Tucson, AZ

Sunday - There was a special test session this afternoon for a class. The instructor was in Eugene, OR, and the students were from coast to coast including one from Hawaii. It was a long session lasting over three hours but all but one of the students passed.

I finished the day out sitting in the jacuzzi until around 8pm. Pretty nice...

Monday - The temperature this morning was only 61°F and this wasn't the overnight low. Those are pretty nice temperatures. And the high of 82°F is nothing I'm going to complain about.

I'm going through the directions for the refrigerator upgrade and I think it will take a couple of days. A lot of steps in the seventy-five pages of instructions. Plus, it must sit upright for a minimum of twelve hours to allow the oil to drain back into the compressor in case the direction arrows weren't followed during shipment.

Tuesday - Lead one of the test sessions today. I wasn't planning on it but no one had volunteered. I called the applicant about ten minutes ahead of time and he had tested with us before so he was familiar with the drill.

The replacement refrigerator back arrived via FedEx truck at around 5:30pm. The paperwork indicated that it weighed 95lbs but I’m sure that includes the pallet it was sitting on. It seems to be very well packed for the weird shape. 

I disconnected several more wires from the back and discovered that the ice maker shutoff doesn’t shut off the water so I just removed the valve from the back of the refrigerator and left the supply line connected. 

Tucson

Thursday - Another minor chore was defrosting the freezer. Since we will be upgrading the refrigerator next week sometime, I wanted to get all of the ice melted since it'll be lying face down on the floor with the doors removed. After the late afternoon rain, it was a pretty nice evening at the pool. There was still some lightning about fifteen miles northwest of here occasionally lighting up the clouds but it was nice here.

Friday - Since the freezer was defrosted, the freezer temperature actually got into single digits again! I guess the ice is a pretty good insulator. While we will be doing the upgrade, we borrowed a portable compressor refrigerator/freezer from Mike and Kathy. Currently, it has most of our freezer items and our compressor refrigerator/freezer will have our refrigerated items. The upgrade will take over a day since it needs to sit upright for at least 12 hours to let the oil drain back down to the compressor in case it was ever inverted while being shipped. I already have been contacted by FedEx about the delivery on Tuesday late afternoon or evening. 

This afternoon, Bridget saw a FB message that corn and tomatoes were available here in the park. We walked down and the produce looked fantastic. Especially the tomatoes. While we were there, a storm came through and this area got dumped on. Some of the hail is shown in the next picture which was taken behind the RV.

The water flowing down the street was curb to curb. A lot of water. Plus, it dropped the temperature quite a bit. People around us were digging out their sweaters.

Saturday - It was a wonderful, cool morning with an overnight low in the mid-60s. So I was able to lead a test session while sitting outside using a large step stool as a table. It is nice to be able to use the outside space again. 

After the test session, I washed the Jeep. This RV park doesn't prohibit it as long as you don't leave the water running and don't wash the car on the street. I used the RV pad behind us as they left much earlier than planned. 

In the afternoon, there is a demonstration of a remote test using special software. Right now, I'm waiting for the Zoom session to start and it's a good opportunity to write a blog post. To pass the time, I just took one of those FB trivia tests where they guess your education level. Perfect score and the software guessed Ph.D. Guess their software needs some work...

Ahhh

Sunday - It looks like cooler weather has finally arrived! High temperatures in the 80s again will be nice. We haven’t seen those temperatures for quite a while. And lows in the 60s will be a nice change.

We spent the morning with KathyK at a craft market east of here and also stopped at a nursery complete with alien staff. Not very talkative…

Monday - Wonderful morning temperature. Made breakfast outside on the Blackstone griddle then sat talking to the neighbors before the morning test session (9:00 AKDT). 

Around noon, the refrigerator vent fan I ordered from Amazon arrived. I had it installed on the side refrigerator vent blowing outside air into the space behind the refrigerator. The old fan was installed above the condenser blowing air up. A better setup but would require removing the refrigerator to install. I’ll move these fans to that location when the compressor retrofit is installed. 

It has a thermocouple to sense temperature but I currently have it running at maximum speed on manual to see if it helps lower the temperature of the refrigerator and freezer. 

Tuesday - The original plan was to go on a bicycle ride this morning. With the morning thunderstorms, it’s been postponed. This storm wasn’t even in the forecast!

That little storm just sort of sat over this area for quite a while. Today’s novelty was no A/C needed all day long! This is the first time in a long time that we didn’t need to run the A/C.

And another task, adding distilled water to the four golf cart batteries that provide 12VDC to the RV. They took about 1½ quarts. 

Wednesday - We went for a bike ride this morning along Pantano Wash initially heading north until the path ended around Costco then south to Golf Links Rd. Nice path and nice temperatures. 

There was a movie scheduled in the activity center called Cry Macho at 1:00. Free popcorn and soda. There were only about six or seven people but it was a decent movie that I hadn’t seen before. And the popcorn was fresh. 

We went to a poké restaurant for dinner. Delicious! It was near Costco so we stopped there for a few items including a bargain $4.99 cooked chicken. 2.7 lbs without bones…

Another Repair Project

Thursday - Back in spring while we were at a HH, the MaxxFan started misbehaving. If we ran it on auto, which is the preferred mode, as it got warmer and the fan sped up, the fan would shut down. The manufacturer said that it was probably the controller board and they would send out a new one - once they get hold of some. 

After multiple delays and shipping address changes, I finally asked a ham radio friend, BobB, who lives in the Orlando area to just mail it to us whenever it arrives. It took months. He mailed it to our home in Fairbanks and Bridget bought it back with her at the beginning of September. I finally got around to replacing the board. 

Friday - Thunderstorms and wind this afternoon. Enough potential wind for me to bring in the patio awning. By 4:30, it was dark to the south and east with lightning in the clouds. 

Not much going on today. Two test sessions and grocery shopping. I did order the 12VDC  compressor conversion kit for our Dometic RV refrigerator. It is a complete replacement for all of the ammonia and propane pieces on the back of the refrigerator box. The control board is reused.

It’s supposed to work much better than the absorption refrigeration unit. With an average power consumption of 60watts, that’s still 1,440 watt-hours or about 115 amp-hours. So we may end up upgrading our 220 amp-hour (usable) house battery bank and maybe adding more solar sooner rather than later.

Around 6:00, I wandered to the pool but it started to rain around 15 minutes later. It stopped around 6:30. Then started again around 6:45…

Saturday - This is one reason why we are replacing the absorption part of our refrigerator. Kind of too warm for a refrigerator. It should be in the upper 30s to low 40s. Not in the 50s. I think that it’s kind of interesting that the jump from the 40s to 50s was shortly after I had ordered the compressor conversion unit…

I did notice that I couldn’t hear the fan running behind the refrigerator. There is a 12V fan to blow air up towards the upper refrigerator vent on the roof.