Wednesday, May 2, 2018

Not Slacking Off

Or at least not slacking off too much. I pulled the carpeting out of the main part of the trailer. It turns out that the linoleum from the kitchen area extended almost up to the slide. The linoleum was installed before any of the walls or cabinets were installed as it extends under the exterior walls, cabinets, and all the way into the front storage area. The carpeting extends under the cabinet at the top of this picture and was folded over and stapled wherever there was an exposed edge. The carpet did not extend under the exterior walls and was just tucked under an aluminum cap where the slide comes in.

A utility knife made quick work on removing the linoleum in pieces. I just ran the knife along the cabinet edges and the exterior walls. There is still some cleanup at the ends of the slide as there are welded aluminum caps to reinforce the corners of the slide. Tomorrow, I'll clean up the floor and pull out any leftover staples. Overall, the floor looks pretty good with no soft spots or signs of water damage.

At least not until you turn around. This is the driver's side rear corner. The plywood on the floor is still really solid so water has gotten into the luan wallboard below the window. The wallboard feels solid above the bottom of the window. The rear wall is suffering from the same problem. Fortunately, all of the framing material in this trailer is aluminum so I will simply replace the wallboard after locating the leak. This could be a remnant of the roof leak that was repaired before purchasing the trailer as the floor is completely dry in this area. 

Since I was out there, I connected to the RV wifi network to see how the solar was doing with the recent snow. Yesterday, there was insufficient sun to get to the absorption stage. You can tell from the voltage graph where the red line (array voltage) is above the green line (battery voltage) and the battery voltage is above 13.4 volts. If the battery voltage drops to ~13.4 volts while the array voltage is still high, then the batteries are in float charge.

We did get a measurable amount of snow today and it was actually sticking until early afternoon. I got the new thermocouples from Aircraft Spruce yesterday so they are now installed and it's nice to see the cht (cylinder head temperature) gauge working again. Compensating for the 35°F air temperature, the gauge was peaking at about 400°F while cruising down the road. Since this is a simple cht gauge, you need to manually correct the readings for the ambient air temperature. Seems to be a bit high but I need to check it against my IR thermometer. At least it's an easy way to see when things change. 

4 comments:

  1. What led you to pull up the carpet/linoleum? Suspected leak or wanting to upgrade?

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    1. Just 17 year old worn carpet. And wanting something a bit “fresher”.

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  2. Well you found the issue, now you can fix it. Fun. What will you put down on the floor once you're done with the wall fix? We have mostly tile with just a bit of carpet on the full wall slide, but I wish we had no carpet, honestly.

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    Replies
    1. I’m looking at Allure vinyl plank flooring from Home Depot. But the local store doesn’t have enough… I’m glad to be rid of the carpet.

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