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.