Hot water woes ...part deaux

Well I guess I was a little premature when I declared the hot water fixed. I went out the front door of the coach and there was water running out the bottom of the access door to the heater. Now what??!! I knew the pressure regulator had been dripping occasionally and had purchased a spare "just in case". Now it was pouring water out at a steady stream and it wasn't even hot water. Time to change the old corroded regulator with the shiny new one.

I got out my adjustable pliers, turned off the water and "presto, chango" had that sucker swapped out in no time!. I turned everything back on and was back in business. The water heater fired up and ran, and ran, and ran, and ran before finally shutting completely down. Now what??!! I quickly deduced it had to be the thermostat not working. There is an emergency cut off that shuts things down when the water reaches a really high temperature, like 200 degrees (YIKES!). I called the only RV place here in Campbellsville and he had the proper part so we made a stop on our way to work. Yesterday was another "presto, chango" day so I once again got my tools out and started to work. The old thermostat came out pretty easy but the new one was a little tougher to install. The thermostat is held in place by three tabs on the outer wall of the water heater case and is held tight to the inner tank by a spring that has to be compressed while turning the thermostat so it locks in place. I had to bend the tabs a little with my screwdriver and, of course, two were easy and the third one was tough to get too. Of course no job is complete with out a little blood shed and an apology to our neighbors for my language. :-)

I was able to get the new thermostat installed and after two days of operation it is back to cycling like normal.
No big news at work yet on our release date. We are still planning on our last shift being our "normal" end of week on December 21st. There has been some rumors about us getting out a day or two earlier. We are supposed to get the "official" date from Amazon sometime this week, until then it's just work, eat, sleep and repeat. I'll keep you posted.

feeling our age .....

Wow, this week has been a tough one! Our only days off were Sunday and Wednesday so we really didn't have the time to recuperate. My hat is off to the full time employees who are required to work the mandatory 60 hours of overtime as well as the work campers who volunteer to do it. We are only required (as work campers) to do a maximum of 50 hours and that is our schedule for at least one more week. The good news is, since our overtime day is Tuesday, we are back to having two days off in a row. :-)

This week has not been without it's drama though. Friday Rudee was finishing her shower and hollered at me to come into the bathroom, she was smelling a "hot" smell. I went in and knew right away we had an electrical issue ...... somewhere. She had the electric heater on but we quickly ruled it out, then I checked the portable ice maker we keep on a shelf above the washer/dryer. Nope, that's not it. Then I thought about the water heater and ........ yep, you could smell the hot, burning wire smell coming through the floor area where the water heater is located. Crap! I quickly shut it off and the smell slowly went away. The water heater heats the water two ways, either by an LP gas burner or by a 120V electric heating element. We have almost always used the electric portion since the gas burner is noisy and the water heater is just below the floor at the foot of our bed, plus the electric provided at most RV parks is included in the site fee. :-)
I let everything cool down some and turned the water heater back on using LP now. Oh oh, I should be hearing the burner burning but it was totally silent. Double crap! By this time we had to leave to go to work so I didn't have the chance to figure out what the problem was with the gas side of things and was worried the the whole unit was "toast".
Saturday afternoon (which is our "morning") I was finally able to take a look at it. Our heater has "thermal cut off" which is a type of fuse that will not allow ignition if it is blown.
The problem is you can't always see if it is good or bad just by looking at it. I got a small piece of 12v wire and bypassed the fuse and "whoosh" the unit fired up! Now we're getting somewhere! I had to replace the fuse once before and when I bought the replacement it came with two of then in the package. I just had to remember where I put the other one. :-o
I showed the old one to Rudee and she had no idea where it could be. I looked in all my usual hiding places and then remembered I store some small things in a compartment in my tool box and "looky what I found".

I put the new fuse in place and we were back in the hot water business! I will tackle the electric element down the road when I have more time (and energy!).
The weather has made a turn for the worse. We went from 60's earlier this week to the 20's and 30's with heavy rain. When we came out from work this morning I had to scrape about 1/2" of ice from all the windows and there is nice coating of ice on all the tree limbs. Brrrrrrr!
We are starting to do the big countdown for our remaining time in Kentucky. Two more weeks to go! I just hope this weather gives us a window where we can get out of here safely. Our plan is to head back to Indiana for a week to ten days and then head south to Florida. We are still in the market for a work camping job (or any gig really) for this winter. We are checking into Disney but they require "in person" interviews so we may check them out further once we are there but if any of you know of anyone hiring let us know. We are not too picky our only requirements are no snow or ice! I'll keep you posted.

gonna be busy!

With Thanksgiving over the big Christmas buying frenzy starts. I have to laugh a little at the whole "Black Friday" thing. Since when did Friday begin at 4pm on Thursday? Looks like all the stores are doing their best to get people in earlier and earlier for the mayhem.
We were invited to go to dinner Thursday afternoon with a group of fellow "Amazonians" here in our RV park. To give us time to enjoy the holiday Amazon let the day shift off three hours early and delayed our start time by three hours, thanks Amazon! :-) There were five couples and we had a great time getting to know each other and share our stories.

Friday and Saturday were our regular scheduled work days and it was also an "all hands on deck" event. Pretty much everyone who works at Amazon had to work those days. We were busy but with all the extra people from different shifts we handled the additional work load well. The biggest issue was getting in and out of the parking lot! Even though the police were directing traffic it was still a slow process moving that many people in and out.

Today (Sunday) is our only day off for a few days. We are normally off Sunday, Monday and Tuesday but with "Cyber Monday" coming up we are having to work. We will get Wednesday off and then back to work the rest of the week. We are both still a little sore after work but my hands have quit hurting and my feet are starting to "get used to the abuse". :-)

While off today I took advantage of the time to complete my next project. Several months ago I read on an internet forum about changing the fluorescent lights in the ceiling into LED lights by simply wiring in a strip of lights. I kind of forgot about it until our friend and fellow fulltimer Steve (FOSJ Blog) wrote that he had made the switch in their motorhome. This sparked the memory in me and I got busy ordering the LED lights and electrical connectors which were delivered last week. The lights are pretty easy to install, they come in a big strip and you can cut them with scissors to the length you want. I removed the florescent bulbs and cut the wires to the ballast. Then you simply wire the LED's up and peel and stick to the inside of the light fixture. The lights work great but I had some issues with a couple of the "quick connects" that came with them, they just didn't want to make a good connections. I changed out all three of our overhead lights and we really like the new lights.
Before

After

I still have one connector that is giving me a problem. I think I'll get my soldering iron out, maybe that will scare it into working right! :-)

We also decided to get into the Christmas spirit so we put up our tree! That consisted of me crawling into one of our basement storage compartments trying to find the box holding our tree which, of course, was all the way back into the farthest corner. Turns out that was the hardest part since the lights are already strung on the limbs all you have to do is spread them out and hang the ornaments.

Looks pretty festive! :-)

I'm not sure if I'll feel much like writing in the next week or so since we will be working so much. Only three more weeks to go and we'll be free again! I'll keep you posted.