Eric’s Blog

The Camper

The night after we got back to the camper from homecoming in the Burg, at about 2:45 AM , Adrianne woke up to the sound of the circuit breakers in the camper popping off. She woke me up and I took a look at it. For some reason, we couldn’t keep the power on in the camper and were running on battery power only. We didn’t have any heat the entire time and it was one of the coldest nights we’d had so far. Around 6:30 AM, the power failed completely. I stayed home that day and tried to sort out what had happened.

As it turned out, the power converter that turns the Alternating Current (AC) from the campsite into Direct Current (DC) to keep the batteries charged burnt up. Nothing smells like burning electronics. For the rest of the day, all I could smell and taste was burnt electronics.

After the sun came up, I went outside and tried to narrow down if it was the camper, or the campsite. One of the neighbors was up and about, so I asked him if he had any issues. He said no, but we got to chatting and it turns out he was in the Navy also. He and his wife were living in their camper full-time, same as us, but they move from place to place every couple of days. He kept coming over and checking on my progress as I continued to troubleshoot and diagnose the problem.

Once I found the bad power converter and pulled it from the camper, the neighbor said that he may have a spare part, but it was in the belly of his camper and if they weren’t leaving today, he would pull it out for me. At some point, he decided to pull it out anyway, and it turned out to be the exact model we needed. The guy said that he bought it a few years ago as a spare, then wound up putting a bigger one in his camper. He’d been carrying around the one he’d just pulled out of his camper for a few years. It was serendipitous that it was the exact part we needed. He sold it to us for half the price that the part normally retails for and we were at about the 80% solution.

We still had the issue with the batteries being completely drained. I’d put the batteries on a direct charge and we decided to abandon ship after twelve hours of working the issue. We were cold, wet, and tired. We went and stayed at Ed and Maria’s house and took the cats with us for the night. I found a guy who could come to the camper the next day and help us continue troubleshooting the power problems we were having.

The next day, the repair man came to the camper and did some investigating. According to him, the batteries had been drained so thoroughly, they were damaged. He likened it to running the Boston marathon one day and four days later, running the New York marathon. You’d probably be able to complete the race, but your performance wouldn’t be as good. We walked through the electric system of the camper and he told us that we’d need to replace the batteries soon. We replaced the batteries this past weekend and haven’t had any more issues with the power.

Just before he left, the furnace in the camper started making an odd noise, so he stuck around and helped me figure out what was going on with it. It appeared that the squirrel cage in the furnace was bent or something was rubbing up against it. As it turned out, there was something rubbing up against it we couldn’t see and it just dislodged itself this past weekend. I’m still having difficulty with it making good fire. It ignites, then goes out and shuts itself off. We have the electric heat pumps and the fireplace for the moment, so I’m continuing to work the furnace issues.

While we were going through the belly of the camper, I kept finding things about the camper that made me sick to my stomach. It was literally slapped together. Bits of pipe and wire sticking out here or there. Hoses that didn’t connect to anything else. Screws that weren’t screwed in. It was depressing to say the least. I thought we bought a quality product when we got the camper. Now I know that they just put it together as fast a possible to make their money on it.

The worst part was feeling that we were so alone in the whole mess. We feel as though we’re homeless at the moment and didn’t know where to turn to for help. We’re fortunate to have such good friends as Ed and Maria. They’re more like family than friends and we’re so grateful that they’re in our lives.

The House

Part of the reason we feel homeless right now is because we haven’t closed on the house yet. Closing was scheduled for 10/31, but we received word that week that the people buying our house had an issue with their loan.

I don’t want to get into the gory details. The problem is being worked and we’re moving in the right direction. We hope to have an update sometime this week about when the new closing dates will be set. For now, we’ve moved back the date of delivery for our household goods, the washer & dryer we’ve ordered, and the installation of the internet at the house.

The good news is that we still want to close, the builder sill wants to close, and the people buying our old house will want to close. So everyone is working to make this happen. I could go into all the details about what could happen if the closing doesn’t go through, but, I would wind up driving myself insane. All we can do at this point is to keep calm and carry on.

Sarah

Sarah called while we were at Ed & Maria’s to check on us and told us about some of the things that she’s dealing with right now. I won’t go into details, but she’s having problems with some of her roommates. It was hard to hear her talk about all the problems she’s facing and there really wasn’t anything else I could do to help her. At the end of a very long day, all I could do at that point was listen to her and try to be supportive. I felt so helpless; it actually made me ill that there wasn’t anything I could do.

The Truck

On top of everything, the truck had a maintenance light on it the other day. I took it in to have it looked at and they informed me that it needs new rear brakes . Of course, the brakes have to be put on by a Toyota certified technician and it’s going to cost about $600. It’s also going to need new tires before we get any snow on the ground, so that will be about $1,000+ in the next month of so. I just can’t seem to catch a break.

Reflections

This is about the point where I’d normally say something like, “I’m not sure how much more we can take”. But, I don’t think we have any say in how much more we can take or not. We just have to take what is given to us and do the best we can.

It would be nice to get some good news this week. Hopefully, we’ll hear some good news about the house in the next day or so. I will update all of you when I have something to tell you one way or the other.