to be a lot less that the expected 120 volts. The problem this causes is that a 1500 watt heater draws 12.5 amps at 120 volts. At 90 volts it will try to draw 1500 / 90 =  16 amps which will at least blow a breaker and could overheat the wires and possibly cause a fire.

When I first plug in, the protector checks that the outlet is wired and grounded properly. If not it doesn’t let the power through. Then it watches for voltages low or high out of the expected range and suppresses voltage spikes from such things as lightning.  If anything does happen it disconnects the RV.

You can buy these either with normal plugs on each end but then you have to leave your $400 surge protector hanging from the power outlet outside the RV. I opted for the permanently wired one that is somewhat safer inside the storage bay.

Generator

If the campground doesn’t have electrical hookups, the RV has a 6500 watt generator in one of the compartments. The generator runs off the engine fuel tank but is hooked up so that it will always leave 1/4 tank.

To use it I just plug the 50 amp shore power cable into an outlet wired to the generator. Some RV have automatic switchover boxes that connect to RV to the generator when it is started.

The problem with using the generator is that it is VERY LOUD and uses a lot of gas. We almost never need 6500 watts of power. I wish it was smaller and quieter.

Smart Meter

The RV comes with a monitor panel to display battery charge level but it just basically 4 LEDs saying 0,1/3, 2/3,full which is pretty useless.

One of the first things I added to the electrical system was a Trimetric 2020 Battery Monitor. It provides a digital readout of the battery voltage and current number of amps being drawn from the batteries but the most useful things it does is record the number of amp hours than have been used since the battery was charged. When we are camped using battery power alone this is the easiest and best measure of how much battery capacity I have left.

Inverter

As an alternative to the generator, when we have no hookups,  I installed a 2000 watt inverter that takes 12 DC power from the batteries and converts it to 120 volt AC.

The inverter can provide power to all the wall outlets and to the fridge. If it senses shore power it does nothing but if the shore power goes away it will start drawing from the house batteries.

Now the number of batteries I currently have could never provide 2000 watts of power. 2000 watts at 12 volts = 2000/12 = 166 amps. That would very quickly kill my batteries. I plan to add more batteries in the future once I can figure out a place to put them that can support the weight and has the proper venting.

This means when we are using the inverter we cannot use any high wattage appliance such as the microwave, toaster oven, coffee maker, etc.

I have a separate outlet, not connected to the inverter, for our electric space heater. As we tend to have it on for long times I don’t want the inverter to ever try and power it if we have a shore power failure (which has happened).

Having the inverter also allows us to power our laptops, the fridge and the stereo when we are driving.

A note on inverter types. In your house the 120 volt AC is delivered as a smooth sine wave (remember your high school math). Some cheaper inverters try to approximate this with a square wave. A lot of high end electronics such as some TVs will refuse to run on the square wave type.

Installing the inverter was a real pain. The 120 volt circuit breakers are at the very back on the drivers side. The inverter should be installed as close to the batteries as possible so that the 12 volt wiring is as short as possible (since it carries more amps). The batteries are located under the door mid way down the passenger side. Since the invert can draw up to 30 amps at 120 volts you need to use heavy 10 gauge cable. You must also use stranded cable everywhere as it stands up better to the flexing from the movement when driving.

To split off the items to be powered by the inverter I had to remove those wires from the main circuit breaker panel and add a second panel that is powered by the inverter.

So the sequence was:

1. remove circuits from the main panel
2. add a 30 amp breaker to the main panel
3. snake 30 feet of 10 gauge cable from the 30 amp breaker to the inverter
4. add the second breaker panel and wire up to the outlets
5. snake 30 feet of 10 gauge wire back from the inverter to feed the second panel.
6. connect 6 feet of 2 gauge cable to the batteries

One problem with this big an inverter is that just having it turned on and not powering any loads it still draws a bit more than 1 amp from the batteries so I just usually turn it off when we don’t need it.

It does have what is called load sense mode where the inverter will go into a low power state and it will wake up every so often to see if you have turned something on and will then will supply power but it doesn’t seem to work very well with very low power things like clocks and our router.

Battery Charging

First a short course on the type of batteries called “flooded cell” that I have.

With no load, a fully charged battery will show a voltage of 12.7 volts. At 50% charge it will show 12.1 volts and 10% it will show 11.5 volts.

However the best way to tell the charge state of a battery is to measure the specific gravity of the electrolyte in each cell with a hydrometer. This is like a turkey baster with a float and a calibrated scale inside. You open us the cell and suck up some of the liquid. The level at which the float goes up indicates the specific gravity of the scale. The manufacturer has charts of specific gravity to charge state.

Batteries like to be charged by what is called a 3 stage smart charger.

First the charger enters bulk charging mode. It raises the voltage well above the full level. For my batteries the recommended voltage is 14.8 volts. It also pushes a high but not too high current into the battery. This is usually 15% to 20% of the amp hour rating so in my case the charger supplies about 40 amps.

As the battery voltage starts to rise as it charges, the charger switches to what is called the adsorption stage. Here it keeps supplying the high voltage but starts reducing the amount of current so as not to overcharge them.

Once the batteries stop accepting current, the charger enters the float stage and reduces the voltage supplied to a bit over the full limit (in my case 13.2 volts) and supplies small amounts of current only when the battery accepts it.

The charger also has a temperature sensor connected to a battery post. All of the required voltages vary with the battery temperature. For example a cold battery need to show a higher than 12.7 volt reading to indicate that it is charged.

The charger I got is actually a combination inverter/charger called a Xantrex ProSine 2.0. With the combination, both use the same 120V and 12V wires. This unit is very programmable so that you can set the proper charging parameters as recommended by your particular battery manufacturer.

The remote display panel is used to program the charger, displays any alarms such as low battery voltage, and gives a real time display of the amount of battery power it is using and the status of the 120V AC input.

Solar Panels

When we stay somewhere without electrical hookups you will still have to charge the batteries somehow if you stay long enough. Normally this would be done by running the noisy generator to power the battery charger. This is rather wasteful as the charger only draws a few amps at 120 volts from the 50 amp generator.

I wanted a nicer way to do this so we installed some solar panels on the roof of the RV.

I have 2 150 watt panels installed to give me about 25 amps of charging current. I can easily add more panels as the need arises. The system can handle up to 45 amps of charge current.

The panels are connected to a charge controller designed for solar panels. It is also a smart charger and take the 17 volts from the panels and converts it to the proper voltage to charge the batteries.

I guess it gets hot as the huge black part is al heat sink.

I did all the wiring from the batteries to the controller and from the controller to just below the roof. I let the professional installers punch the hole in the roof and mount the panels because I wanted it done properly without any leaks.

The mounting brackets also come with arms so in the winter when the sun is low in the sky you can tilt the panels up for more direct exposure.

Because I like gadgets I got the optional display panel which tells you battery status and what power you are getting from the panels.

Unfortunately the two times we have camped without hookups so far, the sites were so shaded that the panels we useless and I had to use the generator. 

Battery controller

There is also a box that does sometimes connects the house batteries to the chassis battery.

For one, if you happen to run down the chassis battery you can press a button that connects the house batteries and you can try and use them to start the engine.

Running down the house batteries does not affect the chassis battery.

The controller also allows the engine alternator to charge the batteries although it is not a smart charger and is not all that good for the batteries especially if they are somewhat discharged. I watch once as I started the engine, the alternator tried to push 100 amps into the batteries.

I have heard of people that have disabled this function and just rely on their solar panels when they are driving. Not sure yet…

Battery Maintenance

Every month you should open the cap on each cell and check that the electrolyte level is high enough. The manufacturer tells you what to look for. If it is low you should add distilled water to bring it up to the required level.

If any of the cells where low you should run the battery through a charge cycle to mix up the electrolyte before you proceed.

Then you should measure the specific gravity of each cell. If any differ from the others you should get your charger to do an equalize charge on the batteries. This put a high voltage (15.5 volts) but a moderate constant current into the batteries to try to force the low cells to charge. Every hour you should stop the charger, let the batteries rest a bit and check  if the specific gravities have become equal.

What the RV Originally Had

When I first got the RV it had no inverter and no smart charger.

The batteries were 2 12 volt Group 27 deep cycle batteries rated at a total of 200 amp hours.  These are more like marine batteries that you would use to start your engine or run a trolling motor. Not nearly as good as the golf cart batteries (but a lot cheaper).

It also came with what is essentially a 12 volt power supply to run the 12 volt lights when we are plugged in. It would also charge the batteries but did a terrible job of it and would never supply enough voltage to fully charge them.

It essentially ruined the batteries. Even after I added the smart charger they would never fully charge. I could only get about 30 amp hours out of them before they were dead so I bought the new ones.

Lighting

In order to conserve power I converted some of the incandescent 12 volt bulbs to LED bulbs. As these bulbs cost about $15 a shot I only converted the ones we tend to leave on a long time.

Two of the old bulbs would draw about 5 amps from the batteries. Two LED bulb draw 0.2 watts.  I essentially never worry about those lights being on. They are a bit dimmer though.

Running on Batteries

When we are without hookups and running on batteries every amp counts.

1. We only use the incandescent bulbs when necessary and for as short a time as possible.
2. If we don’t need the inverter we shut it off.
3. I have switches and power bars to disconnect anything that we don’t need but that draws power even when turned off.
4. We swap out Jennie’s 30 inch TV for the 17 inch one from the bedroom. It uses about 1/4 the power and even has a low power mode.

With some lights, both computers, Jennie’s PVR and TV on we draw about 10-12 amps. If she watches TV for about 4 hours we use about 50 – 60 amp hours in a night.

With the laptops, I haven’t yet figured out if it is better to run them on their batteries and then charge the batteries or to just leave them plugged in all the time so as not to drain the laptop batteries.

Enough for now.

Life in our RV – Part 7 – The Driving Experience

When we were looking into buying an RV I will admit that I was very worried about driving one of these monsters. The test drive we did before we bought allayed my fears a bit. It was far from relaxing. I had a death grip on that steering wheel and probably needed a shower afterwards but I knew I could get use to it.

Between the time we bought the RV and actually picked it up I tried to find some driving courses for big RVs. The closest I could find were for large delivery trucks. Most were for getting your Class A license to drive a transport truck. In the US, some RV dealers do run RV specific courses.

The most useful thing I did find was a set of online videos.

RV Driver Confidence Course

I have watched them many times and taken many notes, which I even now look over occasionally.

Keeping in Your Lane

Now the RV looks huge when you stand beside it. With the car behind, it is 56 feet long and over 12 feet tall but those don’t really matter when you are driving. It is the width.

Initially the biggest problem I had was keeping in my lane. The RV is 101 inches wide and the minimum width for an interstate highway is 144 inches. Now 40 inches of leeway may seem like a lot but that is less than 2 feet on each side when you are centered. It looks like much less when you are driving. Lots of the secondary road are even smaller and with no shoulders if you make a mistake.

One trick I learned from the videos was to put a piece of tape low on the windshield to mark where the center line of the road should be when you are centered in your lane.

I NEVER take my eyes off the road and always keep both hand locked on the wheel (sometimes very tightly). If I need anything I always get Jennie to hand it to me.

Wind

The RV is really a giant sail. You REALLY have to watch the wind as you can get blown out of your lane very easily.

An especially bad place is going down a hill into a river valley. The road down is usually notched into the valley wall so you are protected from the wind. Then you cross the bridge at the bottom and get blasted by the winds from the side.

Head and tail winds do not really affect the drive very much other than the change in gas mileage.

As I said in the posts when driving across the prairies, driving in a cross winds is very tiring, especially if they are gusty. You are constantly turning the steering wheel to counteract the changing side force. Sometimes I have to turn so much I can actually hear the tires squealing because they are actually running a bit sideways.

Another thing to watch for is being passed by transport trucks. As they come up behind you they have a bow wave that pushes you to the shoulder.  Then as they pass you get sucked back towards the center in the vacuum behind the bow wave.

Mirrors

You really learn to use your side mirrors in the RV. Obviously you have no rear view mirror and the rear monitor is not much use because it is mainly for backing up and can only see about 30 feet behind the RV.

The mirrors on my RV are mounted out the side windows as in a car. Some RV’s have them mounted out front so you can see them through the windshield. I think I would have preferred this because it is less of an eye movement to check them but I am not sure if having part of my windshield view blocked would bug me.

Each mirror has a flat section and a convex section below it. The convex section covers most of the view beside the RV but there is still a small blind spot just behind my shoulder on the drivers side. The blind spot on the passenger side is much larger as a car can easily hide there and I wouldn’t know it. The side view cameras help but to activate them I have to put on my turn signal which can scare people when they think I am going to turn into them.

There is also a large blind spot directly behind the RV where again a car can easily hide without me knowing it is there but this is less of a problem unless they suddenly pop out to pass.

I have just learned to always check the mirrors to know what cars are around me and coming up beside me.

Lane Changes

Lane changes in traffic are just about the scariest maneuver.  I always try to make these as far in advance as possible to wait for an open spot and can move over when I know there is no one beside me.. Having the GPS warn of upcoming changes helps.

Sometimes, though,  a lane ends without warning in heavy traffic and you just have to get over. In this case I just put on the turn signal and hope people let me in. People are usually kind of intimidated and get out of the way either from fear or kindness. In these cases I usually get Jennie to check the blind spot if I have to move right.

Knowing when a car is far enough behind you so that you can move over is also a challenge. The view in even the “flat” mirror is slightly distorted so objects do appear closer. In this case I usually use the wide view in the backup camera to tell me that the car is far enough back.

I also use the monitor to tell me that I am passed someone on the rare occasions that someone is driving slower than me and I have to pass them.

Turns

In the RV, as with all long vehicles, you have to make very wide turns and usually take more than one lane to make a 90 degree turn.

As with cars the turns basically pivot on the back wheels but in this case the back wheels are almost 30 feet behind you so you go way past where you normally think you start your turn.

On tight turns near other things you also have to watch as there is almost 10 feet of RV behind the rear wheels that can swing out quite far. I am especially careful around gas pumps.

The turning radius on the RV is not bad. I think I could do a U turn in about 4 to 5 lane widths.

The videos had a lot of tips on turning and it is now second nature.

Another weird thing is that sitting up so high and a bit back from the front of the RV, there is about 10 feet on the ground in front that you cannot see.  In tight places making turns it feels like you are driving right up on top of things when you really still have a lot of room.

Speed and Cruise Control

The RV is speed limited to about 70 mph but it gets downright scary from all the wobbling going down hills at anything over 65.

On an empty highway my usual cruising speed is about 55 mph or 90 kph. The RV feels nice and solid and the engine is not struggling too much.

The only times I go faster is in heavy traffic where it is best to keep up with the flow or when there are a lot of trucks on the road. I usually pick a truck and try and match it’s speed. I don’t mind forcing cars to pass me but trucks are another matter.

The engine is strong enough to keep a constant speed in high gear in all but a heavy headwind on a flat road. Going up even a slight hill will usually make it downshift. I have read that this engine is OK with high RPM but going up steep hills I usually let it downshift but never let the RPM go over about 4000 and just crawl up at usually about 35 mph or  about 60 kph. At that speed I can get up just about any hill without straining the engine too much. On two lane highways I know I annoy the drivers behind me but what can you do. Most highways have turnouts of some kind if there are a lot of hills.

If I am going down a valley I usually speed up on the downhill to have some extra momentum for the uphill.

I have also learned to really watch for the little speed limit signs they post for curves. I always slow down to the suggested speed because if you hit one too fast the lean in the RV is quite unsettling. I don’t want to learn what it would take to tip it.

The RV has a cruise control but I rarely use it. It usually downshifts so much to maintain the speed on even the smallest hill  that the engine is screaming. I do use it on long flat stretches as it gets better gas mileage that I can because it feeds just enough gas to maintain the speed.

To control my speed on long down hills, the RV has what is called “tow/haul” mode. You activate it via a button on the gear shift. If you hit the brakes going down a hill, the transmission will downshift to try and use engine compression to slow the RV. You can then let off the brakes and the RV will usually maintain its speed. If you brake some more or the speed starts increasing it will downshift some more. The engine is usually screaming but not using any gas and you are saving your brakes.

Towing

With an RV this big you just have to tow a vehicle to use to do your sightseeing. There are lots of interesting places to go that the RV would just not fit.

As I have said before, we just happened, 11 years ago, to buy the Honda  CRV which is one of the few vehicles that can be towed with all wheels on the ground. Jeeps and Saturns seem to be the other ones we always see.

To tow it we had to take it to hitch dealer and they basically take the front off the car to add what is called a base plate that attaches to the car frame and projects to pins through the front so that we can attach the tow bar that is connected to the trailer hitch on the RV.

We also had to a a light socket added to the front and the required wiring and diodes to light the CRV’s tail lights and turn signals to match those on the RV. In our case it is not really necessary as the lights on the RV can be seen over the roof of the CRV.

The two black cables are safety cables to drag the CRV along behind us in case the tow bar ever detaches. The blue cable is for the lights.

The tow bar attaches to the front of the CRV with pins. The arms are extendable and have the rubber sleeves on them so that the CRV doesn’t have to be in exactly the right spot to attach the bar. Once the bar is attached I back up the CRV until the bars are fully extended and they lock in place.

The little red wire is attached to the brake controller I will talk about below. If the CRV becomes detached it will cause the controller to lock the brakes on the CRV to quickly stop it.

With the tow bar removed the modifications are not that noticeable.

On some older bars, the tow bar stayed with the car instead of the RV so you drive around with this massive thing attached to your front bumper.

These tow bar are not cheap. The bar and base plate and installation cost me almost $2000.

When you tow something over a certain weight (can’t remember the number) it needs to have its own brakes that activate when the tow vehicle’s do. I had to buy the box that sits on the floor and clamps onto the CRV’s brake pedal. It has a piston and an air compressor and pushes against the driver seat. It must also have some sort of accelerometer because without any direct connection to the RV brakes it senses when I brake and applies varying amounts of brake pressure to the CRV pedal.

It is bit of a pain in the neck to take it in and out each time but it only takes a minute or two. You can buy built in units that go under the hood and use the cars own hydraulics to activate the brakes but neither type are cheap (this one was $1200) and the CRV is old so I wanted a portable unit.

Backing Up

With the car attached you never back up. When being towed the CRV’s steering wheel must be unlocked so the front wheels can follow the turns of the RV. If you back up they could flop to one side and you could wreck the steering, pushing the wheels sideways. I have heard that some people put a second person in the towed car to hold the wheel but others have said this is dangerous as they say the flop can happen quickly and you could break a finger or wrist.

If you do get into a situation where you must backup you disconnect and then reconnect the car.

When I do backup, such as into a campsite, I never make a move unless Jennie is behind me telling me exactly what to do. The mirrors and monitor help but it is very hard to judge distances. At the campsites we stop on the road, discuss where we want to end up and then staying in sight in my side mirror she uses hand signals to guide me. We have come up with a set of unambiguous signals that work for us. If I ever lose sight of her I stop immediately.

Getting Gas

The main problem with getting gas is that you can’t back up. A lot of stations these days have convenience stores and you drive up to the pumps facing the store. There is almost never enough room for me to get to the pumps and then move forward and turn, missing the cars parked at the store. So we never go to this kind of station.

We always look for stations where the pumps are parallel to the road but even some of the smaller ones of these don’t work, as the entry or exit is too close to the pumps and I can’t make the turn to get next to them.

Since we have to be so choosy I usual start looking for a station soon after we use half a tank. A full tank can take me about 500 miles or 800 kilometers.

Another problem at gas stations is pre-pay only pumps. If you pre pay with a credit card you can usually only (only he says) pump $100 of gas. With a 75 gallon or 285 litre tank even half a tank is over that with prices these days. So you have to go into the station and ask them to remove the prepay only from your pump, go and pump your gas and then go back and pay.

Waiting for that much gas to pump is kind of boring too.

Finally

After saying all this it must seem that it very scary to drive but it is not. It just demands constant attention. Due to this we usually limit our drives to from 2 to 4 hours. This works out as we arrive at our next campground just after lunch and still have time to do some exploring.

I won’t say it is fun to drive, as it is just a big lumbering brick on the road but I am much more relaxed now and don’t mind driving it at all, even on the twisty roads.

Life in our RV – Part 6 - Television

We have three main ways to get television.

Over the Air

The simplest is to get over the air broadcasts. We have a crank up bat wing antenna on the roof that via coax cable and a splitter goes to each of the TVs in the RV. The batwing is somewhat directional so you can rotate it from inside the RV to try and get the best signal. This doesn’t work very well for the new digital broadcasts where you tend to either get them well or not at all.

Whenever the batwing is up I put a clothes pin on the gear shift by the steering wheel. Many people have lost their antennas when they drive away with them up.

Cable

Some campground have cable connections at each site. They usually offer the basic cable channels and sometimes the premium pay channels.

To connect to this I put a cable jack in one of the bays. From the jack a coax cable runs up to the splitter box used by the “over the air” cable. I put an A/B switch on the input to the splitter with one input to the switch being the over the air antenna and the other the cable jack in the bay.

I think we have only been reduced to this one night when we just couldn’t find a hole in the trees for the satellite.

Satellite

We like to watch our local TV stations from home with local news so we much prefer the satellite connection.

We have only two choices in Canada; Bell or Shaw Direct.

I have heard that Bell customer service can get very rude if they discover that you are not using the system at home. They have even cut people off. I have heard that they are also trying to limit the footprint of their satellite signal to be mostly in Canada.

All the online forums and even the company I bought the setup from said to use Shaw Direct. They are much more RV friendly and they even sell RV rooftop antennas on their own website. It also seems that you can get a strong signal from their satellite even in Mexico.

Jennie has a two tuner HD PVR on her TV and I have a regular HD box on mine. With the Shaw dish this means I have to run three separate coax cables all the way out to the dish.

Dishes

Shaw offers two sizes of dish. I chose the larger one because I wanted the best signal possible even if I was on the fringes of the reception area.

The are many mounting systems for the dish. I chose the cheapest which is a tripod you stake into the ground.

The other easier to use options are usually mounted on the roof of the RV. The simplest just crank up and must be aimed manually. Most people these days buy the automatic ones that use a GPS to determine your location and automatically lock on to the satellite. Some are even inside domes and can be used while driving down the highway.

They also now make little carry out version of the domes that don’t have to be roof mounted.

If I had gone with Bell, the advantage is that they use the same system as DirectTv and DishNetwork in the US so that you can use the same dishes and therefore get the automatic ones much cheaper.

My tripod and dish cost about $200. The Bell automatic ones are usually in the $1500 range. The Shaw automatic ones are in the $2500 range.

Shaw uses its own system so the dishes are specific to Shaw. They are also much larger than the Bell dish and would not fit in a dome or carryout box.

I don’t think I will ever get a roof mounted antenna. We have been in too many tree’d campsites where no matter where I parked the antenna would be blocked. Even if I did get one I would still carry the tripod around.

Setup

I have a program on my laptop that tells me the azimuth/direction and altitude/height to find the satellites based on the nearest city.

I take my compass and first find a location where there is clear sky in the direction needed. If there are trees I use the compass as a protractor to see if the satellite is over the trees.

I take the tripod, set it up and put a magnetic two direction level on the post. Finding the satellite is much easier if the post is absolutely vertical. As the tripod legs are fixed length I use some wooden wedges I made to level it.

To hold the tripod down I use one of the giant screw in pegs people use to tie their pet leashes to in the backyard. I use a ratcheting cargo strap from the peg to the tripod and really crank it down.

At first I had tried to use tent pegs and bungee cords to hold it down. The first big wind storm blew it over and broke the arm off the dish. I have seen other people use hanging gallon jugs of water. I would never trust that.

As I said I need three coax cables out to the dish. I have three 100 foot RG6 cables tie wrapped together wound onto a garden hose reel. I just lay the reel on the ground by the RV and unwind what I need to get to the dish.

The dish and the arm won’t fit in the bay when attached so I have to put the arm back on each time I use the dish. I also set the correct elevation before I set the dish on the tripod. I swapped out all the nuts that came with the dish for wingnuts so that I don’t need tools to make the adjustments.

Once the dish is on the post I use the compass to point it as close to the correct direction as possible.

Then on go the TV and PVR to the installation screen. Jennie stands by the TV as I move the dish is small increments until we get a signal. If we are out of shouting range we use the walkie talkies.

While this sounds time consuming, from the time I walk out the door we are usually completely set up in under 5 minutes.

Even with the system I have, in a really strong wind the dish acts like a big sail and can spin the post off alignment. All it takes is a degree or two we lose the satellite. The post is only held in place by 3 bolts top and bottom just pressed up against the pipe. When this happens I just have to go out and tweak it a bit back in place. When I can, I place the dish out of the prevailing wind. I need to come up with a way of preventing the pipe from twisting.

Life in the RV – Part 5 – Internet and Phone

A long wordy and somewhat technical post.

Internet

We each have laptops. We also have an iPod Touch onto which we sometimes load PDFs of trail maps, etc to take with us. We have several ways to connect them to the internet.

Campground WIFI

These days most private campgrounds have to offer WIFI to remain competitive. None of the state and national parks we have been to offer it.

The quality of the WIFI varies greatly from campground to campground. Some have large high bandwidth connections while other may be remote enough that they use a satellite link.

One campground we were at, on a sat link, was limited to 400 Meg a day for everyone in the campground or they were cut off for 24 hours. It happened twice while we were there.

The larger campgrounds with lot of users or the small ones with low bandwidth links usually block such sites as YouTube or NetFlix. Even then they can be painfully slow.

Broadband Internet Sticks

When there is no WIFI we connect using a internet stick such as the Rogers “Rocket Stick” or the Bell “Turbo Stick”. These connect to the cellular network and use the same services that allow you to surf on your smart phone. I actually have one of each. I initially bought the Rogers one but then discovered, when we went to Newfoundland last year, that Rogers has no coverage there.

I bought both sticks outright and they were on month to month pay as you go plans. I knew I would only use them in the RV in the summer. They are both cancelled right now. I will probably have to pay a activation fee to get the one I choose going again.

Here in the states I bought a Verizon stick at Walmart. Again I bought it outright so it is not on a plan. I just buy top up cards at Walmart for $50. This gives me 1 month of usage and 1 Gbyte of data. I can’t currently top it up online as you need a credit card with a US address.

I think there are cheaper options than Verizon but most want a US address to bill you.

I only activate a top up card when I know we will be at a campground that has no WIFI. If the stick is active we sometimes use it even when there is campground WIFI because the campground’s connection can be so slow as to be unusable.

So far we have only been at one campground in the wilds of Oregon where I could not get a cell connection for the stick. Verizon has pretty good coverage just about everywhere and seems quite fast.

Router

I don’t like connecting our computers directly to these “public” networks as everyone on them can talk to ours.

I bought a router called a Cradlepoint MBR1000. I created a private encrypted network to which computers connect. This allows our computers to hide behind the firewall on the router and not be directly accessible.

The Cradlepoint has a USB port that I can plug in the internet sticks. This allows me to share the cellular internet connection amongst our computers.

I also bough another little box called a Pepwave Mini. When there is campground WIFI I configure the Pepwave to connect to the campground network. It is then connected to the Cradlepoint with an ethernet cable in the same way that your cable or DSL modem is connected to your home router, and shares its connection with our computers.

Some campgrounds still charge for the internet or give you vouchers that are only good for so many days. Using the Pepwave it only looks like I have one computer on their network so I only need one voucher.

Another advantage of the Pepwave is that it has a better antenna than the laptops so it more easily connects to the sometimes distant campground access points. I can also leave it in the front window where the line of sight is more unobstructed.

Future Upgrades

I would like to get an even better antenna for the Pepwave. Perhaps a large omni directional one on the roof or even a directional one that I can aim at the campground access point.

I would also like to get a cellular amplifier. A company called Wilson makes unit with an large antenna on the roof and  an amplifier. The amplifier can either connect directly to your stick or phone if it has an antenna port or it can rebroadcast the amplified signal via a small antenna inside the RV.

Telephone

Neither one of use the phone very much. In the RV we mainly use it to call campgrounds to make reservations.

I have a Bell phone and Jennie has a Rogers. They are both pay as you go. Mine is $100 a year and hers is $10 a month. We have never run out of minutes. They just expire.

Since roaming charges in the US are horrible we just went to Walmart and bought a $10 phone by Trac-phone. Then I bough 300 minutes that expire in 180 days for I think around $30. The only problem with this is that I don’t seem to be able to call Canada with it.

Last year sometime we got rid of our Bell landline at home and switched the number over to an internet phone from Vonage. $20 a month with many more features vs $50 a month for the Bell phone. You get a little box that you plug into your internet router and then plug your phones into the box. At home I just disconnect our inside phone lines from the Bell line coming through the wall and plugged the Vonage box into one of our phone jacks so that all the house phones can use it.

The advantage of this is that since the Vonage box works from any internet connection I can take it with us in the RV and now we have our home phone with us at all times. We usually leave it off though due to the usual nuisance calls. If someone leaves a message I get an email with a sound file of the message attached. The sound quality of the phone can suffer when the campground WIFI is bad.

To talk to our daughters in Canada we first try the Vonage phone and if that doesn’t work we try Skype on the computers.

Life in our RV - Part 4 – The Interior Layout 2

Kitchen

We have not done much to the kitchen other than add a few small appliances.
The fridge is 9 cubic feet with a good sized freezer. We have filled it pretty full a few times but mostly this size works for us. It can run from propane or 120V AC.
We have a full size microwave and a 3 burner propane stove top. We also have a small propane oven but we never use it. Currently it stores all the pots and pans.
We added a coffee maker which velcros to the wall when we travel. We also added a small toaster oven. To keep it in place I cut some small squares of wood, drilled holes in them and stuck them to the counter such that the legs of the oven fit in the holes.
You will notice there is not a huge amount of counter space. We requested that the dealer add (no charge) a fold up counter extension beside the sink. This helps a lot when washing the dishes.
One other thing I did was change the cupboard over the sink. It used to have a center post between the doors. I removed the post and unscrewed the doors and moved them closer together to cover the gap. It makes getting things in and out of the cupboard much easier.
There is one small problem with the design of the kitchen. The dinette and the kitchen up to the cook top are in the driver’s side slide.  If we stop for lunch while driving, with the slides in, the cupboard below the sink inaccessible and the sink is harder to use.
The RV came with covers for the sink and stove top that matched the counter top. We left them at home. I am not sure why you would ever use them. I guess in the showroom it makes it look like there is much more counter space.
All of our dishes and glasses are plastic. In addition to being unbreakable they make much less noise banging around when we are on the road.
Bathroom

Nothing amazing here except that the shower is big enough to actually use with a nice bright skylight.

The only change we made here was we had the dealer replace the fancy raised glass sink that was like one of these.

With an in counter stainless steel on that is much easier to keep clean. The only problem is that the new sink is a little small.

Notice everything is in baskets so it doesn’t fly away when we drive away.
The toilet is a special RV toilet. It uses almost no water. Since the “material” only has to drop straight down a short tube to the tank it doesn’t need that huge flush of water to move stuff along the pipes that a residential toilet uses. It has a pedal to flush, part way down just adds water, all the way to open a flap to flush. When done you just add enough water to seal around the flap to prevent the odours.
Bedroom
The bedroom has tons of storage. Three wardrobes, lots of drawers and cupboards over the bed. There is also storage under the bed.
There is also the third TV, a small one mounted at the end of the bed that we never use.

One of the wardrobes has the plumbing and power setup if we wanted to install an RV washer and dryer. I doubt we ever will. They want over $2000 for them; they are small; they take forever to dry things; you need  full hookups with sewer as they use a ton of water and most campground have laundries. $2000 can pay for a lot of loads at the campground.
The bed is what is called a short or RV king. It is full king width but 6 inches shorter that normal to allow it to fit when the bedroom slide is in. This wouldn’t do for me and would have been a show stopper because my feet would hang over the end. What the dealer did was add a fold out extension to the board under the mattress. With the slide out we unfold the board and pull the mattress away from the wall. They also gave us an upholstered piece of foam the same thickness as the mattress that we stick between it and the wall. Voila, a full sized king. The seam between the mattress and the extra piece bothered me a bit so we went to Walmart and bought a full sized 2 inch thick memory foam mattress topper.
It is a bit of a pain to fold and unfold the bed each time we move but a few times we have had to sleep with the slides in and the short bed was very uncomfortable.
When we eventually replace the mattress we will get a queen size to give us more space at the sides to move around.

The third wardrobe in the hallway to the bedroom.

There is a door whose edge you can see that closes to give some privacy (from whom I don’t know). When this side’s slide is closed the wardrobe is pressed up against the door and inaccessible. We then get to the bedroom through the two doors in the bathroom.
Safety
There is a smoke detector over the driver’s seat that we are constantly setting off when cooking.
There is a CO detector in the bedroom. The propane detector near the floor in the kitchen can shut off the propane from the tank if it loses power or detects any gas.
There is a fire extinguisher near the door and I added another one in the bedroom.
The window over the dinette and the rear window in the bedroom can unlatch at the bottom and swing out as emergency exits.
Slides
Here are some comparison pictures with the main slide out and in.


Still useable but it feels much smaller.