BROWNSQUAD

I keep the heater on the lowest setting and it does not stay in all the time. The thermostat for the heater works pretty well. Unfortunately our arrow does not have the winter package for the tanks.

I have an electric space heater that I have been using since it has gotten colder. The house batteries do need to be replaced. They show good on the monitor panel but they keep boiling out. I'm trying to decide on the brand and if I should go with a glass mat or not. I just noticed that it seems the converter fan comes on quite a bit. Other wise something is making my electric bill go up and it seemed like the batteries may be the culprit.

Looking to replace the batteries within the next week. I do have a questions. My electric bill at the house has gone up considerably since I have had the shore line connected. The only reason I can think of why is that the batteries are constantly charging. Does anyone have any ideas?

Planning on putting an extend-a-stay on our arrow. I am currently parked behind the house we rent. We are staying in our motor home full time for the moment and planning on full timing out to Arizona as soon as we can thin down our possessions. Here is what I am trying to do: I have two 100 gallon propane tanks that set about 5' from our arrow. We are using a lot of propane during the cold times here in Virginia. I want to connect the two 100 gallon propane tanks to the arrow via the extend-a-stay. Here is what I am concerned about: I can remove the 90 off of the connection point to the house and put a tee on and connect the extend-a-stay connection hose there, but I am worried about pressure. I was planning on putting the extend-a-stay between the tank shut off and the regulator on the arrow. The external tanks for the house have a 9.5 W.C regulator which is what our arrow's pressure regulator is rated at. I'm concerned that there my be a problem with pressure if I have two regulators on the same system even if they are rated at the same W.C... does anyone have any wisdom or fix for this so i can get this system installed this week. I am not a fan of recreational maintenance when i can do the job right the first time.

I'm currently looking for new house batteries for our Arrow. However finding replacement batteries is not seeming to be that easy. Camping World seems to only have 12 volt batteries. so how do I know what to get? I want to make sure I get the right batteries and possible upgrade the batteries that I currently have. Does anyone have any links that they know of that they can recommend so I can do my research and choose the right ones? Also where is the best place to by 6 volt batteries? Any links to other threads on this will be very welcome. We are looking at two to three weeks out to moving out of our home completely and full timing our way across the county. Like i said earlier, this has been a vast learning curve. Ready to get on road soon. getting cold in Virginia, insulated the bypass lines for the water heater last night and i currently have a heat lamp down there now. ready to get out west again. Thank you for everyone's help so far.

I'm a plumber by trade and I am a fan of PEX. but in the last 6 months I have been introduced to class A PEX by Uponor. This stuff is great! its only draw back is you have to have a special tool to expand the fittings and pipe. there are two things that I like about this type of PEX 1. The pipe expands to go around the fitting... this means if the pipe freezes at or near the joint then when it thaws you wont have stretched out crimp ring.. this is because the pipe is always trying to return to it original shape and size. the ring that holds the fitting on is the same material as the PEX. it squeezes the fitting and that makes the water dame. 2. If you get a kink all you need is a heat gun. This is really cool... you put the heat on the pipe and it will turn translucent and will return to its original shape. If I already had the tool I would rip all of the CPVC out of our motor home and redo it in Uponor PEX.

OK. So, I am so sorry that it took me so long to reply back but it has been some kind of busy. Trying to manage two households with maintenance on both has been really hard. So here is what I found out. I was kind of thinking this but was hoping that this was not the problem. I check the voltage on the batteries and they were coming up fine... however... I checked the water level on the batteries and found that both of them were almost completely dry. I put just short of 2 gallons in two 6 volt batteries. the problems seemed to have gotten better but then I check the batteries a week later and found them low again. The batteries had been getting really hot. So what I was hoping to not be the problem turned out to be a problem... my converter. It seemed that I thought i had a four stage charger but when I looked further into it that Ii found out that there is a separate part that plugged into my converter that actually monitored the charge and make it have four stages. Mine did not have this so it turns out that it was not fully charging the batteries and also always putting juice in them which was causing them to boil out. anyway.... I replaced the converter with a 55 amp Go Power converter. All seems to be working well now. I did have the batteries and the alternator checked and they said that they are showing to be good. My wife still says she smells a minor gas smell when the furnace is on. I checked them today and they seem to be working OK but we haven't smelled the bad rotten egg smell that we had been smelling. I have to do some research on my water heater because it is not burning consistently, that is one thing I found today. I don't think that it is heating efficiently anymore. I'm going to look on here next to see what i can find. Thank you so much for your advice and help. I'm really glad there is a community here for motor homes.

It looks like your ductwork is deteriorating.

I will work with the batteries this weekend. Work is keeping me from being able to work on it through the week. I think the batteries are not that old. The previous owner told me that they went dead on her when she was camping in South Carolina. I thought that she said less than two years old. I will also check the belts on the engine and do a voltage test on the alternator. I'm assuming here but I wouldn't think that it wouldn't be any different than doing a voltage test on my truck or car. We have a gas motorhome that is 30 AMP service. When we are driving the engine seems to run fine unless I come to a stop sign or light then the idle can surge as well sometimes. Just a note that might be relevant. the night that the batteries died I had a hard time staring the engine. When it did start is was really rough at idle and did not want to stay started. I had to keep giving it gas to keep it running and the surging has been there ever since. I just don't understand how it could be related to the batteries running dead. but it did not do that until the batteries ran down. I'm really hoping that my fridge isn't going. I have enough stuff that is needing replacing without that going bad too. i'm getting a crash course in repair already. wolfe. I'm going to start with the batteries this weekend and let you and dickandlois know what the results are. I do believe that we have an automatic transfer switch. It is located in the compartment behind the breakers. I had to repair the shore line when I got the motorhome to the house before I could plug it in. It was not a pretty picture or safe at all. So while repairing that i was tracing wires to see how hard it would be to pull a new wire for the shore plug. This is when I realized that i have a lot to learn about motorhome electrical wiring and how different it is from house wiring. I am comfortable working with wiring it is just a new world to learn how it all works together and in what order. I will try the breaker for the generator to see if that helps on that issue. Thank you for replying so quickly. I will relay what the voltages are in what settings. could you let me know what they should be reading? thank you for all of your help. Joshua

OK... Hello everyone. we are new to the forum and new to RV living, we are preparing to become full timers. so i am on an intense learning curve as we bought a 1999 Fleet wood Pace Arrow that needed minor work. so here is the problem that i am having right now. We have been staying in the MotorHome trying to become accustomed to staying here full time. i was going through the basement vacuuming everything I could reach with the shop vac two Saturdays ago. I had the basement lights on and i went working into the night as I also had a plumbing leak that I had to repair. To my horror the next morning i found that I had left all of the basement lights on. We had not yet been sleeping overnight in the Motorhome. The batteries were completely dead. i could not get the gen set to start but was able to start the motor and was able to eventually get a charge on the batteries by connecting a shoreline and was able to operate everything eventually. The problem started here... when I started the engine at idle the RPM's pulsed. This had never happened before and i have had the motorhome around two weeks at this point. it has been doing it ever since just not as bad. when they pulse at idle it is a steady up and down pulse. Another thing that has changed and I have noticed a difference in is that the lights have started to surge at times and I hear the converter under the refrigerator make surging noises. Today I drove the motor home around 100 miles and when i got back home to park and level I found that i could not get the hydraulic jacks to level the motor home. two would touch and then the hydraulic motor sounded like the motor would just loose power. This was with the engine running. I shut down the engine and connected shore power and turned the key on and the hydraulic levelers had full power and worked like a dream. Another issue that I found out was that the gen set would not power anything. I tried the generator before hooking up the shoreline because i thought that it might be a voltage issue. So now I am here in the motorhome and I notice that the lights are just not as bright as they normally are and i am just like " what in the world did i do to our motorhome". With all of that said I hope it makes sense what I am trying to convey. I am trying to get everything ready in the motorhome so I can move back to the west from the east. having a hard enough time getting rid of everything in the house let alone now having problems with my motorhome. I hope your knowledge and experience can help me in my predicament. I don't know if it is my batteries or the converter or both. Oh, just as a side note because it might be relevant. we had been getting a rotten egg smell in the motor home that was intermittent. and we were noticing a really strong smell at the front passenger side of the engine compartment as we would walk by it. I checked tonight and noticed that the chassis battery is located here.. could this be related as well. Thank you so much for your help and advise in advance. I'm trying to learn as much as I can as fast as I can and to be honest the electrical is seeming to be the hardest as it seems to be so foreign to residential electrical. BrownSquad