Thursday, December 27, 2012

Christmas Dinner, Truck Repairs and Finding a Balance of Power

 

Christmas day we drove into San Antonio and met with all of the other Christmas tree lot managers and the owners of the company for a Christmas day meeting and dinner. It was nice to see everyone again and to swap stories from our tree sale adventures. It seems like everyone did well and the company as a whole had a good year.  The dinner was excellent and of course I overate as usual.

It will take the company a week or two to figure out our pay, so we are just hanging out here at the Thousand Trails resort at Lake Medina until then. We will leave here around the 5th of January to head towards the Phoenix area. It will be so nice to get my motorcycle back.

We spent Wednesday at a local Ford dealer and at the mall. I noticed some fluid leaking from under the truck. I crawled under it and thought it looked like antifreeze from a radiator hose so I made an appointment for Wednesday to have it checked out. The dealer confirmed it was the radiator hose but he could not get one until later in the morning. We decided to take their shuttle over to the mall and walk around until they could get it fixed.

Finally  around 12:30 they called and had it all done and sent the shuttle back for us. They ended up changing both the upper and lower radiator hoses and refilled the cooling system. Now we will be ready for that long stretch through west Texas.

The weather here is getting cold and it is getting down to around 28 degrees at night. We are on 30 amps so I have to be careful using our electric heaters. At 28 degrees, that is too cold for our heat pump to work so we have been using one electric heater and our furnace set low. Until last night when I ran out of propane and was too warm under our electric blanket to go out at 3:00am to change over the tank.

freezing1

When I got up at 7am it was really cold so I went out and changed over the tank and fired up the furnace. I hate using the furnace because it is such a propane hog, but when we are on 30 amps we have to use it. A lot of fulltimers like using those Blue Flame heaters that are much more efficient. I just have not jumped on that bandwagon as yet.

With the electric blanket on, one electric heater and the fireplace I am drawing about 27 amps of power.  If we move the electric heater to the middle of the rig and leave the bathroom door open and the fireplace on, we might be able to withstand 28 degrees at night without using any propane. It might also be cheaper in the long run to pay the $3.00 a night extra for a 50 amp site and run an additional electric heater. Finding the right balance can be tricky.

Stay warm and enjoy your day!

4 comments:

owensontheroad said...

Brrr. It's been in the 30's here at night. We do have 50 amp and free electric. We tend to leave our fireplace going and a thermostat space heater on in the bedroom. George hates using the propane heat :)

Steve and Joan said...

Guess we shouldn't complain about the temps in the 60's. We had a great Christmas with our families here in Florida. We will be leaving the 3rd to head back to Las Vegas. Really missing "home". We have a volunteer job at Lake Mead National Recreation Area for two months. Looking forward to that. Hope you guys have a Happy New Year!

Anonymous said...

Dave I dont know if you remember but we met in Tennesse at the RV Dreams rally we were just starting out and had our MS on order. We are in Gold Canyon AZ currently. When you get to Phoenix get hold of me and we can meet up for lunch somewhere. Been following your blog, sounds like you got a good workout in Tree business.

Bob and Janet Lehenbauer bjlehenbauer@hotmail.com

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