Training - Day 2

I spent my first night in the new rig after the first day of training.  Most of the evening was spent reading user manuals, a lot of user manuals.  Multi-plex lighting, two-zone thermostat for the two A/C's and two furnaces, three different models of MaxxFans (whole house fans, two manual one remote controlled), 42" HD LCD TV, Denon Home Theater System, Samsung Blue-Ray Player, multi-fuel (propane & electric) fridge, Whirlpool Velos Oven/Convection Oven/Microwave combo, Fisher & Paykel drawer dishwasher, LED lighting, 12 volt systems, 120 volt systems, and the list goes on.

So my head is spinning a little and now it is time to get my outside orientation.  Jeff started us out at the front of the rig.  In the forward compartment of the "basement" are two sub-compartments.  The lower one holds the house batteries.  These are not your ordinary car batteries.  They are however the usual classification of deep-cycle batteries found on RV's and boats.  But that is the only thing usual about these.  These babies are 6 volt, there are four of them total and paired to deliver 12 volts each from two banks of two.  And they are AGM (absorbed gas mat), there is no free-liquid.  This makes them essentially maintenance free, more rugged and more durable.

But all this is not without a price.  These batteries are HUGE, they are almost eighteen inches tall and weigh a total of 500 pounds!  I sacrificed a lot of storage space and carrying capacity for the security of being able to power virtually everything except the air conditioners for a few days before charging is needed.

But that is not it.  You have to have a way to manage the power distribution and charging of these monsters.  Much of what they power is 120 volt AC so there has to be an inverter to step those 12V's DC up to 120V AC.  Here's ours:

This (the white box) is a MagnaSine inverter rated for 3000 watts and has a built-in computer that monitors all battery activity.  There is a remote control panel in the power management cabinet inside by the front door.  There is a CAT 5 cable routed from the storage compartment to the monitor/controller.

It knows the condition of the batteries and can adjust the charge rate based on what temperature the batteries are.  You can tell the system what kind of batteries they are and it customizes how it charges and discharges the batteries so that you get the most out of them while extending their life.

To the left of the inverter you can see the two-stage whole-house water filtration system.  This filter system is for particulates and has charcoal for taste and odor.  Every drop that comes into the rig goes through these filters first then it is on to the plumbing and individual faucets.  There is a second, reverse osmosis filter that feeds a separate faucet on the kitchen sink for drinking and cooking and another line to the ice maker.  Cyndee has never met a glass of water she likes, until now.

Just around the corner from the battery compartment is the BigFoot leveling system.  In all our years of RV'ing we always had to tote around boards and blocks of various sizes to put under the wheels so that we could level the coach from side-to-side.  There are very few campgrounds in the country that have truly level parking spaces.  While it is not absolutely necessary to have your rig level, it does make things like your fridge work better if it is.  And it is nice to have doors stay where you put them and not have your eggs roll off the kitchen counter, or you roll out of bed, and the water in the sinks and shower to drain.  So there was always the routine of putting the rig in the position you wanted, reading the bubble levels, estimating how much to put under which wheel, pull forward, put the blocks down, back up onto them, and see if you got it level on the first try.  The front-to-back leveling was much easier.  You just had to raise or lower the jacks to get that direction level.  Once you had done this a few times, it didn't take very long.  Cyndee and I could get it done in less than five minutes.  But it did take two of us working in a well choreographed routine.  Now, with the automatic leveling system it is a one-person job of just pushing some buttons.

This system is yet another computer.  From a menu you pick "unhitch" and, with the remote, lower the front jacks to lift the rig off the truck's hitch.  Then you pull the truck out of the way, go to the menu choice of "auto-level" and step back.  Using sensors that are buried in the frame at the front and back of the rig the system starts dropping the rear jacks and once it feels the weight it begins to start adjusting for level.

It is pretty cool to hear and watch.  Lots of hydraulic pump sounds and seeing almost 19,000 lbs of camper being elevated and tilted to a good position.  The system has a lot of latitude to work.  The hydraulic rams have quite a bit of stroke length and can accommodate a pretty sloped parking spot.

The spot we are in now has a pretty good slope from front to rear but the BigFoot just kept lifting the back (and lowering the front) until everything was trued up.  Even if that meant lifting four of the six tires off the ground.

Our propane system is about the same as it was on our old rig, two thirty-pound tanks.  The difference with this new rig is that the tanks are mounted on a slide out rail system.  This makes it very easy to get the back tank out for refilling.  Another convenience feature we did not have before is the automatic switching regulator.  When one tank runs empty, it automatically starts drawing out of the second tank.

The utility box on this rig combines all the "ports" that were spread out all over the driver's side of the other rig.  In one nice and tidy box there are hook-ups for city water, holding tank valve handles, fresh water fill system and cable, satellite and network interface connections.

In addition to the cable and satellite connections in this utility box, there is also an over-the-air "bat-wing" antenna on the roof.  This too has evolved from a hand-crank raise/lower/point device to powered.  It does a great job of bringing in the new digital HD signals.  We did not have HD service on our TV in the stick-n-bricks.  We spend a lot of time saying "oh, wow, look at that, you can see the pores in their skin".

If you were observant, you may have noticed a little something extra attached to the mast of the antenna.  This is a WiFi antenna and it is fed through a junction box and conduit on the roof to the energy management closet inside the rig where it is attached to the WiFi Ranger (essentially a wireless router).  This antenna will pull in even weak WiFi signals from a mile or two away as long as it has line of sight to the signal.

The signal is then fed to the router which in turn is supporting both of our computers, both of our phones and ultimately any wireless, internet device we install.  This means that we should be able to pull in the traditionally weak signals from campground offices and establish a solid high-speed connection when our neighbors can't even see the signal with their built-in WiFi cards on their computers.

Around back, you can see the large window arrangement.  We really like this feature, it opens up the feel of the inside of the rig and most of the places we have been it also provides for nice views.  Right now we are overlooking what was once a Georgia farm from before the turn of the century.  Now it has gone fallow and is a mixture of volunteer hay and corn that gets mowed every three weeks or so.

In the foreground of the above picture you can see the bird feeding station (click on any picture to enlarge it and see details) that we decided not to dispose of with the rest of our possessions.  There is just too much entertainment from the cast of characters that this thing draws.  Brightly colored song birds, doles of dove, chipmunks and squirrels all come in for a bite to eat.  But it gets interesting when when the hawks start coming in to dine on the diners.  They will glide overhead and let out one of their shrill screeches and everything at the feeder starts looking for a place to hide.

Something else that we were sure to have put on this new rig was a rear hitch.  The old rig did not have one and it was a real pain dealing with the bicycles, either getting them lashed to a ladder-mounted bike rack (you needed a PhD in geometry to get it to work) or using the front bumper hitch on the truck, which put the bikes in your field of vision and virtually blocking the headlights.

This set-up is nice and tidy and it is beefy enough that we could add much heavier things, like a scooter rack.

Moving around to the entrance side, we have our "patio" which is shaded by a 16' long awning.  This awning is a big jump in technology from our previous one. 

The old one had lots of latches and bars and tensioners.  And everything had to be adjusted manually, one side at a time.  This new awning is done with no more fanfare than the flip of switch.  It is electric and is operated from inside the coach.  Deployment has gone from a 15 minute work-out (usually just when the weather, or daylight was right) to seconds of holding down a switch without regard to weather or light.

By the way, that white trailer in the lower left background is my previous rig sitting in its storage spot.  Know anybody looking for a lovingly-used, well appointed 5th wheel?

The forward storage compartment, aka basement, is pretty large.  Of course this is relatively speaking in terms of a trailer.  We have probably triple the basement space that we had in our old rig.  Our old frame had a structure similar to the transmission hump in your car, leaving just a little space on either side.  This frame is like having a front wheel drive car.  There is no hump and the floor is flat all the way across.

 

This new-found space has its plus' and minus'.  The good thing is that we have room to put a lot of things that were just not possible to carry before.  The bad news is that we have room to put a lot more things.  Between 500 lbs of batteries and probably another 500 lbs of "stuff", the weight of the rig is getting pretty high up in the front end.  You can not see it from this photograph, but the space passes all the way through to the other side where there is a single-wide access door.  We are trying to be organized with this new space and containerize everything.  I am sure that the use of this space will evolve with time.

Yet another new technology that comes on this coach are its frameless windows.  These windows completely eliminate the channels and vinyl trim that are on the traditional aluminum framed windows.  There is nowhere for water to collect and no vinyl to mildew and crack with age.  Just a clean, smooth look that should be much easier to take care of.

Whew, long post, I know.  But it was a long day of training.  If I thought my head was swimming a little on the morning of this training, it really was afterwards.

Training - Day 1

I rolled into New Horizons at 10:00am, sharp.  There were introductions to the people that would be working with me for the next few days doing the training as well as addressing the punch-list (like putting on one of the two propane tanks that they forgot, or plugging in the electrical part of the fridge so it would run without consuming propane).

Jeff was my primary contact for training.  In his very capable hands we spent the first day going through the inside of the rig.  Much was familiar, but not exact to what I knew from my 11 year-old rig.  RV technology had come a long way in the last decade.

The first thing that struck me when stepping in was that it was bright and airy.  Our Newmar rig had a color scheme that was based in a dark blue, but for the New Horizons we chose to go with earth tones on the textiles and a light colored oak for the woodwork.  Wow, was it different.  We got just the effect we were looking for.

Lots of windows, and large too, contributed to the open and airy feeling.  You can see from the photo that lots of light gets in but you can't see from the inside that these windows are heavily tinted and double-paned for low heat gain.  It was a hundred degree day when this picture was taken with the rig taking full sun and it was comfortable inside.  No doubt with some help from the two A/C's.

The couch is a residential size and takes up more width than we planned on.  We were supposed to have small tables on each end of the couch but there just is no room.  I kept one table and put it between the recliners.  The other table went back into the factory.

The galley turned out great.  With the deeper counter-top and island, we have about triple the counter space of the old rig.  The pendant lights are something new for New Horizons.  The ceiling height above the island is almost 9 feet and the lights do not hang down low enough to be a problem, for most people.  I have only bumped my head on them once.

The sink is much bigger too.  Large enough to get a 12" skillet in it all the way.  Going from our Newmar rig to the New Horizons rig we increased our length from 34' to 37'.  A little more than a foot of that new length went into the fridge.  We more than doubled our freezer and fridge capacity and got an ice maker too!

Another area where we picked up a little more space was the pantry.  The old rig had fixed shelves that were deep and sometimes hard to reach all the way back and retrieve your ingredients.  This rig has pull-out drawers, and lights that automatically come on when you open the door.  Very nice.

Check out the "shoe garage" we had them build.  The shallow coat closet at the entrance door usually extends all the way to the floor.  We had them raise the floor of the closet just enough to be able to slip a couple of pairs of shoes under the closet and keep them from being something to trip over.  Those are my size 14 cross-trainers you can see the heel of.  They almost fit completely under.  No clutter in front of the door.

In the picture above, see the large drawer, down low, on the left under the kitchen counter?  It is not your every day drawer, it is a drawer-dishwasher.  And because of the way it works, you need a remote to operate it!

Back to the living room.  The entertainment center is another place that used a good chunk of that extra three feet of rig.  The upper cabinet houses a Denon home entertainment console.  Everything; TV, radio, blue-ray player, game console (which we did not get) are piped through this console.  Between the upper and lower cabinet is a window that we had them put in.  Most of the time there is just a fixed TV mount in this area but we really wanted to maximize the number of windows and be able to gather as much light, and scenery as possible.

But to have both a window and a TV, the TV had to be mounted on a lift.  Remote controlled of course.

The surround sound system is pretty nice but the subwoofer is a little on the powerful side for an RV.  I think my neighbors have no doubts when I have a movie on.  I'm going to have to read up on how to tone down the base.

More electronics - In the cabinet above the coat closet is the energy management system.  This cabinet houses the displays for monitoring the levels of the fresh, grey and black water tanks; the control for the water heater to run on either electric or propane, or both; the charge controller; the inverter; and whole house surge protector.  And the switches for all three slide-outs. 

Up high is a Wi-Fi Ranger.  This is a signal amplifier, it picks up wi-fi signals from a campground that are weak from an antenna on top of the coach and brings them inside and rebroadcasts them at full strength.  I can now get signals from campgrounds that are normally not worth connecting to and communicate at high speeds.  The cables dangling in front of the Wi-Fi Ranger are CAT 5 cables that can be plugged into the router.  The cables are already routed to strategic parts of the coach.  One goes to the entertainment center, one to the bedroom entertainment center, one to the utility box outside and one to the pre-wired set-up for the solar system.  When, or if, I add internet enabled or computer control by wi-fi devices all I have to do is plug them in.

On to the bedroom.  If you read previous posts where we did a factory tour while they were building our coach you will remember the shots of the bedroom wardrobe/entertainment center being built.

Here it is, all finished and installed.

And with the TV "deployed".

The cabinet in the center, bottom is a cedar-lined hamper.

Directly opposite the wardrobe is the queen-size, sleep number bed.

The bedroom comes standard with a shelf above the bed but we had them build cabinets instead and put in 120V power outlets on each side of the cabinet.  We have our weather alert radio plugged in and tucked out of sight here.

There is a nice amount of space in the area around the bathroom sink and shower.  It will be easier for the both of us to get ready for the day at the same time in this rig.

And also room to work on laundry day.  Washer on bottom, dryer on top.  Both do small loads and seem to take longer than full-size models but should do fine in keeping up with the laundry for just the two of us.

The shower has a curved front with a large, clear skylight above it.  And there is an integral bench at a height that is actually useful.  We had a bench in our old rig but it was shallow and short, making it impractical to use.  This one is comfortable.

Tonight I try to use all these systems and confirm they work.  I won't be able to verify the cable TV connections as they have no connection here at the factory and I can only get one, fuzzy channel on the over-the-air antenna.  So I am off to find a Red Box and rent a movie.  Tomorrow is "outside" training and working on things on the punch list.

The new rig is ready.

After a delay of about a week and a half past the original completion date, the new rig is ready.  But with the time that has elapsed, work schedules are such that Cyndee will have to stay in Georgia and I will have to make the trek to Kansas alone.

I threw a few clothes in a small bag, loaded up the "starter kit" of plastic-ware, paper plates and towels, blankets, pillow, etc. that we had put together for getting us through the week of training and getting it home.  My appointment for taking possession of the new rig was for 10:00am Wednesday morning, Aug 8.

It is a two-day drive to cover the 900 miles between Cumming, GA and Junction City, KS.  I went to work on Monday morning the 6th to get a few things done that could not wait till I got back.  About 1:30 that afternoon I climbed into the truck and headed West.

Over the weekend I had found a number of rest stops and truck stops that were at about the half-way point and a little beyond.  Since I will be by myself, I'll just overnight in one of these and not fuss with a hotel room.

For having left so late, I made it quite aways.  I decided to just keep driving until it got late and cooled off enough to sleep without the benefit of airconditioning.  Using that strategy got me to a rest stop about 35 miles East of St. Louis.

My GPS showed that I had been on the road almost nine hours with about 40 minutes of pit stops and 540 miles traversed.  I eased into the rest stop and found a parking spot at the far end of the side for cars.  There were already some weary travelers parked nearby and bedded down for the night so I quietly went about setting up my bed.

The back seat of the F-550 will lay flat and makes a decent place to sleep, for one, my size.  I got out the blankets and pillow and proceeded to do a little housekeeping.

All-in-all it was not a bad night's sleep.  The temperature had dropped into the 70's and with the rear split-window open and the back seat windows cracked, it made for a fairly comfortble night.

Still, the anticipation of getting started with the new rig contributed to an early awakening.  About 4:30 am my eyes popped open and I headed to the rest stop's facilities to splash some water on my face and brush my teeth.

By 5am I was back on the road and had St. Louis in my sight about the time the sun came up.  Since I had made my one fuel stop late the day before there was no need to stop except for bio-breaks.  By two o'clock I was getting close and made a call to the factory to see if the rig would be far enough along for me to stay in it tonight.  Sadly, it was not.  They said they needed right up until the 10:00am appointment to get it ready.  I grabbed a room at The Hamilton Inn in Junction City, went to the Walmart Supercenter deli and picked out my supper, got back to the room, got the TV on, put my feet up and promptly went to sleep.  I woke up sometime in the middle of the night and got undressed and got in bed proper.

New Lessons in Fulltiming Lifestyle

We recently learned new lessons in living the full timing RV lifestyle.  While our 400sq ft of well-appointed living space is very comfortable for the two of us, it is a little lacking in being able to accommodate the demands of visiting family that have overnight needs.

Our couch is a sleeper-sofa but its mattress and springs arrangement seem more attuned to dealing pain rather than comfort for sleeping.  And its size is good for only one adult or two children.  And even if people shrugged off the poor sleeping arrangements there would be a morning traffic jam trying to get everyone ready for the day.  As it is now with just two people you have to do a bit of a ballet and time the things you do so that neither of you need to be near the sink or mirror or closet, etc at the same time.  All those things we used to do in parallel in a bricks-and-sticks have been modified in the past weeks to a routine for each of us that is slightly off-set from the other.  Not a big deal for the two of us but it would potentially add hours of preparation time if five or six were trying to do it.

So, for our daughter's wedding reception we did just like everyone from out of town; we got a hotel room.  All in all this was not a bad deal.  Since the reception was smack in the middle of the city of Atlanta we could not have been any closer than about 40 miles with our rig.  Getting the hotel room put us just minutes away and in the same building with my brother and his family.  We got to spend more time with family, sight-see and do more in general than we would have making 80 mile round trips.

The new rig should have a better quality sleeper-sofa (plus, we are investing in some quality air mattresses) and we certainly hope we will have the occasion to use it.  But there will be no getting around the one shower (12 gal hot water), one sink, one mirror challenge.  What I think will be great is that at whatever point in the future it is that we have guests, we will be in a traditional campground (because we will be retired and not stuck to one place) that has bath houses.  Lots of room, multiple showers, unlimited hot water (usually), everybody can dance to the beat of their own drum.  Yep, can't wait.

Anticipation continued....

July 31st (2012) was supposed to be the day that the new rig was completed.  However there are a couple of items missing and described as "on backorder".  One that is not critical to the building of the rig but certainly important is furniture.  They did not elaborate exactly which pieces of furniture were missing but it does not matter, it all has to be there before I will be able to take delivery.

Another item that is way more critical that is missing are air conditioners.  They have known for months that this rig was being built and that A/C's were part of the deal.  What is up with this?  Some kind of a run on RV A/C's?  I did not know that the RV manufacturing business had picked up so well.  Anyway, there are two large holes in the roof with wires and ducting hanging there with nothing to plug into.

We have slipped our schedule out by one week for going to Kansas to do the pick up of the rig.  Maybe this will work out for the best and the heat wave will break and temps in Kansas will get below 105°.