Last Week in Tucson

Tuesday - This is the beginning of our last week in Tucson. It has been a nice place to park as we needed a place for Bridget to recover. The initial attraction was the pool and hot tub but the people we’ve met here have been wonderful. Very accepting even though we aren’t residents or even seasonal. 

This morning was our last coffee and donuts provided by the park. It was also the last one for the season. They restart next October. I managed to complete a couple more minor projects today. The pads from the above dash cabinet had come loose. I used a couple of SS wood screws to attach them to the underlying metal frame. The endoscope arrived yesterday from Amazon. I used it to inspect all of the plumbing into the grey tank. It all looks okay. Maybe it was just the one loose shower drain. 

The last task was switching out the battery temperature sensor from the Victron shunt with the starter battery voltage. I will use a 30amp relay between the coach batteries and the small PWM charger that charges the chassis batteries. 

Wednesday - This morning we went to Saguaro National Park as Bridget wanted to take pictures of the blooming cactus. The Saguaro we just budding with a just a few flowers. I forgot my phone so no pictures.

After we returned, I started a task that I’ve been really putting off. Waxing the RV. This product was recommended by several other RVers as a fairly simple way to get it done. And I’ve been really happy with the ceramic car wash I’ve been using on the Jeep so I thought I’d give it a try. 

It works pretty good. I had washed the back with Dawn before putting on more stickers so it really needed some sort of wax. I got around a quarter of the RV done before running out of clean microfiber cloths. We washed them so I’ll continue tomorrow morning. At 86°F this afternoon, it’s kinda warm.

We watched a movie in the activity center this afternoon. It was a Tom Hanks movie about Elvis. Hanks played the role of the evil manager. It was actually a pretty good movie.

Thursday - A morning test session just after another couple took off for the summer. Erik had lent me stuff when I was installing the new batteries. As a full-timer, he carries a lot of stuff with him including quite the selection of tools.

After the morning test session, I finished up most of the passenger side of the RV. My wash brush broke but I’ve had it for over 5 years. This meant that the upper 6” or so of the RV wasn’t washed or waxed. Oh well. It still looks a whole lot better than it did before. I’m pretty impressed with this stuff. 

As a test of the Shelly1 and the relays on the input the the PWM chassis battery charger, I set the chassis battery trigger voltage to be below 12.8VDC for at least 15 minutes. The other condition is the SOC for the house batteries to be over 90%. This is just for testing. I’ll probably use 12.5VDC which corresponds to a SOC of about 80% for lead acid batteries. There is another HomeAssistant automation that turns off charging when the chassis batteries exceed 13.2VDC for 15 minutes.