Category Archives: Maintenance and Repair

Battery Battle

It’s been such a long time, I almost forgot about this site. The truth is, the original intent was to keep family and friends up to date on our whereabouts and adventures while we traveled full-time in our motorhome. Since settling at Viewpoint in Mesa, Arizona, we have fewer travels and adventures to report.

We keep busy and our days are full of activity nonetheless though, it just gets repetitive to blog about it. Donna has her hands full with her non-profit group, Viewpoint Good Neighbors (www.vpgoodneighbors.org). There’s also the Viewpoint Tennis Club and league matches, her clarinet playing in the concert band, some golf when time allows and monthly flights to San Diego to check in and visit her mother.

I’m also active in the tennis club, playing recreationally and in league matches. I also participate as a league scorekeeper for the East Valley Senior Tennis League. I also string tennis racquets and my latest hobby/learning experience is building wristwatches. I could go on for pages about that, but for most people it’s probably a boring subject.

The reason for today’s post is a bit of a rant about car maintenance in general and battery replacement. Our Jeep Compass is equipped with two batteries. One is the “main” starter battery and the other is an “auxilliary” battery. The main battery starts the engine and provides electrical storage for various functions. Modern automobiles rely heavily on electronics and need a stable source of electrical energy.

The auxilliary battery is a small (Group 400) battery that has a primary function (or so I thought) of operating a few accessories when using the start/stop function. This is a superfluous feature that will shut off the engine when stopped in traffic for a few minutes, then restart the engine when you release the brake pedal. It’s design goal is to reduce fuel consumption and emissions during an EPA test cycle. In the real world, the effects are minimal at best. I habitually disable the system by pressing a button on the console after I start the engine.

We started getting a warning light on the instrument panel showing the start/stop as inoperative. Around the same time I also noticed the starter motor struggling a few times to start the engine after it had been driven. I suspected bad batteries and tested them. They were down to about 50% capacity. It was time to replace them before we ended up stranded with dead batteries.

I found suitable replacements online and went to Batteries Plus to buy a new Group 47 main battery and the aforementioned auxilliary battery. Their prices looked good and they showed both batteries in stock a few miles from home.

When I went to buy the batteries, I found the prices were higher than what I saw online. I asked about this and was told that online pricing and walk-in retail pricing weren’t the same. I asked if they would honor the online offer. The answers was no, they couldn’t do that but they would give me a 10% discount. This wasn’t enough to offset the pricing difference.

So, I said, “What if I ordered them online for in-store pick-up?” They said that would work. I stood there in front of their counter and used my smart phone to access the site and placed the order – to add icing on top I found a 15% discount coupon that I applied at check out! I saved over $90 this way. Insane way to do business, right?

Back at home,I removed the old batteries. Then I went to retrieve the new batteries from the rear cargo area of the Jeep. Well, without electrical power, the rear hatch cannot be operated. The latching mechanism is electrically operated with no mechanical means of opening it. This is the bane of modern vehicles relying solely on electronics for simple operations. I ended up folding down the rear seat and wrestling the heavy battery out of the back.

The connections on the auxilliary battery were interesting. There was a square, black box on top housing some type of integrated circuit. I had no idea of what its function was. I looked online but couldn’t find a wiring diagram or schematic for the vehicle that would give an overview of the system and how things interface. Obviously the auxilliary battery isn’t as straight forward as I assumed. When I disconnected the auxilliary battery, I made a mistake. I disconnected the negative terminal first – this is standard procedure to prevent a short from positive to ground when you remove the positive lead. Well, unbeknownst to me, the negative cable sprung itself back against the negative terminal making contact. I accidentally touched my wrench against a metal component while removing the positive terminal and this created a short to ground and a mighty electrical arc.

Main starter battery in the upper part of the photo with the red cover plate. Auxilliary battery in front of it, between the coolant reservoir on the left and windshield washer fluid container on the right. Note the four cable connections and integrated circuit box on top of the auxilliary battery.

I tucked the negative terminal under a nearby plastic tab and carried on – I should have done this from the start. I was a little concerned about the arc – this spark could cause a current surge through any active part of the electrical system connected to the auxilliary battery.

Modern cars contain computer networks with various functions and components electrically tied together. When you remove all power, some things need to be reset. This is best performed with a scan tool, but there are workarounds built into the software. After connecting the new batteries, I did a reset for throttle position and the infotainment system, then started checking functions. All was good except for one thing. The power door locks were inoperable as was the rear hatch latch.

I suspected a blown fuse from the battery arcing to ground and sending a power surge through the door lock/rear hatch circuit. This circuit is active all of the time to allow you to remotely unlock the car with the key fob. Now I had to track down the fuse without a wiring diagram.

There is a fuse panel in the engine compartment near the battery. I went through every fuse looking for a open fuse but didn’t find anything. The panel isn’t marked in any way to identify which circuit ran though each fuse. I did some digging online and after searching, I found a reference to fuse F38 in the interior fuse panel which is the door lock and rear hatch circuit. But, it didn’t tell me anything about where the interior fuse panel or F38 was located. I crawled around looking in all the usual places, under the dash or behind anything that could be an access panel. No luck.

After some more time searching online, I found a YouTube video of a guy adding an accessory to his Jeep Compass and he connected the power feed of this accessory to F38 at the fuse panel. I sat through a portion of his video to see where he found the fuse panel.

Before I go on, I should say that I’ve spent some time in a number of automobile factories in Germany, Slovakia, Portugal, Mexico and the USA. One thing you see there is the assembly-line build sequence. Typically the wiring harness with connectors is one of the first things installed in the body. From there, various parts are added and components are plugged into the harness as they go along and eventually the interior is built around them.

Well, this works well for assembly, but sometimes results in unintended servicing consequences. In an electrical circuit, a fuse or circuit breaker is there to protect components and wiring from excessive current. The fuse itself is expendable, meant to blow and open the circuit before damage occurs. They are consumables that should be easily replaced instead of replacing expensive components or rewiring burnt harnesses. So, with that in mind, you would think the logical thing to do would be to place the fuse panel in an easily accessible location.

Not so much with the Jeep interior fuse panel. They put the panel against the firewall on the driver’s side, above and to the left of the brake pedal. This put it behind wiring bundles in a small space squeezed in between the steering column and other bits. To reach it, first the lower dash panel needed to be removed. To remove the lower dash panel, the end plate of the dash facing the driver’s door needed to be removed. It was like peeling an onion. Once exposed, it was a very tight space and I could barely reach my hand in there, scraping against other parts in the way.

To make matters worse, once I started disassembling the lower panel, I found half of the fasteners were phillips head screws, but others were #20 torx fasteners. I used to have a complete set of torx drivers but they were lost when our trailer was stolen in San DIego. I haven’t needed them in the last 10 years or so, so I never replaced them. That meant a trip to Harbor Freight was up next to buy a new set.

Driver’s side lower panel and end plate

I was able to get fuse F38 out of the panel with a large hemostat, getting fingers on it was impossible. I installed a new fuse and presto! The door locks and rear hatch worked like new.

Interior fuse panel – F38 is the in the column of yellow 30-amp fuses, it’s the fifth one up from the bottom.

So that’s my rant about how a 30-minute battery change job turned into hours spent researching and peeling away parts. Next up, it looks like our golf cart batteries are nearing end-of-life. That’ll surely be a fun project!

Have a happy new year everyone and all the best for the year ahead.

Hot Times

July was mostly uneventful as the weather warmed up in the Valley of the Sun. As expected, it became downright hot in the metro-Phoenix area. Of course, the media sensationalized the hot weather, claiming a record number of days over 110 degrees. The Weather Channel almanac recorded a total of 20 days of highs of 110 or higher in Mesa for the month of July, including a stretch of 17 consecutive days starting on the 13th of July.

I don’t know where they record the official metro temperature for recordkeeping, but I imagine it’s somewhere in the concrete jungle near the Phoenix city center. There was also a lot of talk about the nighttime lows staying the 90s. I think some of this has to be attributed to the amount of desert that’s been paved over and the amount of concrete poured for various buildings over the last couple of years. This retains a lot of heat – more than the open desert.

With all of that in mind, a look at the almanac also shows that these high temperatures aren’t that unusual – it’s always hot here in July and August. The “record” number of consecutive days over 110 were set because we didn’t have “breaks” where the thermometer only hit 108 or 109.

The most unusual thing I’ve observed this summer is the lack of monsoon activity by this time of year. The southwest has a monsoon season the begins mid-June and extends through the end of September. The monsoon is characterized by intense thunderstorms, higher humidity and high winds. This weather pattern comes from moisture brought up from the west coast of Mexico and is strongest in Arizona although it also affects southern California, parts of Utah, Colorado and New Mexico.

Thunderheads and lightning have been visible over the Superstition Mountains from our place in Mesa, Arizona, but we’ve had very little rainfall and only a few windstorms with blowing dust. Much less activity than we normally see.

The hot weather curtailed much of the acitivity around here. In July, Donna continued to play tennis, starting at 6:30am to beat the heat and she also golfed early. I’ve given up pickleball for this stretch. Astrophotography is out of the question until temperatures cool or when we do our next housesit in a cooler climate.

In previous posts, I mentioned trouble with the swamp cooler in our Arizona room. The pump quit working and I replaced it. The drive belt for the squirrel cage fan also needed to be replaced. The new belt didn’t last – it quickly slipped and burned up. The guy at the Weather Shack told me I had the belt set too tight – it needs a certain amount of slack to work properly. I replaced it again and set it how he had instructed. Then the cooler quit working and I found the root cause of the drive belt troubles. The shaft bearings in the fan were shot and finally seized.

I thought about replacing the swamp cooler with a new one as it had served us well. There were drawbacks though. The main issue is high humidity in the monsoon season. Swamp coolers are most effective with dry air and lose their effectiveness as humidity rises. A replacement cooler would run about $2,500 plus installation.

I went to the Weather Shack and looked at alternatives. Specifically I was interested in looking at a ductless mini-split heat pump. Another alternative would be to add ducting from our existing heat pump to the Arizona room, but that had drawbacks as well. It would mean running ducting through the crawlspace and putting in floor vents. Additionally it would also require a return duct to circulate the air back though the evaporator housing. This would reduce our limited floor space. It would also cost about $2,500.

A mini-split ductless system splits the air conditioning unit or heat pump into two separate elements. You have the compressor and condenser unit that is situated outside of the house. From there copper tubes carry the refrigerant into the house to the evaporator and interior fan unit. This splits the cooling (or heating) unit from the blower assembly with only a couple of hoses joining the two with no need for ducting.

I wasn’t sure of what size unit I would need for our 400-square-foot Arizona room and I was also skeptical of making it a do-it-yourself project. It would require a few special tools and equipment to do it properly. The guy at Weather Shack gave me contact information for a guy he recommended for installation, Dan Shroeder. I called him right away and he stopped by later that afternoon.

He looked the Arizona room over and checked how much heat was coming from the ceiling. The metal roof over the Arizona room was surprisingly cool, due to the Cool Foam installation I had done last year. Although it was 114 degrees outside with full sun on the roof, inside we could place our hands on the ceiling and it wasn’t hot. He said a one-ton unit was all I needed. He said if I bought the mini-split heat pump from the Weather Shack, he could do the installation the following day, Friday, July 14th.

The Weather Shack had a stack of Hessaire mini-split heat pumps on sale. I bought the one-ton heat pump kit for $532 including tax. This was an unbelievable deal – Home Depot wanted nearly $900 for the same unit. Dan showed up with a helper the following morning and did an excellent job. He had it up and running shortly after noon.

He told me the main failure point on mini-split systems is the connectors of the refrigerant tubing. He cut the ends off of the copper tubing and made new flares as he didn’t trust the factory flares. They could easily be damaged during shipping. He also replaced the foam insulation sleeves over the copper tubing with another type that he said was more UV resistant and durable. He wired a dedicated power circuit from the household electrical service panel. He had the proper equipment to evacuate the system to eliminate any moisture before he charged it with refrigerant. Altogether he did a fine job and charged $500 which I thought was more than fair.

Hessaire mini-split heat pump outdoor unit
Refrigerant tubing is under this cover and enters the room at the top
Mini-split indoor evaporator and blower interior assembly

Now I needed to have the swamp cooler removed and the hole in the wall for the swamp cooler duct filled in. I called Paragon Home Services and they came out and removed the swamp cooler.

Covering and sealing the hole for the swamp cooler duct – siding was added later

They did a good job filling the hole in the wall and repairing the interior drywall. The worker commented on the 2×4 framing of the Arizona room. He said it was solid and better than what he usually sees in these type of room additions. They charged $375 for the job and hauled the swamp cooler away.

We are very happy with the outcome. Our Arizona room is comfortable and we’ll be able to utilize the mini-split system for heat in the winter so that’s a plus.

I dropped Donna off at Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport at dark-thirty on Sunday morning, July 23rd. She had a flight to Cincinnati, Ohio for band camp. I know, band camp jokes, right? She had a busy week with classes, seminars and practices that entailed about five hours of playing the clarinet daily. The camp finished on Friday and she then flew to Tampa, Florida to visit her sister, Linda. She came back Monday evening, the last day of July.

Meanwhile, I was holding the fort down and trying to keep Ozark the cat company. It was getting a bit boring. To break things up, I went to RJ’s cigar shop one afternoon. This shop has a large walk-in humidor and a two-room cigar lounge. To enjoy a fine cigar in the air-conditioned lounge, you have to buy a cigar there. My previous experience with these types of lounges found high prices on the cigars they sold. I was pleasantly surprised to find RJ’s prices were very reasonable – within a buck or two of online pricing.

I figured that I would splurge on a cigar I wouldn’t normally buy for my home humidor. I went for a Padron Serie 1926 – it was a $23 cigar. And it was worth every penny. I read my Kindle and enjoyed puffing for about 90 minutes. I saw three guys come in together with a cooler. They bought cigars and sat around a table in the lounge and proceeded to pull beers out of the cooler while they talked and puffed. Hmm, is this legal?

I came back a few days later and bought another Padron, a 1964 this time. I think this may be my all-time favorite cigar. It lasted two hours while I read again. I asked the shop owner about bringing your own drinks into the lounge. He said it was fine and if I wanted to bring liquor he had an ice machine, cups and mixers in the back room. Who knew?

My diet suffered while Donna was away – nothing new there. Here are a few of the dishes she prepared before she left. I don’t cook like that, although I do have a few specialties for the grill and smoker and I make killer grilled cheese sandwiches, omelets and Japanese fried rice.

The first plate is a Mediterranean chicken skewer with cilantro lime rice and Mexican corn on the side. Delicious! (We bought four prepared skewers for under $10 from Costco – a great find.)

The next dinner plate is shoyu chicken over rice with grilled bok choy. A favorite for sure.

I couldn’t pass up USDA Prime beef tender loin steaks (filet mignon) at Costco. I grilled the steaks medium rare and Donna made sides of green beans with bacon and roasted baby potatoes.

That’s about it for dinner examples. This afternoon, we’ll be meeting Mike and Jodi Hall at RJ’s Cigars. Mike and I will puff stogies and solve world problems while the girls catch up. I’ll bring a cooler this time.

Not much to report weatherwise. It will continue to be hot for the next couple of weeks. Monsoon rain should arrive sooner or later. I don’t see any sign of rain in the 10-day forecast.

Tucson Housesit

It’s the last day of May already. Every year, time accelerates and the years fly by. May was an eventful month. We started the month by celebrating our anniversary on Cinco de Mayo at Baja Joe’s. We ended the month by celebrating Donna’s birthday on Memorial Day weekend with dinner at Alessia’s Ristorante Italiano. We love that place!

We had our first housesitting “job” through Trusted Housesitters. We drove down to a home southwest of Tucson, Arizona. It was in a neighborhood of custom homes on large lots south of the area called Tucson Estates. It was a very nice house with a pool and jacuzzi.

The job included taking care of two dogs – one was a big, one-year-old labrador named Rebel and the other a little chihuahua called Lil Bit. The lab was pretty rambunctious, although he would settle down after a bit and would sit on command. We knew that part of the deal was allowing the dogs to sleep with us in the master bedroom, but it was too much for me. So Donna slept with the dogs while I retired to the guest room. The dogs really only required a minimum of care – give them treats, feed them at their scheduled times and clean the yard after them. There was also a tortoise named Diego, but he was still hibernating so we didn’t see him.

We treated the week as a mini-vacation. We dined out for dinner with a friend in Tucson, Kathleen Wessels and her mother Sandy. We had lunch at Tiny’s and another lunch at the Coyote Pause Cafe. We also had a great breakfast at Coyote Pause – we really like that cafe. We enjoyed the Arizona Sonoran Desert Museum one morning, which was less than 10 miles away. The museum is more like a zoo for native animals and botanical garden. We spent about two hours hiking through the property.

View looking east from Arizona Sonoran Desert Museum
Flowering saguaros at Arizona Sonoran Desert Museum
Black bear at the museum

I could add pages of pictures from the museum – but I won’t. I think I’ll back pedal a bit to some earlier events in May. On the second week of May, I made three trips to the Weaver’s Needle Viewpoint to capture images of the Pinwheel Galaxy (M101). I ended up processing 161 sub-exposures for a total integration time of 3 hours 21 minutes.

Pinwheel Galaxy (M101)

This galaxy is 25 million light years away from earth. Donna asked me to put a light year into context – she asked me how far is the moon in light years. Well, the moon on average is about 220,000 miles from earth. Light travels 186,000 miles per second, so the moon is less than 1.2 light seconds from earth! The sun is about 8 light minutes from earth.

The interesting thing is, eight days after I completed my image of M101, one of the stars in a spiral arm of the galaxy exploded into a supernova. This was first seen by an amateur astronomer in Japan. The supernova marks the end of life of a star as it explodes into intense heat and light. The bright star can be seen in photos taken after May 19th – although the actual event occurred 25 million years ago. I don’t know how long this star will burn so brightly – it may be weeks or months.

I packed my astronomy gear for the trip to housesit in Tucson. The sky would be dark in the area we were going to. I took my big APM 140-980 telescope.

Gear packed in our Jeep Compass – pay no attention to that bottle of Irish whiskey

I set up my telescope and mount in front of the house. The really nice part was, I only had to remove the telescope and store it, I could leave the mount set up where it was for next four nights.

Telescope set-up in Tucson

I wanted to try capturing an image of something new while we were there. I targeted a globular cluster in the constellation Hercules called M13. Globular clusters are gravitationally bound, stable groups of tens of thousands stars. They are a real challenge for newby astrophotographers.

Over three nights, I was able to get 365 usable sub-exposures for a total time of 6 hours five minutes. I’m pleased with the results.

Globular Cluster M13

M13 contains over 100,000 stars and is one of the brightest globular clusters in the northern hemisphere. It’s roughly 25 thousand light years away from earth.

I had one maintenance chore at home earlier this month. We cool the Arizona room with a swamp cooler. The cool air circulates to the front of the house providing some moisture and lowers the workload on our air conditioner.

One morning, I realized it wasn’t blowing cold air – it was pulling ambient air from outside. After a quick inspection and a couple of tests, I determined the water pump was shot.

Swamp cooler water pump

There’s a store that carries swamp coolers and parts about a mile away from Viewpoint. I found a replacement pump for $35 and installed it. But it’s never that easy, is it? While I was connecting the pump to the water distribution pipe, the plastic fitting broke. The threaded portion of the fitting was stuck inside the distribution manifold. After a few attempts with various tools, I managed to extract it. I made another run to the shop and found a replacement fitting.

Water distributor with fitting broken off inside

I put everything back together, and then the drive belt for the squirrel cage fan went kaput! One more trip to the shop for a belt and all is good now. The cooler is blowing cold air and it only cost me $45 in parts and three trips to the shop – about two hours for what should have been less than half an hour total!

Donna made a couple of new chicken dishes. The first is a skillet dish called Chicken Afritada with potatoes, carrots, celery, peas and Castelvetrano olives.

Skillet chicken dinner

Last night, she made seared Duroc pork chops with a side of calabacitas, which she saw on the menu at Coyote Pause. It was delicious.

The weather down in Tucson was similar to the daytime temperatures here in Mesa. The nights were cooler though. For the month of May, we’ve had highs ranging from the mid-80s to high 90s. We had 100 degrees on just one day. This is cooler than this time last year. The next two weeks are forecast to be more of the same – mid to high 90s for daytime highs with overnight lows in the high 60s. I won’t complain about that!

Nine Years After

A week ago Wednesday, I drove Donna to the Cortez Munipal Airport as planned. She was flying out to San Diego for a long weekend with her sisters to attend her nephew’s high school graduation commencement. Her flight out of Cortez was on a regional airline, Boutique Air, in a Pilatus PC12 aircraft. These are small, single-engine turbo-prop planes built in Switzerland. They have an excellent reputation and safety record. Boutique Air configures the planes to carry eight passengers and two crew – pilot and co-pilot. The co-pilot doubles as a flight attendant.

They have two filghts between Cortez and Phoenix daily as well as four flights between Cortez and Denver.

Pilatus PC12 arrived from Phoenix and will turn around and go back to Phoenix

In the photo above, the plane arrived from Phoenix and is being made ready for the flight back to Phoenix. The Cortez Municipal Airport has one runway (3/21) that’s oriented roughly northeast/southwest – 30 degrees northeast and 210 degrees southwest. The prevailing winds are from the southwest so most takeoffs and landings are on the 210 degree heading.

The airport was made famous in 1959 when a USAF Lockheed U2 reconnaissance plane made a forced landing there after its engine flamed out at an altitude of 70,000 feet above sea level. The pilot was a Chinese (ROC Taiwan) Air Force Major on a night training flight from Laughlin AFB in Texas. He flew to Salt Lake City and turned back on a secret flight path. The U2 was a highly classified secret aircraft at the time. When his engine quit, he didn’t have much of a plan.

He glided to a lower alitude and attempted to restart, unsucessfully. It was dark and he didn’t know his precise location, just a general idea. He knew the area was mountainous and didn’t know of any airports in the area. By a stroke of luck or the grace of God, he ended up gliding between mountains in the high desert valley and spotted runway lights. His glide path and speed coordinated perfectly to line up a landing at the Cortez airport! If he had been a few miles east or west of the valley he would have slammed into a mountain in the dark night. It’s quite a story.

I had an uneventful four nights as a bachelor while Donna was away. I played pickleball, read books and took care of Ozark the cat. Donna had a nice time with her sisters – she hadn’t spent time with the three of them together in years.

Sunday afternoon Donna flew back to Cortez, backtracking her flights to San Diego. The Boutique Air flight from Phoenix landed at 3:36pm. She said she enjoyed the small aircraft – she hadn’t flown in a Pilatus before.

Donna in the doorway exiting the Pilatus PC12

In the photo above you can see Donna in the doorway exiting the aircraft and get a sense of scale for the small airplane.

Sunday evening we went to J Fargo’s Family Dining and Micro-Brewery on Main Street. We had dinner and a couple of brews and discussed our future plans. The water leak situation is only a minor leak, but fixing it is problematic. Our friend and fellow Alpine Coach owner Lynda Campbell told me she found an access panel in the back of the cabinet in the kitchen behind the shower wall.

I hadn’t seen this panel because it’s behind a wire rack where we store canned goods. I emptied the cabinet and removed four screws and pulled the panel out. This wasn’t going to help much. First of all, the guys that built this coach covered half of the access point with lauan plywood. This could be cut away without too much trouble, but there were still two concerns. It wouldn’t access the shower valve if that’s where the leak is. If the leak is at the shower head, I would need arms about a foot longer than I have to reach through the cabinet to fix it.

The leak is really small, but over time it will create water damage. Water damage is an RVer’s worst fear. We’ve been minimizing the leakage by only using the onboard water supply and turning on the water pump as needed. When we turn the pump off, we leave a tap open to relieve the water pressure and stop any subsequent leakage. This had been a tedious process and uses a lot more water than we normally use.

We need to get the coach into a shop where they can create a better way to access the shower plumbing. If we continued on to New Mexico as planned, we could probably find a competent shop. But we would need to have an open-ended stay at a motel while the work was being done and would have to bring Ozark into a motel room. Been there, done that and it wasn’t good.

We decided to leave Cortez a week ahead of schedule and go back to Mesa, Arizona. Here we have our own home and I can research repair shops to see who would be the best fit for this work.

At that point we agreed that moving forward, once repaired, we would sell the motorhome. Donna always said we would know when our time on the road was done. We’re done. Our future travel plans will probably involve B&B stays around the country in the summer months and we’ll stay in our park model home at Viewpoint Golf and RV Resort the rest of the year.

When I started this blog nine years ago, the stated purpose was to keep my family and friends informed of our whereabouts and our activities. With the RV lifestyle in the rearview mirror, this may be the last installment of this blog.

Day Trip to Hovenweep

It’s been an eventful week – some good, some not so good. I’ll start with the good stuff. Monday afternoon we drove over to the Cortez Elk’s Lodge and enjoyed a cold brew on the patio. The view was similar to our back deck – we were overlooking the golf course. Donna wanted to check out the golf course and driving range there.

Golf course view from the Cortez Elk’s Lodge

Donna wants to hit a few balls at the driving range and maybe play a round on the course while we’re in Cortez.

I played pickleball on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. I took Thursday off as I had an appointment with Clint, the only local RV repair guy – but that’s another story I’ll get to later in this post. Donna alternated between pickleball and tennis. Friday was too windy for pickleball.

On Friday morning, Donna went over to the Owers Farm to help Carolyn with weeding. Then, after lunch, we made a trip to Hovenweep National Monument. It’s about an hour drive from Cortez on mostly two-lane county roads across the border into Utah. Hovenweep is an interesting place. It was inhabited over 800 years ago by a large number of ancestral Pueblo people – what were formerly called Anasazi. These people were farmers and also skilled at building, utilizing bricks made from mud, rock and plant material. Most of the building ruins there were originally built from 1230 to 1275 AD.

The area is thought to have had many creeks and springs providing water to the canyon where Hovenweep is located. Around this same time, the Mesa Verde cliff dwellings were also built. The people of Hovenweep didn’t stay here for long. It’s theorized that after the towers, storage buildings and dwellings were built, decades of drought ensued. It was once thought that the ancient Puebloans simply disappeared. Nowadays we know that they relocated – some went to the Rio Grande valley in what is now New Mexico, others went south to the Little Colorado watershed in Arizona.

Today, the Navajo, Hopi and Zuni tribes can trace their ancestry back to these people. We hiked from the visitor center to the Square Tower, then on the way back we took the Tower Point loop. The hiking path was well-marked with stone boundaries and the terrain was uneven, flat stones. Wear good, sturdy shoes if you come here!

Stronghold House
Tower Point
Hovenweep Castle
Square Tower – Hovenweep House on top of the canyon in the background

I should have had Donna pose in a picture or two to give a sense of scale. These were large structures, many stories high. It was a fun and entertaining way to spend the afternoon. When we came back to town, we made another stop at Loungin’ Lizard. Once again the beer was cold, but the food was off and the service a bit hit or miss. We’ve heard from a local person that’s what you can expect there – hit or miss.

On Saturday, Donna and I played in a pickleball tournament put on by the Cortez Pickleball Club. They call it a “Shootout.” I didn’t play all that well, but we had fun. The format had us playing three games with a different partner each game, then based on total points scored you either moved up one court or down one court for another three games with different people.

Now the not so good stuff. In my last post, I mentioned two issues we were having, both related to water. We have water dripping from behind the shower, either from the water supply line at the shower valve or the shower head connection. I cannot find a way to access either area. So, in the meantime, we are only running the fresh water pump on an as-needed basis to prevent a constant drip.

As if that weren’t enough to contend with, the fresh water supply suddenly lost flow and pressure. I was fairly certain the problem was the check valve at the hot water tank. I ordered a new one. When it was delivered on Tuesday, I drained the hot water tank by pulling the anode rod. I was surprised to find the rod had eroded down to the core material – it was about the diameter of a clothes hanger wire. The tank was full of anode rod bits and mineral deposits.

Once I had the tank cleaned up, I embarked on a comedy of errors – at least that’s how I think of it now. When I removed the check valve, I saw I had ordered the wrong replacement part. The Amazon description says it’s for our Suburban water heater and it will fit the heater tank, but the other end of it is a female coupling and I needed male couplings on both ends. Grrr. I cleaned up the old check valve as best as I could and reassembled it and filled the hot water tank.

Good news – it worked fine then! I went back to Amazon and ordered replacement anode rods. I enjoyed a nice, hot shower with good water pressure and flow. Donna had half a shower before trouble hit again. We lost water flow and pressure. I went back to Amazon and found the proper check valve and placed another order. We were stuck for the remainder of the week without good water pressure.

Thursday morning, the only local RV repair man came out. I explained the water drip situation to Clint and showed him the dilemma regarding access. He looked at the options and couldn’t come with a good solution. As I feared, he said it wouldn’t be a mobile repair job and would have to be left at a shop – it wasn’t something that could be done in a day. The only way to do it would be to either cut through the wall or cut the shower enclosure and patch it afterwards. Not good.

Friday Amazon delivered the new anode rods, but the check valve wasn’t scheduled to arrive until Saturday. I would need to remove the anode rod to drain the tank to install the new check valve, so I waited to do the repair on Saturday.

New anode rod on the left, old eroded anode rod on the right

In hindsight, I can see that I should have drained the hot water tank when I put the coach in storage. Leaving water in the tank for eight months without use eroded the rod.

I should mention that I had to buy a 12″ adjustable end wrench in order to remove the anode rod. When we were full-time RVers, I always had all of my tools with me – now I only pack a handful of tools. An adjustable wrench should have been in that handful.

The check valve arrived mid-day on Saturday and I set to work. I removed the old anode rod, drained the tank, then replaced the check valve. After installing the anode rod, I opened the pressure relief vent and turned on the city water supply to refill the tank. I opened the bathroom faucet to check for flow and pressure and was disappointed. I couldn’t figure out what was going on.

I went back outside to check the hose and saw water dripping from behind the hot water tank. I shut off the water and hustled back inside. The pex hose connection to the check valve was leaking profusely. After fiddling with it, I could see that I was missing the rubber gasket. I looked around inside the cabinet where I was working and couldn’t find it.

In a panic, I drove to the hardware store and found a Sharkbite-type 90 degree pex elbow fitting that I thought would work. I came back and started disassmbling the fitting when I had a sudden epiphany. I picked up the old check valve and sure enough, the rubber gasket was lodged inside it. Doh! I installed the gasket on the new check valve and put it all back together. Another refill of the hot water tank and pressure check was a success. Good flow and pressure, no leaking. This was not one of my finest repair attempts.

New check valve – note arrow showing direction of flow

After that long winded tale of woe, I’ll talk about dinner plates. Last Monday, Donna grilled shrimp kabobs with onions, mushrooms, tomatoes and pineapple chunks. She served it with tare sauce on the kabobs and I put soy sauce on the side of rice.

Grilled shrimp kabob

Tuesday she made something new – hoisin glazed pork bowl. The recipe called for thinly sliced carrot, radishes, mushrooms and scallions – it recommended using a mandolin the get the radish thin enough. We don’t have a mandolin but with my Japanese 180mm bunka knife, I was able to cut the radish nearly paper thin.

Japanese 180mm bunka – forged by Teruyasu Fuijiwara

The vegetable medley was placed over the thinly sliced pork that was seared and then baked with a hoisin marinade. I mixed everything together before eating it and it was delicious. I would happily go the through the meal prep for this dish anytime.

Hoisin pork bowl

The daily temperatures were in the mid 80s through Thursday. Then a front came in bringing wind and cooler temperatures – the high was 71 on Friday, only 68 on Saturday. The overnight lows have been around 40 degrees. We’ll see more of the same for a few days before it begins to warm up again mid-week.

Roughing It

Things went according to plan last Thursday – except for one thing. We noticed our fresh water pump would run for a few seconds with an interval of a few minutes before it ran again. I checked for drips and didn’t find anything. Before we left, I saw a drop of water fall next to the left rear wheels. This would only come from a leak up high – I was guessing the bathroom sink area. We’d left the pump turned off all night. I couldn’t deal with it where we dry camped, so we hit the road.

We drove north through the Petrified Forest National Park, then hit I-40 eastbound. After about 20 miles, we exited on US191 north through Navajo Nation land. It was an uneventful drive until we were north of Chinle, then we hit a series of construction areas where work was being done on bridges, leaving only one lane available. These stoppages added several minutes to our drive.

The road surface also deteriorated north of Chinle as we hit unexpected dips and heaves in the roadway. We turned northeast at US160 and that road had a number of bad areas that rocked us. This route took us to the northwest corner of New Mexico – about a minute later we left New Mexico and crossed the Colorado border. The Four Corners monument where Arizona, Utah, New Mexico and Colorado meet is less than half a mile off US160.

We entered Mountain time and lost an hour when we left Arizona. We made it to La Mesa RV Park in Cortez around 3pm local time. The camp host, Jim, said we had our pick of three sites – 7, 11 or 13. He said satellite reception should be good at any of the three. I took 13 to get us as far from the street and car wash as possible. This turned out to be a bad choice.

We set up without any issues. Donna heard a drip behind the back of the kitchen counter. She pulled out the bottom drawer and we found the leak. It’s coming from the water supply line to the shower. The problem is, it’s up high between a wall and the shower stall with no access point. Until I can figure out a way to get to it, we aren’t using the city water supply. Instead, we only run the fresh water pump with a faucet open to prevent pressurizing the shower supply line. This is a real pain.

At that point, I tried to tune in the Dish satellite TV. No good. The tree at the back of the site has grown and was leafing out enough to block reception. I talked to Jim and told him I didn’t want to go without satellite TV for a month. We decided to move to site 11 in the morning. I wish I had checked the satellite reception before we set up. Tearing it down and securing everything to move 50 feet is just as much work as securing everything to move 100 miles.

Friday night Donna manned the grill and made barbeque chicken thighs. She made barbeque sauce from scratch with a base of tomato paste, maple syrup and sriracha along with a few other ingredients. It was excellent. She served it with garlic mashed cauliflower with chives.

Barbeque chicken thigh with mashed cauliflower

Later, while she was washing dishes, the water pressure from the fresh water pump dropped and only a weak stream of water came out of the kitchen faucet. When I checked it out, I found the sprayer head on the faucet we clogged. We chalked it up to eight months of storage. I took the sprayer head off and soaked it in vinegar. After soaking overnight I could blow through it – it wasn’t clogged anymore, so I put it back together.

The water volume didn’t improve and now we aren’t getting hot water – only lukewarm on the hottest setting. We had this issue seven years ago – I wrote about it in this post. I think the check valve is bad again. I ordered one from Amazon and should have it tomorrow, but I might have another problem. I only packed a few tools that I thought might come in handy. I didn’t include a 1-1/8″ socket, which is what I usually use to take out the hot water heater anode to drain it. I’ll see what I can figure out when the parts come. Meanwhile we are roughing it with low water flow and no hot water.

Saturday morning we went to the pickleball courts at Centennial Park. The Cortez pickleball club had a social event with round-robin style play. We had a good time. I felt I played really well. Donna said she was a litlle bit rusty, but she had fun.

Saturday night we went to the Loungin’ Lizard downtown for drinks and dinner. Our friend Rocco Gerardi raved about this place when we met up for a cold one at Wild Edge Brewery here a couple of years ago. He was right – the beer was cold and the food excellent!

The weather is agreeable – it was cool when we arrived on Thursday – in the mid 60s. Daily highs have varied from mid 70s to mid 80s since then with overnight lows in the mid 30s to low 40s. It’s very dry – humidity is only 10-15%. But we’re used to that as it’s dry in Mesa, Arizona too.

Swamp Thang

I mentioned how well our swamp cooler works in my last post. When our friends Ginette and Greg were visiting, they were amazed to find we weren’t using our air conditioner and kept the house cool with the swamp cooler. In fact, they had never heard of a swamp cooler.

They live on Vancouver Island, Canada where a swamp cooler wouldn’t be very effective. Swamp coolers are evaporative cooling devices and are most effective in dry climates. They take advantage of the physics behind the effect of changing water from liquid to vapor. The swamp cooler is a simple device – it pumps water over a matrix – in our case, it’s batting material made from cellulose fibers. This batting is held in the louvered housing on three sides of the cooler. The fourth side is a duct connected to our Arizona room.

The batting is soaked with water drawn from a sump in the bottom of the cooler. A large squirrel-cage fan sits inside the housing of the cooler. This fan draws air through the louvers past the wet batting and pumps the air into the Arizona room. As the hot, dry air passes over the wet batting, the water absorbs heat from the air and changes from liquid to gas (evaporates), thus cooling the air. The drier the air is, the more effectively this change of state occurs.

This also has the benefit of adding some moisture to the dry air in the house. It’s common to have relative humidity levels under 20% here in central Arizona and last week we had single digit relative humidity.

We typically see a change of temperature in our house of about 20 degrees – it’s about 20 degrees cooler inside than the ambient outside temperature. So, last week when we had temperatures in the 90s outside, our house was comfortably in the 70s inside. The swamp cooler doesn’t require much power – only a couple of amps to run the fan and water pump. Considerably less than the demand of a compressor on an air conditioner unit.

When we bought this place, the previous owner said the swamp cooler didn’t work very well when the temperature reached triple digits. I wondered about this – it should still provide the 20 degree drop regardless, unless humidity rose high enough to slow the evaporative process.

By the way, the 20 degree drop is an average of the interior temperature versus outside. Swamp coolers don’t have any temperature regulation – it’s not governed by a thermostat. I checked the temperature of the grill where the air from the cooler enters the Arizona room with a non-contact infrared thermometer and it’s typically 60-62 degrees. To regulate the interior temperature, I leave a window and the front sliding glass door open, otherwise it would get downright chilly inside!

When it was in the upper 90s, I noticed the swamp cooler seemed to struggle – in fact, it quit working. I checked it out and found the problem. The water supply to feed the sump was feeble and couldn’t keep up with amount of evaporation taking place at that temperature. I could see the water dribbling from the supply valve – it has a float arm like you would find on a toilet ball cock that opens the valve as the water level drops.

Swamp cooler side panel open – you can see the batting on the side, the squirrel-cage fan, sump, pump and water supply valve below the fan

On Monday, I went to a shop that sells swamp coolers about a mile from here and bought a new supply valve. I took the old valve off and found the water supply still only dribbled a small amount of water. Hmmm.

I went to the other end of the water supply line and took it off the fitting – still only had a dribble. The clamp over the water pipe holding the water supply feed line was mis-aligned. Once I straighten that out, I had ample water flow to the swamp cooler.

Swamp cooler water supply fitting

Now the swamp cooler works better than ever and maintains plenty of water in the sump. Job done!

Last week, I played pickleball six days without a break. After taking Sunday off, I played for the next four days. That’s a lot of pickleball and my 65-year-old legs were feeling it. When I first started playing pickleball, I bought a Pro-Lite paddle. I used it for a few years, then I replaced it with a Head paddle. I bought the Head right when they hit the pickleball market – Head was well established as a tennis racquet supplier also sold ski equipment.

Head had their pickleball paddles manufactured in China. As an early adopter, I was a victim of poor quality control – my Head paddle literally fell apart. Then I met a Paddletek representative in Colorado and bought new Paddletek paddles for me and Donna. Paddletek makes their products in the USA – Niles, Michigan.

I’ve been using the Paddletek paddle for over three years now and I decided it was time for a replacement. I did a little research. The biggest factor in pickleball paddles is arguably the shape. The rules give a restriction on overall dimension, but it can be long and narrow or shorter and wider to meet the specification. My game is more of a control and shot placement game rather than power and speed. I opted for the more traditional shape rather than the elongated power-paddle.

I settled on a paddle branded by the tennis racquet company, Prince. These paddles are actually made by Paddletek right here in the USA.

Prince Spectrum pickleball paddle
Paddle cover

I found it on sale at Pickleball Central for $103 and they included a nice paddle cover. These regularly sell online for about $130 and the cover is an extra cost $17 option, so I think I got a pretty good deal. I’m liking it so far.

As always, Donna is feeding me like a king. Here are a few examples. Last Saturday, she made a new twist on chicken – garlic-roasted chicken thighs with carrots. She served it with guasacaca sauce, a Venezuelan sauce made with avocado, jalapeno, rice vinegar, zest and juice of lime, plus loads of fresh parsley and cilantro. The sauce can be drizzled over grilled flank steak too or used as a dip so it’s very versatile not to mention tasty!

Roasted garlic chicken and carrots with guasacaca sauce

For our Easter Sunday dinner, she grilled wild Alaskan salmon and served it over asparagus with peas and capers in a brown butter sauce and chantilly potatoes on the side. Yummy!

On Tuesday we had real man-food. I grilled New York strip steaks with bok choy and Donna made jalapeno poppers to go with it.

As I mentioned, we had some hot weather. On Monday and Tuesday the thermometer hit 96 and 97 degrees respectively. If the weather guessers are correct, we might see triple digits for the first time this year next Tuesday.

Speaking of next Tuesday, I have an appointment to change the oil in the coach in preparation for hitting the road. Last time I had an oil service, I think I paid $280. Now, every place around here is charging around $400 for the seven-gallon oil change plus filter on a Cummins ISL diesel engine. I don’t see any plan from the current administration to curb inflation and energy costs. It’s disheartening to see these price hikes while my investments are losing value.

Snow Birds Head North

The season is really winding down here at Viewpoint Golf and RV Resort. I haven’t taken time to update this blog and I’ve mostly neglected to take photos when I had the opportunities. I’ll start this update going back to a week ago Saturday.

Mike Hall met me Saturday morning at 202 RV Valet where our Alpine Coach is stored. You might recall, we had a mishap in Utah near the end of last summer. The driver side panel in front of the left front wheel broke loose. I made a few attempts at roadside repairs and finally got it secured well enough to limp to a campground. I made a better repair and it held up as we made our way back to Mesa, Arizona.

But, the panel didn’t quite line up the way it should. Mike looked at it a few weeks ago and came up with a repair plan – he’s a paint and body man among his other talents. Saturday morning we put his plan in action – well, he handled most of the action while I watched and learned. With judicious use of a floor jack, he aligned the panel then riveted it into place. I did some clean-up of tape residue from my temporary repairs by wiping it with laquer thinner and it was job done. I don’t think Mike spent more than 30 minutes on the actual work. Thanks, Mike!

Saturday afternoon I put the Heritage duroc babyback ribs on the Traeger – I wrote about duroc pork in my last post. Our friends, DIck and Roxy Zarowny joined us for happy hour and dinner on the back deck. The duroc babybacks were a hit – I think it’s worthwhile to spend a little extra for the premium duroc pork. In fact, I went back to Fry’s this morning to see if they had them – sold out for now. If I can’t find them in the next day or two, I’ll go to Chuck’s Fine Meats and see if he has duroc or Berkshire pork babyback ribs.

The rest of the week seems like a blur – Donna had tennis most days while I played pickleball. I spent some time learning new songs on the guitar and did a lot of reading. It was hot outside with the temperatures in the 90s from Tuesday through the weekend.

It’s been a while since I’ve gone to Lucky Lou’s for a couple of cold ones and a cigar on the patio. I did that on Friday and met up with Mike and Jodi Hall there. The usual suspects – Leendert, John Huff, Bob and the other John and one of the other Mikes were all there.

I learned on Saturday that my old friend in San Diego, Bob Babich passed away. Bob played for the San Diego Chargers and the Cleveland Browns. He was drafted by the Chargers in 1969 in the first round – the 18th player drafted that year. He was an NFL linebacker for 9 years. He was part of the Bay Park crew I often hung around with at Offshore Tavern and Dan Diego’s whenever we stayed in San Diego. He would have turned 75 on May 5th. RIP Bob – you will be missed.

Yesterday we were joined by our friends Greg and Ginette DeCoteau for happy hour on the back deck. It got interesting a couple of times when wind gusts threatened to take our shade umbrellas away! Greg and Ginette are Canadians, their home is in Nanaimo on Vancouver Island. They’re heading back to Canada on Thursday of this week.

I have some dinner plates to close out this post. First up was last Tuesday’s dinner – grilled chicken with Italian seasoning served with spaghetti squash and marinara and steamed spinach on the side.

Grilled chicken with Italian seasoning, spaghetti squash with marinara on the side

The next night Donna came up with turmeric black pepper chicken with asparagus over rice.

Turmeric black pepper chicken with asparagus

The next dish might be a bit of an oddity, but it was delicious. Last Saturday Donna made duck sausage roasted with onions and grapes. The side dish was cauliflower risotto with chopped asparagus and mushrooms.

Duck sausage roasted with onions and grapes

Yesterday I broke down another whole chicken and Donna grilled the wings, legs and thighs and prepared an Asian dipping sauce made from mayonnaise, mustard and sambal oelek – an Indonesian chili paste. We had grilled shishito peppers on the side.

Grilled chicken with Asian style dipping sauce and shishito peppers

The forecast calls for cooler weather – only in the mid-70s for next couple of days, upper 80s on Friday and back into the 90s for the weekend. It hasn’t been bad – we haven’t even used the air conditioning. The swamp cooler and fans have been good enough to keep the place comfortably in the mid-70s, even with the front slider open and only the screen door closed.

*Just so you know, if you use this link to shop on Amazon and decide to purchase anything, you pay the same price as usual and I’ll earn a few pennies for the referral. It’ll go into the beer fund. Thanks!

Saguaro Lake Ranch

In my previous post, I said I would add some photos from Donna and Sini’s horseback trip and the Pass Mountain hike. A couple of the photos were transferred from Sini”s phone and the files were compressed and the images downsized. I couldn’t restore these very well, but I included them anyway.

They rode horses from Saguaro Lake Ranch Stables, located on the Salt River a short distance downstream from the Saguaro Lake dam. Sini is an experienced rider, but Donna hadn’t been on a horse in 30 years.

Donna ready to head out
River crossing on the trail

After their ride, they had a picnic lunch on the river.

Sini at the picnic spot

They also made a side trip to Coon Bluff and saw wild horses.

Wild horse at Coon Bluff

The next day, last Tuesday, they hiked the Pass Mountain Loop Trail at Usery Regional Park. A light rain shower passed through the area in the afternoon – it was light enough not to be bothersome on their hike and it presented a nice rainbow!

Sini on the trail in a saguaro forest
View from high on the trail

They had a good time and it was a nice visit with Sini.

It’s been a fairly quiet week since then, I don’t have much to report. We had another repair/maintenance item here on our park model home. It seems like I’m spending more on repairs and maintenance here than I do on the motorhome!

When we had the new heat pump and ducting installed, they told me there was a water leak under the house. I took a look. It was a pipe leaking under the refrigerator about three or four feet from the crawl space entry. Monday morning, I called Jimmy Joe’s Plumbing and they said they could have a guy out that afternoon. Later, they called me and said he could be there by noon and he showed up a few minutes after 12:00.

I showed him where the leak was and he crawled under the house. He came out a minute later and said it was an elbow fitting that cracked. The pipe was capped off – it wasn’t attached to anything. He said he could cut the fitting off and re-cap the pipe. Sounded pretty straight forward and simple. Then he floored me when he said it would cost $265!

I asked him why so much? What’s the hourly rate? He said it wasn’t an hourly thing, the price was set because he had to crawl in the dirt under the house and work on his back. He said it’s something you don’t want to do, so you’ll have to pay me to do it. I wasn’t too happy, but he was right about me not wanting to crawl under the house. I couldn’t let the leak continue, so I told him to do it.

About 20 minutes later, I heard him closing off the crawl space entry. I went outside and found him standing out of sight behind his van, talking on his cell phone. He ended his call and said he would give me a break and “only” charge $205 for the work. Some break! He wasn’t even here for half an hour. I left a review for Jimmy Joe’s on Google and Yelp – maybe it’ll save someone else some coin.

On a happier note, I ordered a Yamaha soundbar for the TV in our Arizona room from Crutchfield on Sunday. It was listed at $199 with free 2-day shipping. It shipped Monday. Last night I noticed they had a price drop on this item – $20 off. I called their customer service this morning and asked about the discounted price. Kyle was the rep I spoke to and he said, “No problem, we have a 60-day price match guarantee – I’ll process a $20 refund.” Now that’s good customer service! Kudos to Crutchfield.

Donna bought a new slow cooker – it has all of the bells and whistles. She can program heat settings and timers. She used it on Thursday to make a new-to-us chicken dish – slow cooker brown sugar garlic chicken. She served it with crispy salt and pepper potatoes and fresh green beans. It was delicious!

Chicken with baby potatoes and green beans

Friday night she changed things up with a baked shrimp with fennel and feta dish. Another tasty treat.

Baked shrimp in a cast iron skillet

It was the NFL Divisional playoff weekend, so we kept dinner simple so I could watch the games. It was still good food with carnitas (pulled pork) tacos Sunday night.

Carnitas tacos with baked jalapeno poppers

I bought a USDA Prime 2.3-pound tri tip roast – or is it a steak? – at Costco. I took a picture of it before I seasoned it as it’s important to know the grain orientation when you slice it. The tri tip cut has a change in grain direction from one end to the other and you always want to cut across the grain.

Heavily marbled USDA Prime tri tip

I seasoned it Sunday afternoon and put it on the Traeger Monday afternoon. I made a change in the way I smoked it. I dropped the temperature of the Traeger to 180 degrees instead of 225 and smoked it for 90 minutes. Then I increased the temperature to 225 degrees for another 30 minutes. At that point, I took it out of the Traeger and put it on a hot gas grill – 450 degrees. I seared each side for three minutes.

Reverse seared smoked tri tip

Donna served it with Brussel sprouts in a horseradish bacon cream sauce and baked potato with butter and chives. I love the tri tip flavor when it’s simply seasoned with salt, pepper and garlic.

Tri tip dinner plate

The weather has been near perfect with daily highs around 70 degrees, clear skies and overnight lows in the 40s. The forecast calls for more of the same in the week ahead.

*Just so you know, if you use this link to shop on Amazon and decide to purchase anything, you pay the same price as usual and I’ll earn a few pennies for the referral. It’ll go into the beer fund. Thanks!

Three Quotes and a Decision

In my last post, I described problems we were having with the heating, ventilation, air conditioning of our park model home. I had the air conditioner/forced air heater repaired and also needed to have a 50-amp breaker installed in the power pedestal.

Park model homes in Arizona are considered “mobile” units although you cannot just hook up to a truck and drive them away. This designation changes some aspects compared to a regular sticks-and-bricks home. For one thing, we obtained the title for our unit from the motor vehicle department. Another aspect is the electrical supply to the home.

Our park model is fed electricity from SRP – the local power utility – through Viewpoint and is distributed to each site through a power pedestal just like an RV site. When we had the breaker replaced in the pedestal, I saw one of the 50-amp receptacles feeding power to our unit had a broken housing. There are two 50-amp receptacles in our pedestal – remember, each 50-amp receptacle has two legs of 50-amp current available for a total of 100 amps. With two receptacles, we have a total of 200 amps of electrical service.

The housing of the receptacle is formed from bakelite – a synthetic resin – the first form of plastic invented in 1909 and still used for its insulating properties. Bakelite is easy to form and cheap, that’s why it’s still used. However, it can be brittle. Anyway, the bakelite housing had a section broken off right where the round ground lug is located.

We had another issue with the pedestal. It’s about 34 years old and was placed in a hole in the ground – no concrete surround, just dirt. This results in corrosion and ours is badly corroded around the base. I’m a little concerned about it breaking off at the base and falling over. We placed a work order with VIewpoint – the management of Viewpoint is responsible for upkeep of the pedestal and main power supply to our park model.

They had a maintenance guy come out to look it over. He seemed to think we had nothing to be concerned about. I pointed out the broken receptacle and he said, “That’s common – it’s no big deal, that’s just the ground.” I thought “no big deal…just a ground?”

I pointed out to him that it was potentially a very big deal. With no support of the sleeve for the ground lug, the sleeve could very well have loosened and end up corroded with poor contact to the ground lug. That would mean part of our household circuit was ungrounded. The purpose of the ground is to have an low-resistance path for unwanted electricity to the negatively charged earth.

If the ground lug didn’t have good contact, we may not have that path to earth. Let’s consider a defective appliance like a toaster. If the toaster developed a short to the chassis and/or metal cover, the electricity should be delivered through the ground. This shorted circuit would draw a very large current and trip the breaker, thus telling us we had a problem.

Now, let’s suppose that the ground lug had poor conductivity. There’s no path to ground, so the chassis is charged with electricity with place no to go. Excess current isn’t developed, so the breaker doesn’t trip. The toaster sits there on the counter charged with electricity and if you happen to be unlucky enough to touch it, you become the path to ground. The current would flow through your hand and body and exit from your feet. Bad news.

He said he would get an electrician out to fix the receptacle. I wonder how many people here bought into his thought of the ground being no big deal – he said the broken bakelite was common, right? A guy from Flatiron Electric came out on Tuesday while I was giving pickleball lessons. He talked to Donna and went back to the pedestal. He came out a short time later and told Donna he would have to return the next day. He admitted being a new guy and I think he got a scare – the pedestal is daisy-chained with several others and the input lines remain hot when you work on it. You can only break the connection between the pedestal and the house – to break the feed line would mean disrupting power to a whole row or more of houses.

I confirmed Donna’s suspicion – she said the guy looked a little shook up when he left. I found half of the outlets in our Arizona room weren’t working. I found a tripped ground fault circuit interupter (GFCI). He must have shorted a hot lead and tripped the GFCI. I bet it made a big spark before the GFCI tripped!

He came back yesterday morning and got the job done. He must have had a lesson or two the afternoon before, because he replaced the receptacle fairly quickly, without incident.

New receptacle in power pedestal – note the corrosion

I neglected to take a photo of the old, broken receptacle before it was replaced.

On Tuesday, we also had Brandon from Gleeson Mechanical come out to give us a quote on a new air conditioner/heating unit. He spent more time looking everything over than the previous two contractors we got quotes from. In the time between the quote from Liberty last Friday and Gleeson on Tuesday, I did more research.

I was initially inclined to go with an electric heat strip for winter heat. I was a little skeptical about a heat pump. This was because the heat pumps we have on our motorhome don’t work very well when the temperature is below the mid-30s. This only happens occasionally here in Mesa, but we do have the odd frosty morning here and there.

What I found was my assumption based on the motorhome wasn’t a good one. The units on our coach are 20 years old and are much smaller than a residential unit. The technology has improved over time and current heat pumps remain efficient until the temperature drops below 25 degrees for an extended time. This doesn’t happen here. A heat pump costs a few hundred more initially, but it’s more energy-efficient and will save on utility bills.

Gleeson Mechanical gave us a quote for a 2.5 ton Day and Night brand heat pump with new ducting. The price was $4,800 – this is $900 more than the quote from Liberty, but it’s an apples-and-oranges comparison. Day and Night is a brand from Carrier Corporation – a well-respected brand of heat pumps with a track record for quality and reliability. Liberty quoted a Broan 2.5 ton air conditioner with an 8kW heat strip. Broan is a brand name under Nutek. I can’t find much in the way of favorable reviews for their products.

The first quote we received was for a Day and Night 3.0 ton air conditioner with an 8kW heat strip and it was $5,500. My research indicated this unit was too large for the air space in our park model home and inefficient. Also, the labor charge was high, so we wrote that guy off.

At the end of the day, I figured paying the extra $900 up front for the Day and Night 2.5 ton heat pump over the Broan will pay off in lower utility costs and peace of mind for a quality product. Gleeson will come out tomorrow and do the installation.

The weather has been very pleasant this week with daily highs in the low to mid 70s and overnight lows around 50 degrees. It looks like more of the same in the coming week with overnight lows dipping to the mid 40s. The new heat pump should cope well with that.

*Just so you know, if you use this link to shop on Amazon and decide to purchase anything, you pay the same price as usual and I’ll earn a few pennies for the referral. It’ll go into the beer fund. Thanks!