Saturday, July 2, 2022

Athens, TX

Thursday - Right now, we are around 1300 miles into our 3500 mile trip across the country. Or around a third of the way. We’ve spent around $800 or so on diesel for that distance or a bit less than I had expected. Our total fuel bill will be less than these two A/C units that just arrived here in Athens. No one ever said that RVing is cheap. Certainly not me.

I looked up the installation instructions for both of the A/C units and it turns out that I ordered the wrong unit for the rear! I had searched Amazon for a Dometic Penguin A/C w/CCC2 interface and no heat pump. The description matched what I needed but it turns out that the description was wrong. There is no CCC2 board and, in fact, no control board at all. It’s just a basic unit for the price of a more expensive unit. 

Amazon authorized the return and UPS will be picking it up tomorrow. The front unit, which is the one that really needs replacement, is the correct unit. 

Friday - A very short travel day today. Only ten miles. We moved from Lake Athens Marina to the Texan RV Park. Garrett from Diary of a Family YouTube channel, is going to install the unit tomorrow morning with me helping.

It doesn’t look good, temperature wise, for us in TX. The radiator fan I had ordered from Amazon didn’t get delivered. Since we are leaving here on Sunday, I’m not sure what to do about it. 

In preparation for the front A/C installation tomorrow morning, I disconnected the network connection between the front and rear A/C units and made the rear one stand-alone using the old thermostat. Since the thermostat and the rear control board was powered from the front A/C unit, I need to find 12VDC in the roof somewhere. For now, it’s wired to the lights.

Saturday - Front A/C installation day. Garrett brought a lift mechanism that fits onto the top of a ladder. It made quick work of lifting the 100+ pound unit onto the roof as well as lowering the old one safely back to the ground. 

Meanwhile, I installed the SoftStart back onto the rear A/C unit and it appears to work fine. I removed the SoftStart from the front A/C unit and will reinstall it once the warranty runs out. I wired up the low voltage wiring and we shortened the existing wiring by several feet. The thermostat wire by over ten feet. Fortunately, I had plenty of RJ11 plugs. 

The new thermostat was installed to operate the new A/C unit and the Micro-Air thermostat was moved to the bedroom. We simply now have two thermostats instead of two zones. Each A/C unit still controls its own furnace but now we have a little more flexibility. I.e. heat pump in the front and furnace in the back. 

It’s now up and running and with it 90°F outside, the cold air out is 58°F. The old one was putting out 78°F air at the same outside air temperature. 

We plan to leave early tomorrow morning so just about everything except power has been disconnected or put away. 

2 comments:

  1. Bummer about the fan not showing up!

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    Replies
    1. Yes, kind of annoying as the package has been sitting in Tyler, TX, since Friday morning...

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