This is the entry for July 9th:
The original reason to rent the RV and take this trip was to get together with Susie's side of the family. Today, we were able to finally get everyone at the campsite at the same time. But first, we had a little excitement...
BEEP, BEEP, BEEP, BEEP.......
Coming out of a sound sleep, I'm trying to figure out what the beeping noise is coming from. The Carbon Monoxide detector in our bedroom is going off. We had been running the propane heater throughout the night and it now appears that we have filled the RV with CO! Yikes!!! We open the vent in the roof (Which we should have done before we went to bed...) and reset the alarm.
I get up, get dressed, and go check the status panel. It seemed to us that the heater ran an awful lot last night and I fear we may have used up a lot of propane. When I check the panel, it is dead. It appears we also completely drained the house battery. Damn. Well, we'll start the generator and recharge the house battery.
As an aside, I thought I only had these types of cascading problems with computers. Obviously not...
Now I have to sit and think a minute. Well, I should be able to start the RV engine and that will charge the house battery as well. Once that is going I can then start the generator. All of a sudden the propane detector at floor level goes off. Now, I have read a lot, and I mean a lot, about RV's but I have never heard of this before. If there was a system in the RV, it was complaining.
After resetting the propane detector, I started the RV engine. It started immediately (Whew!). I stepped out of the driver's seat and checked the status panel. Our batteries were fully charged, the propane was at 3/4 tank and everything looked perfectly fine. I started the generator and it fired right up.
It appears that I happened to reset the system that somehow got confused. I was actually getting false alarms. After awhile everything was back to normal. Mitch came by, and said hello and I told him what happened and how I solved it. He said these things happen (!!!). Well we won't be buying a Coachman...
Mitch leaves to go fishing and we are eating breakfast....BEEP, BEEP, BEEP, BEEP... Not again! This time it was the propane detector. Susie resets the detector and we finish up breakfast and decide to open up the RV shut everything down and let it air out. We are hoping that whatever we are doing will be stopped once we get out of there.
We go sit by the campfire and we can smell propane. We start to follow the scent and find that one of Mitch's propane lines and struck a leak. His trailer was upwind of ours and the propane was being detected by our RV! I shut off the propane at the tank and we decide to find Mitch. We are not sure that shutting off the propane was the right thing to do and also fear that with the propane off other bad things can occur.
We eventually find him and bring him back to camp. He said we did the right thing and that it is OK to completely shut off the propane. After checking his hoses Mitch finds that the other hose is suspect as well so we decide to take a trip into Steamboat Springs to pick up some new hoses.
We are expecting Mitch's brother Rich and Susie's brother Mike at any time. We make a quick trip to town and get back to find them both here. Mitch will have to leave shortly to go pick up Susie's sister Isabel.
After Mitch got back with Isabel, Mitch, Rich, and Mike went fishing. Mike's kids went hiking, and the rest of us sat around the campfire and talked.
Once the guys got back, we ate dinner, roasted marshmallows, talked until 11:00 PM and then went to bed.
Posted by swfields at July 10, 2004 05:35 PM | TrackBack