Furnace Failure and Working Backup Plans

Negative 18 degrees for a low is a bad time for a furnace to go out in any domicile. Depending on heat from a breakable system of fans, control boards, ignition systems, switches and relays is a recipe for an eventual critical situation. In an RV, the situation is slightly different because the walls are 1.5” thick Styrofoam and only retain vital heat for so long. Since I just experienced this situation, I realized it was a story worth telling. Thankfully, through all of my planning and forethought, I had backup plans in place that allowed me to experience this calmly and without damage.

The Suburban SF-30 furnace that came with my RV failed on a frigid February morning. It actually silently failed overnight, but I didn’t notice until the evening that day. The only way I noticed was that the cabin was a couple degrees colder than normal when I came home and the furnace didn’t appear to be firing. The only way the cabin wasn’t stone-cold was that I have electric heaters with thermostats that come on at a finely tuned temperature. With the electric heaters as a backup, everything was saved.

The furnace failure was quiet, but marked by obvious signs – signs which I caught onto quickly and responded to. The signs were a cooler than normal internal temperature and no sign of furnace firing when it should be. Once I realized what was going on, I entered into my first phase of emergency backup plans. The only way my first layer of backup plan was different than what I was doing anyway was to install a small, personal heater in the water compartment under the bed, so the internal water pipes didn’t freeze. The rest of the cabin was warmed by electric heaters on a supplemental basis anyway, so this one step was quite simple.

Since I realized the failure around 6pm on a February night, it had already been dark for an hour and was already quite cold – negative 11 or so when I checked. In my preparedness, I pulled on my arctic-insulated Carhartt bibs, a fleece coat, an expedition-weight down coat, a wool hat, and wool glomitts. This insulation was necessary because the furnace is accessible only from outside. I grabbed my volt meter to test relays and power to the motor, and a few other tools, and started testing the device. Before I put on my deep-cold winter gear, I looked at the manual and came up with theories for what was wrong first – the schematics give enough information to get an idea of how the device works and what could be wrong.

Truth be told, it took me a while to narrow down what went wrong, but that first night spent outside until 10pm in negative 18 degree temperatures allowed me to begin forming hypotheses to test the next day – mostly, it gave me an opportunity to familiarize myself with the device and to sleep on my experience.

The next morning, I went out and started testing my hypotheses with a written plan of things to test. I even came up with theories for what tests would determine what part(s) were the cause of the failure. Once I found tests that were falling into my range of theory of what was wrong, I was able to start gathering parts that needed replacement. My theories were pretty rough estimates at best, largely because I was unfamiliar with this device and how it worked – I had never seen the internals of the furnace before, or any RV furnace for that matter.

My tests revealed that the “time delay relay” was likely out due to a failed voltage test with the thermostat on and calling for heat. Then, the motor simultaneously was not showing continuity where and when I hypothesized that it would have continuity. Whether the motor was actually bad is something I didn’t actually care to test further – the motor was likely original and almost definitely on its last legs anyway. The furnace in my coach is 15 years old this year and I have put year-around-dwelling pressures on it. As a 12 VDC motor, it was likely to go bad any time.

Upon finding the likely candidates for failure, the next phase was to figure out how to extract the guts of the furnace to work on it and to locate parts. My location doesn’t have a parts dealer, so I had to go to the nearest city, over 40 miles away. The commuting time for such travel added roughly three to four hours to an already long day, which included a lengthy diagnosis and learning period already.

All the while, I learned that each propane-dependent device did not have its own shutoff valve. That meant that if I wanted to service the furnace, my water heater and stove become non-operational. In a full-time living situation, that’s not practical or safe. So, another project got added into the mix: The project of adding a shutoff valve to the furnace’s propane line. That also meant learning how to do this correctly and safely.

The cold snap that both triggered and increased the severity of this failure led me to have to learn systems quickly and to pick up new skills fast. I had to learn how to make flare fittings in copper gas line, how to properly install gas fittings, and how my furnace worked in order to get the right parts. Being able to pick up these skills fast was critical, but was underlain by a long history of working with vehicle electrical and mechanical systems that made these skills fast and easy to pick up.

Safety in this case was critical. Working with gas lines and valves becomes dangerous and I can only hope that I did it all as well as I think I did. Failure to set new gas fittings properly could lead to explosive consequences, which I believe I avoided by doing my work right. I suppose time will tell.

In the end, the lesson is that it is always good to have backup plans on top of backup plans and to respond quickly and effectively to these kinds of critical failures. When I rebuilt the furnace, I made sure to clean every part, lubricate anything that moves, and to preemptively replace something if it is destined for failure. The blower motor and the time delay relay had to be replaced, which required a nearly total disassembly and reconditioning of the furnace. The time delay relay was even discontinued, but I was saved by the presence of an aftermarket model that will likely outlast the original by a number of years. In the end, I spent hours outside in sub-zero temperatures, but was never uncomfortable or concerned for my safety through extensive preparation for such an event. I had hoped that I would never have to see such a circumstance, but now that I have, I realize that my preparations were fantastically appropriate and that it could have been worse and I would have been unscathed. That’s a pretty incredible statement considering the complexity of the job and the weather extremes that I was faced with.

A Home Doesn't Have To Be A House

After a year and a half in the Winnebago, I realize that it's now the place I call home. Not the town I live in, the trailer lot, or even my own little lot. The lot isn't my own and my connection to the town, though solidified in my history as an important one, is a fleeting connection. Upon completion of my degree, I will only likely return to visit remaining friends, a walk around campus, or lunch at a familiar establishment for memories. The Winnebago has become home -- which is nice because home can now be anywhere the wind takes me.

When I look back on how this project got started and how it has continued, I realize that I have done something unique, fun, and have done it all very well. In that, I've turned a recreational vehicle into a full-time living arrangement that actually works. I guess I can't scream victory yet, but after something like 600 days spent in my 26 foot rolling home, I'm actually happier than the day I moved into it.

One reason this life experiment has been so great is that it has social, economic, and personal dimensions that I didn't necessarily anticipate.When I started, I thought I would become a pariah for living in an RV and that people would find a way to look down on me. The entire opposite has been true. Instead, I spent a lot of time dragging myself down as if this was a too strange of a choice to fit in with the rest of society, but my experience has been overwhelmingly positive. The economic potential of the project has been fantastic -- though expensive over a short term, I walked into this with a 3-year plan in mind. That third year was intended to pay off all of my student debt.

The personal dimensions of the project have grown with me over time. Looking back to the beginning, the plan was born from the economic instability of the late '00s and a clear need to change my view of my own financial picture based on the national shakedown that was occurring. One thing I realized was that my Grandparent's generation didn't seem to be in as much trouble as my own generation is projected to be in for. I spent hours, days, and months churning over how to create financial stability out of a system that appeared to be heading toward greater and greater instability.

My answer to the question of how to deal with likely economic hardship in my future was to look back to the past. When I look at the humble beginnings of my Grandparents, I realized that they had it right: Live simply and within your means early in life. While the idea was not directly hatched from this inspiration, it was part of my cultural memory and something I had heard from time to time growing up -- Grandma and Grandpa lived in a tiny trailer with wheels when they were in college and a few years following. They had it right: They lived within their means.

Living within one's means is a very subjective concept today. Loans, mortgages, and easy money make borrowing a very simple and powerful financial tool. But I realized that debt makes my skin itch, it brings down my psyche, and keeps me chained to payments. In today's world, debt is unavoidable for all, but the well-to-do. But I aimed to minimize being tied to such a system as much as I possibly could and I am doing it all through personal interest, familial inspiration, and skills that I have uncontrollably embedded in me from my family.

The system isn't perfect. It isn't even always fun. Sometimes, it could even be dangerous -- many of these systems aren't meant for extreme conditions and year around, continuous use. Given that it has worked great so far, one of the greatest things I've learned is that a home isn't a house -- a home is a space. It's a state of mind. And it is the peace that comes from security, safety, and the creation of memories that will last a lifetime. My house isn't perfect, it's even a little odd. It's an idea born from my parent's parents, but it has led me to realize that you can't buy a home -- you can only buy a house, but it's the way you live and think about the space that makes it a home.

Negative 31 Degrees Fahrenheit

According to the National Weather Service, my location hit negative 31 degrees Fahrenheit for the low during a cold snap. It was negative 31 for only a couple hours in the early morning, but then the highs the following day were not even above zero. The days surrounding had similar lows in the negative 24 to negative 28 degree range. Trailers in my neighborhood were flooding the streets from frozen and cracked pipes. University buildings were suffering frozen pipes. And many other houses in the town had frozen pipes. I didn’t! 

My winterizing work really got tested during this cold snap and it all turned out to be a smashing success. My remake of my heated water hose turned out to be great. It should be good down below negative 40, but hot water came out of my faucet after negative 30, so that’s a major win.

Because of the ultra-cold temps, I did drain my tanks before the snap and pour RV antifreeze into the waste tanks. The purpose of this was to keep the pipes and valves from freezing and splitting. Since the water closet compartment is heated by both the furnace and an electric heater, I wasn’t worried, but wanted to cover all bases. Whether it was necessary to add RV antifreeze, I’m not sure, but my guess is that it didn’t hurt. 

Inside the coach, I was able to keep it at 59 degrees F even during the coldest moments in the night because of the good insulation that this model has and because of my use of both a propane furnace and electric heaters to supplement the propane furnace. My electric heaters were set to their lowest setting and I only use them to spread heat and to keep the furnace from running constantly. At their lowest setting, the two electric heaters consume 725 W. That’s more energy than I would care to admit is needed, but in the grand scheme it’s a tiny amount of energy to heat a house in negative 30 degree F temperatures.  

I made it through the first major cold snap with ease. The problem is that winter had not even arrived when these temps arrived – it was still fall. So, as winter begins and then progresses, we’ll see how many more of those ultra-cold days are still in store. The condition that has me concerned is the possibility of the power going out during a major cold snap. If the power goes out, I have an emergency plan in place, but it will require me to be home for the outage and to recognize the outage in time. In double-digit negative temperatures and a power outage, my heated water hose has about 15 minutes before ice crystals will start forming in the pipe.

Tiny Houses Make the News, RV's Don't

Browsing Facebook, I came across an NPR story, "Architect's Dream House: Less Than 200 Square Feet." The story is about an architect who lost her house to foreclosure and couldn't get another mortgage. She decided to build a "tiny house" by herself and spend only $11,000 on it. Her house is now under 200 square feet. Great idea!

The thing that caught my ear was that she lives in Idaho and said that she didn't live in an RV because RV's aren't built for the climate. I beg to differ.

The tiny house movement is great and it's a step in the right direction for bucking big banks, life-long mortgages, and rent-market ripoffs, but why all the new materials? There are RV's bigger than this lady's tiny house sitting on lots, rotting, all over the country. With a few nifty inventions, the right RV is good down to at least negative 31 Fahrenheit by my experience.

My gripe here is that when people build something resembling a house on a flatbed trailer, it makes NPR. When someone repurposes a Winnebago, people get dismissed as redneck, trailer trash. Is it because people have been re-purposing RV's for decades in situations of individual poverty? Is it because it's now stylish to try to buck the system by living in a tiny house? It seems that there are some class issues and stereotypes at work for how these sorts of lifestyles are covered.

My RV-dwelling choice is rooted directly from the tiny house movement -- I just chose to repurpose something that already existed and was going to just go to waste, rather than building something new with new building materials. Gladly, I won't be making the news, but it sure is odd that the well-to-do build a house on a flatbed and it makes news, but those of us recycling and doing the exact same thing for the same reasons get no such attention -- instead we just get assigned a stereotype.

Here's the article, it's well worth checking out:

http://www.npr.org/2013/12/27/257560971/architects-dream-house-less-than-200-square-feet

Routine Maintenance on my House's Engine

Over the summer, I did some maintenance on the ole beast. I changed the transmission fluid, which I believe will greatly increase the longevity of my little home. The transmission has only 37,000 miles on it, which includes all of the pervious owner’s driving and all of mine. The fluid, conceivably, is as old as the vehicle, though. That means it was due for a change.

Changing transmission fluid on an automatic transmission was new to me, as of this summer. All of my other vehicles are manual, so the procedure is quite different. Manual transmissions have a drain plug and a fill hole and it’s easier to change than the motor oil. The auto trans is a little more involved, but I learned a ton of invaluable details about the history of my transmission, which will help me to project its future.

First, the transmission fluid had never been changed and the transmission is original, which is great. It’s also the heaviest-duty model that comes with the Chevy 454 engine. That could make for expensive repairs in the future, or better longevity with infrequent use.

Second, I learned that auto-part stores sell garbage parts that you should NOT put in your auto transmission. For example, the OEM Chevy gasket is heavy duty, reusable, with metal grommets to prevent smashing, and a well-sealing rubber inlay in some kind of hard core plastic. The ones that come with filters at the auto parts stores are either rubber or cork. They are horrendous and are why so many American transmissions leak endlessly. The OEM one won’t leak a drop if installed properly. The filters available are also sketchy – some are not the same quality as the AC Delco (OEM). So, I had to scrounge through numerous filters until I found one that was likely made by the same people as the AC Delco (many auto parts are reboxed). The filter in a Chevy auto trans is on the INSIDE and it’s there for many miles or years before replacement, so this isn’t a part I wanted to mess around with.

Lastly, I learned that my transmission has been well cared for. Upon pulling the pan off to clean it and the magnet that catches metallic clutch slurry material, I learned that the clutches are likely in good shape. There was not excessive sludge on the bottom of the pan or on the magnet. That is a beautiful thing.

To insure a strong future, I changed the fluid over to a full-synthetic Valvoline product that is GM-Approved, which should exceed the factory fluid specs. That’s a great way to make a vehicle last. The icing on the cake was knowing that I torqued the bolts of the drain pan in the proper order and to the exact recommended torque setting and cleaned everything up. Cheap insurance for a multi-thousand dollar transmission, which I hope to never put enough miles on to worry about it. I just want to save myself, or the next owner, from ridiculous failures brought on by careless maintenance. I spent about $150 all said and done and hopefully saved thousands over the course of years. Win.

Winter Is Here

The snow is flying, though it’s only October 3^rd. My winter preparations went a lot faster this year than last, largely because I already have everything made and fit the way I need for a long, cold winter. Winter here is eight months out of the year, so I don’t have much room for error on my inventions. This year, I can reflect on my last winter’s lessons and hopefully improve for the coming year.

My skirt job has proven versatile, durable, and fit to the weather here. Considering that I pieced together a skirt from modified canvas tarps and stainless steel screw snaps and made it through last winter without issue, I’d say the job is a total win. However, I have learned something about water proof canvas tarps… they shrink when they get wet. This year has been exceptionally rainy, which has caused the tarps to shrink more than they did last year. If I were to do the skirt job again, I would actually build it with a little more slack. No serious problems caused by the shrinkage, but a lesson learned.

My windshield insulation job is solid. Using two cheap quilts from Wal-Mart made for an excellent windshield insulation that even looks good. Using black in this climate was even better because they pick up heat during the day. If I were to improve this design, I would line the folded, safety-pinned quilts with another quilt – perhaps old ones, or other cheap ones. The point is: This insulation can be built up to have additional loft. A pro job would be to set snaps, instead of using safety-pins. The safety pins aren’t visible, but snaps would be sah-weet.

My heated water hose design from last year was good, but I dissected it this year to see just how good it was. I had taken a water-grade hose, wrapped it with Easy-Heat wire, then wrapped with foil-backed fiberglass insulation, then wrapped polyurethane foam around that. Well, turns out there’s not enough heat conduction in the water hose to allow the heat wire to self-regulate. Long story short, the water hose was heating too much, so the plastic was swelling – I knew this, luckily, and so avoided poisoning myself with plasticizers and other nasty chemicals by running water through the [short] line last winter.

I fixed the above issue by redoing the heated water hose design this year. First, I shortened the hose, so it wasn’t 10’ where I needed 4.5’; the new hose has been shortened to ~6’, which is much more reasonable. Then, I wrapped the hose with heavy-duty aluminum foil and made sure it fit tightly around the hose. I wound the foil-wrapped hose with Easy-Heat self-regulating wire, with coil spacing that will protect down to -40 deg F; then wrapped with a couple layers of fiberglass batting insulation. To make the hose entirely portable, this time, I heated the spigot and the hose independently. So, to make the hose modular, I wrapped each end from the base of the threads to about 4” up the insulated hose with electrical tape, making it so that the hose can be removed without skin:fiberglass contact. On top of the fiberglass insulation, I wrapped the plastic wrap that came with it in a spiral wrap with 50% overlap in the direction that water will not make into the fiberglass, should the polyurethane foam be compromised. I banded this material on with electrical tape every 4-6” or so. Then, I covered the whole thing with polyurethane foam with duct-tape bands and a seam down the split spine. I formed each end, so it would insulate the angles present at the base and the RV-threads.

Details, details.

In the end, I think I’m ready for Winter and hopefully slightly better than last year. What I am going to work on this year is better moisture management and perhaps some clever window insulation for the rest of the windows. I’m thinking some greenhouse wall material might be good for the smaller windows. Design ideas will likely show up here as I come up with something. However, since I’m heating a 26’ x 8’ x 7’ box insulated with polystyrene, I’m not extremely worried about retaining heat. There are houses in this college town that have no insulation, they have single pane windows, and they’re over 1000 square feet… they’re likely using 10x as much energy as I am for heating.

Back to School : Tethering the RV

Back to school is coming fast. That means that my lofty summer of rolling without a landlord is over. It has been a great summer and I have learned a lot about how to full-time RV with grace. Mostly, I've learned why it's great to have contrast in life and to live with daily variety and that how we define "home" is deeply cultural.

Over the course of this summer, I have occupied about four distinct locations that I started to call home. Since I don't have the money to just bounce around wherever, I have kept the RV in place as long as possible. Since my particular RV is totally self contained, my only regular utility has been electricity via an extension cord to friends' houses.

When I started out, I was a little afraid of what this would all entail -- I was worried that I would get in trouble for parking on streets in front of friends' houses, and I was worried about things like showers. As I quickly learned, my worries didn't take into account my adaptability and resourcefulness.

Even though I ended up on the road for work for a month and a half of the summer, I quickly found that my life was little different than it was before. I was still being efficient with water and electricity and I still had a roof over my head. The only real oddity was finding showers, which as a graduate student on summer break really wasn't a problem.

Looking back, one of my biggest roadblocks and causes of worry were from not knowing just what the next step would bring. Paranoia about what awaited me without a stable pad for my house to occupy was likely born from an entirely non-nomadic culture. As it turns out, being nomadic is actually great fun and there is little to worry about -- especially when you own the roof over your head outright and can be anywhere you want to be.

My sense of "home" was pretty deeply rattled with this summer's experiment. I never felt "homeless" or lost, even though I moved the RV to different locations, which is strange if you think about it. Most people seem to associate "home" with a house on a foundation -- one location that they come home to every night for a minimum of a year at a time (with 12 months being the standard lease period and all).

With the frequent changing of setting, I started to realize that "home" isn't as static as most people might think. For me, it became my shelter -- the RV. And not just the thing itself, but the familiarity of the interior -- my things and the arrangement of those things that are inside it. Home became the place where my tools to survive and exist well were.

Since all of my things and my sense of home were on wheels and no longer rooted in a foundation, I encountered major implications of my sense of identity and my sense of roots in a place. In essence, the world around be became my home, regardless of where it was that my home happened to be parked. In that, my sense of home became much bigger -- it is no longer rooted in a foundation and a house or place -- home became wherever I was at the time and the environment that I occupied.

I spent much of the summer living out of my truck for work, but because of my experience with the RV, this transition was invisible to me. My sense of home had nothing to do with the RV, rather home became my truck, tent, and wherever I happened to be. It seems that this would count as evidence for a full-bore transition to being nomadic.

While on the road, I never really longed for being home because home was wherever I was. It's an odd thing to go from thinking that home was a structure and a foundation to realizing that home is actually survival tools and social networks. Of all of this, I realized that whatever home is to me, it isn't lawns, garden gnomes, and porcelain toilets -- it's my environment, my tools for living, and the people around me.

All in all, the summer has been great, but it is time to reintroduce that traditional stability for the coming winter and the school semester ahead. It's a funny thing to have to come full circle, but the knowledge of what's out there and that home is anything I want it to be has been invaluable. Even though I'm sad to not be as free as I was this summer, that's okay, because now home will be the library, the department, and RV again. Come next summer, home could be the mountains or the desert, or even the arctic. While I'm afraid the experience has pushed me further into becoming a true nomad, it has also taught me the value of stability when stability is needed. Knowing when stability is needed and when it is not is the key -- along with the ability to shift gears quickly and confidently when opportunities present themselves to float freely and not be chained to a foundation.