modifications

Enhancements and repairs to our coach.

Using a sewer tote tank and macerator pump to dump waste tanks from the back of our truck

What goes in, must go out. As mentioned last week, sometimes we stay at rustic campgrounds or rallies where there are no sewer hookups. No big deal for up to about a week. But if we’re staying longer, we have a tote tank that can be used to empty our black and gray tanks, enabling us to camp as long as we want.

We bought a Camco Rhino 36-Gallon Portable Camper/RV Tote Tank from Amazon:

Tote tank box

They (and RVers generally) recommend getting a tank big enough to fit the capacity of the RV’s waste tanks, but that advice is geared towards smaller RVs — our motorhome has a 70 gallon gray tank and 50 gallon black tank, so we need to take two trips to fully empty each.

The instructions that came with the tank:

Manual

Manual

I also got a Tote Tank Gauge for it, that indicates when the tank is getting full; important since the capacity is smaller than the tanks in our coach:

Fill gauge

I didn’t bother installing the ladder hook, since we don’t have a ladder on our coach. In the future I might add a bar to our towbar to mount a rack onto. But for now I store the tank in the bed of our truck, wrapped in a cover:

Covered tote tank in truck

Here’s the tote tank (when it was brand new):

Tote tank

Tote tank

It has wheels at the back and front; the front wheels can be steered; I normally don’t attach the handle, though:

Wheel

There is a valve on the side to dump the contents:

Dump valve

And a second valve on top for filling, though this can also be used for dumping by tilting the tank vertically:

Fill valve

I also purchased a macerator pump:

Macerator pump

Normally one would position the tote tank next to the wet bay, and use gravity to fill it from the RV’s tanks, then hook the tank to a tow bar or wheel it manually to the campground dump station.

But I wanted to keep it in the bed of our truck, so I could easily drive it to the dump station. So I use the macerator pump to chop up any solids and pump it all uphill into the truck:

Macerator pump

Another time, I attached the macerator directly to the port (with a clear tube); the downside was getting a little water in the wet bay when disconnecting (if the tank isn’t completely drained):

Maserator attached directly

The tank in the back of the truck:

Tank

The hose (only used for this purpose) goes from the macerator to the fill valve on top:

Hose

Both the water bladder and the sewer tote fit quite nicely together in the bed of the truck:

Water bladder and tote

Water flowing into the tank:

Water flowing into tank

Water flowing into tank

Fill gauge:

Fill gauge

The fill gauge rising up as it nears capacity:

Gill gauge

Once the tote is full (or the RV’s tanks are empty), I drive the truck to the campground’s dump station, hook up a sewer hose to the side valve, and empty the tank:

Dumping from tank in truck

Much more convenient than dragging the tote behind the truck. And like the water bladder, lets us stay indefinitely even in a campground without a sewer hookup.

Refilling our fresh tank with a water bladder and pump

We usually stay at full-hookup campgrounds, as we enjoy our creature comforts. But occasionally we stay at more rustic campgrounds or rallies where there isn’t a water faucet in our site. If a week or less, we just avoid doing laundry, long showers, and using our rear toilet (as that is a macerating one that uses more water on each flush), and can cope without difficulties.

But if we’re staying longer, we have the ability to refill our fresh water tank via a water bladder and pump.

I bought an Aquatank II water bladder from Amazon, a drinking-water-safe flexible water container with a 60 gallon capacity. It folds up really small for when we don’t need it, and fits in the bed of our truck when in use.

Our fresh tank is 90 gallons, so it takes two loads if totally empty, though I usually do one load when it’s about halfway.

Here it is empty, spread out in the bed of our truck. It has an upper hose fitting for adding water, and a lower hose fitting underneath for draining:

Water bladder

I drive the truck to the potable water supply at the campground, and use a hose to connect it to the water bladder:

Hose from potable water supply

I use a water meter to track how much I’ve added:

Water meter

The water bladder mostly full:

Mostly full water bladder

50 gallons:

Water bladder

I then drive back to our campsite, and use an electric pump to get the water into our coach, via the usual filters and water softener as I use for campsite hookups:

Pump

(I also got a drill pump as an emergency backup.)

The electric pump is about 16 PSI:

Gauges

The water bladder during draining:

Water bladder

It takes about an hour to do the full fill and empty cycle, depending on the water pressure at the campground. Definitely not as convenient as a faucet at our site, but when we don’t have one, this solution lets us stay longer without having to worry as much about water usage.

Replacing solar fuse with breaker

As followers of this blog may recall, we had a fuse between our solar panels and the solar controller:

Fuse

I had an issue where that fuse blew a few times, possibly due to our extra solar panels putting out too much power. The most recent time I replaced it with a 30 amp fuse:

Fuse

That didn’t end so well — a few months later, that fuse melted. Perhaps cheap junk, I don’t know; it should just blow, not melt. It set off our smoke detector, so could have been much worse:

Melted fuse

I considered replacing the fuse holder, but figured I needed a better solution. I decided to replace it with a circuit breaker, so if it is over-current again it’ll just pop instead of blow or burn.

I needed a short length of wire to connect it, so went to the nearby Lowes for wire, using 8 gauge wire, the same as used elsewhere in the coach:

Shopping for wire

That was an adventure in itself; the guy who helped us wasn’t familiar with wire cutting, but he figured it out.

Wire

I connected a short length of that wire to the breaker:

Breaker with wire

I then drilled some holes for the wires above the solar controller:

Installing breaker

And reconnected the controller to that wire:

Reconnected controller

Here’s the breaker installed, and preparing to re-mount the controller:

Installing controller

The completed breaker and controller (with the solar pulling in 14.4 amps):

Completed breaker and controller

Here’s hoping this solution will prove satisfactory!

Photographic artwork

Our coach came with some generic artwork on a wall in the bedroom. But we wanted to personalize it a bit, so we replaced that with 12 photos of favorite places from our travels, printed on aluminum (so we don’t need to worry about breaking glass).

We laid the prints out on our bed to decide on the arrangement:

Artwork

How many of those places do you recognize? I bet there are a few stumpers. Let me know in the comments which ones you recognize, and which ones you’ve visited. See the end of this post for a full list.

The prints came with metal hangers, which wouldn’t really cut it in a rolling earthquake of a motorhome, so I attached Command Strips to stick them to the wall; these Command Strips come in two parts like velcro, so we’ll be able to swap out the pictures in the future if desired:

Artwork

Artwork

The wall in question, with some markers to guide placement:

Wall

Adding the first picture:

Artwork

Paladin helping:

Artwork

Artwork

Artwork

Artwork

Artwork

Done:

Artwork

Artwork

How many of those places did you recognize? Here’s a list, starting from top-left, with links to corresponding blog posts:

  1. Olympic National Park
  2. North Cascades National Park
  3. Yellowstone National Park
  4. Crater Lake National Park
  5. Devils Tower National Park
  6. Custer State Park
  7. Joshua Tree National Park
  8. Death Valley National Park
  9. Arches National Park
  10. Goblin Valley State Park
  11. Grand Canyon National Park
  12. Monument Valley Tribal Park

A huge improvement, and a nice reminder of some of our favorite places.

New tires

A big expense, but an important one: new tires. Motorhome and truck tires don’t wear out like car tires, but instead age out. Tires can last up to ten years, but the advice is to check them starting at five years, and aim for about seven years to replace them, or sooner if there are signs of cracking.

Our 2017 coach had the original tires, made in 2016, so were about due. And when we recently had our brake seize up, raising the temperature of the tire over the danger zone of 200°F, we decided it was time.

These big tires are over a grand each, and we have six of them, so it isn’t a trivial expense, but good tires are very important for the safety of the coach.

We went to Bay Diesel in Red Bay to get this done:

Bay Diesel

Bay Diesel

While there, we also got them to look at our generator, which had misbehaved earlier, but of course was working perfectly while they looked at it:

Generator

The rear wheel without the tires:

Rear wheel

Rear wheel

New tires:

New tires

New tires installed; they were all manufactured in late 2023, so they should be good for another 5-10 years:

New tires

New tires

We also did a test drive with a couple of techs to tweak the alignment of our Safe-T-Plus steering control system:

Test drive

Yay for new tires:

New tires

Engine compartment insulation

The insulation above the engine in our motorhome came loose. Apparently this is a fairly common issue, but not ideal:

Engine insulation

Engine insulation

I used some aluminum tape to temporarily repair it:

Engine insulation

But while in Red Bay we got one of the after-hours vendors, Mark Tedford (662-706-0692), to properly fix it for us.

There is an access panel to the engine compartment in our rear bathroom (yes, the engine is at the back, commonly called a “diesel pusher”):

Engine compartment

He removed that to enhance its insulation:

Engine compartment

The first time I’ve seen inside that compartment on our coach, looking down on our Cummins ISL 450 diesel engine:

Engine compartment

The default engine hatch insulation:

Engine insulation

His enhanced insulation:

Engine insulation

His improved insulation from the back:

Engine insulation

 

Engine insulation

Engine insulation

Much nicer. The bathroom floor used to get quite warm after a drive, but it is now much cooler. And now we shouldn’t need to worry about it falling apart.

Roof AC inspection

Another thing we did in Red Bay was get a couple of our roof AC units looked at, as the rear and mid ones were not performing well. The units were apparently fine, but they cleared out some debris from the ducting, which solved the issue; they’re working much better now.

We did this at Bunkhouse Conversion:

Bunkhouse Conversion

They had an excellent way to get onto the roof; no dealing with ladders, they used a cherry picker truck as an elevator:

Cherry picker

Cherry picker

Cherry picker

A quick and easy appointment, but well worthwhile.

Fixing TV lift

One big issue that we got Davidson RV to investigate was that our main TV lift wasn’t going down reliably; it would often stop partway, requiring pressing the down button several times. They investigated, and determined that the lift controller was bad:

TV lift controller

Here’s the TV laying on our bed while they investigated:

TV

They couldn’t get a replacement in time, so as a temporary workaround, they installed a switch to bypass the controller:

TV lift switch

I contacted the manufacturer, Venset in Denmark, and they referred me to their US distributor, Wood Technology.

I emailed Wood Technology, and Mike Fisher replied. We exchanged several very helpful emails, photos, and documents, discussing the issue and solutions. He provided me with a replacement controller:

New controller

The new controller, installed:

New controller

It was super easy to sync our existing remote control to the new controller, then I was able to successfully raise and lower the TV:

Remote

Here’s a peek of the lift mechanism:

Lift mechanism

Another potential issue that Mike discussed was that the curly cord could get tangled, preventing the lift from raising. So he recommended either cutting it out, or detaching the lower portion and rerouting the wire:

Wire

I did the latter, bundling the curly cord with the other wires coming from the TV:

Wire

That should avoid that issue. And we’re very glad that the lift mechanism is working properly again. Much appreciation to Mike at Wood Technology!

Tweaks at Davidson RV

We got Davidson RV to help us with a few other issues.

One was to replace our water pump, as the old one wasn’t performing well:

Water pump

Another issue with fortunate timing was the entry step didn’t fully retract; they lubricated it, and it’s been fine since (I have been lubricating it with silicone lube, but have since purchased some better lube):

Entry step

Finally, the USB ports on my side of the bed had stopped working, so they replaced them:

USB ports

I could have done all three of those things myself, but easier to get them to do so while we were there.

Cockpit carpet

Another little project while at Davidson RV was to add some custom-fit carpeting in the cockpit area:

Cockpit carpet

Cockpit carpet

Much better. That helps catch dirt coming into the coach, and is more comfortable, instead of walking on cold tile on cold mornings; the heated tile doesn’t extend into the cockpit area.