Newbie errors

[Kim Gass]

Here we are 1000 miles from home on our third night out.What we are finding is that RV'ers like to talk.

We camped next to another newbie last night who was experiencing his second night. It seems he lit the water heater but had no water running through the lines so ..it looks like its fried. He thought it was the furnace..

It seems his PDI lasted 10 minutes. Ours was two hours and actually more on the road. We had some questions and issues out of our own stupidity and called the service department at the dealer. Thank you Chris and Darren at Call of the Wild in Oxford ME

Our idiocy involved unplugging from shore power at home and neglecting to turn off the fridge. We did not know that it used 12 v power and had the setting on electric during the drive.( propane off) Does it?

The power amplifier was also left on and so was the water pump.. Which led us to arrive at our first night destination( dry) with interior lights that would not stay on. The battery voltage was 12 but amperage was 0.

We trickle charged with our portable generator.. next morning the console read half charged..Drove 500 miles and fully charged. that night was full service. Chris reminded us that charging the battery takes quite a while with generator.. a trickle charge.

We hope we did not cause permanent damage to anything

So far if we can keep the fridge powered at night, everything stays cold during the day. We froze three soda bottles at home with water in them and they act as non dribbling ice blocks.

[Sundancer330]

You are safe to run the frig on 12v or propane while traveling. I plug in the frig a few days before leaving to get it nice and cold then switch over to 12v for the trip if its less than five hours, my TV will also trickle the battery while driving. Longer trips you can use propane setting. Once I unplug shore power at home I flip off all the breakers to help with battery draw.

[SkyBound]

I'm not sure that flipping off the breakers will help conserve DC battery power since the breakers are for AC power... Someone correct me if I'm mistaken.

I understand some AC powered things (fridge, water heater) use a small amount of DC for circuitry control but I didn't think flipping the AC breaker would kill that too.

[mainesmoke]

Call Of The Wild is an awesome dealer. Those guys are the best!
That"s where we bought our 361reqs.