Ventline Fan - Handles - Sun Baked

[nunyadamn]

4 years - almost to the day. That's the limit for my ventline fan. The vent pillow that I use pushed the screen up a little and the fan was touching the fan a little. I tried to remove the screen to straighten it and broke into 50 pieces. Then I tried to remove the inner pieces - I don't know the names - and those too broke into a bunch of pieces. My trailer is a 2014 and I live in Arizona so not too surprising.

The reason I even knew there was a problem was I was installing the barker vent stick and handles. They are too long for my pillow to stay in place so I couldn't use them anyway. I will be selling them in the classifieds soon.

So, I am now looking for a new vent fan - two actually, the other one is probably on it's last leg too. I thought about putting in a good fan in, but we really don't use them very much.

I know I have a ventline V2094 now and it is loud.

Anyone have any recommendations?

One last thing - the electrician at Jayco that installed the fan left a cut off wire just hanging in the wall. On a good note, I am going to move the switch down to the wall to turn it on and off after seeing how open it is.

[WinnieView]

We can relate to all the sun damage. What may have helped with our ceiling vents over the years on each RV have been roof vent covers, if you don't have them yet.
On special at Walmart they can be had for as little as $18 and only take about 20 minutes to install.

We don't use our vent pillows in the summer but leave the vents open for heat to escape, and the vent covers keep any rain and some sun out.

[nunyadamn]

I actually bought vent covers last week. I was going to install them yesterday but it looked like it was going to rain so I didn’t install them yet. Glad I didn’t put them on first. It would have been a waste of time.

I did order a couple Dometic 801200 fans. Last night they were $73.70 but I see this morning they are $138 so someone screwed up and I benefited.

I am not looking forward to installing these, but better now while the weather is still a little cool than in the summer.

[nunyadamn]

Quick update - I replaced the bathroom vent fan and rear bedroom vent with the 2 new fan-tastic vent fans yesterday. That went better than I thought it would. I used 4 dicor tubes for the 2 vents and a roll and a half of the butyl tape. Luckily I had an extra tube as I had a few other spots that needed attention - mostly around the bathroom skylight. I will replace that next month after spring break vacation.

Today I was wiring up the fans. That was not as easy as I thought. I wanted to mount the switches to the fans on the wall - one for the bathroom and one for the bedroom. I ran into trouble when I found a 2x2 in the wall where I didn't expect it. I had to remove the bathroom door and trim so I could drill a hole in both pieces of wood so I could fish the wire through where I needed it. I also moved the bathroom light switch from behind the towel rack over next to the door where it should have been. I don't know who designs some of these things, but they should really think it through a little more.

Then I was wiring up the bedroom fan and that turned into a pain too. Going down into that wall was a little bit hard as the hole where the AC wire went down was pretty tight. I had no way of making the hole any bigger as it is between the roof and the wall and only about 4 inches. Then when I finally did get the wire in the hole I drilled into the location I wanted the switch and ran into a corner 2x4. I thought I was far enough away from the corner but I wasn't and had to drill and grind the wood enough for the switch and wire to fit behind without drilling through the wall on the other side.

I still have to finish it tomorrow only because I ran out of light and didn't wire up the light in the bathroom yet.

I do have a bit of advice for anyone wiring up one of these. I saw some others on the internet that did this already so I did not invent anything - wire up the fans with a dual pole double throw (dpdt) switch so you can reverse the fan if needed. No reason to buy the more expensive fan that can do this. It was much cheaper and easy to do. I won't be able to control the speed of the fan from the wall, but I can always change that on the fan if needed. I am pretty sure we will mostly use them on low anyway.

[WinnieView]

What a project!

We haven't "had the fun" of snaking and running wires through the walls of our motorhomes. We have gone from the basement to the cabin but that's usually just one hole.

Thanks for the tip.

[nunyadamn]

About 99% done now. Had a hard time getting the wiring through my head today.

The fans were not really a problem. 12vdc as expected at the fans and all the lines.

On the other hand, the lights all show 6vdc at the lights and lines. Why you ask? It took me a while to think through it, but they lights themselves are 2 sets of 12vdc lights wired in series. The problem is the ground wire looks like it goes to the connector but it actually goes into the light on one side and then the wires go series within the light. It looks like just a white wire on one connector and a black wire on the other connector.

It was confusing me for a while. I checked a couple other lights and they are the same. I wish Jayco and all manufactures would use black and red for negative and positive. Black being positive and white being negative is confusing on it's own but then they ran a purple for positive to the fan and then spliced into that with a pink wire for the light power. The way they splice into the white ground wire is crazy. They just run a white wire all over the place and then tap into it everywhere. So you end up seeing two white wires running into every outlet and a splice into it with a third white wire.

I have been an electro-mechanical assembler, aviation electronics technician in the navy and for the last 18 years I work in the semi-conductor field as a manufacturing technician and this whole setup was pissing me off. I nearly cut out all the wires and started wiring my own harness. I did cut out a bunch of nutty stuff. And since I am complaining - Jayco - please stop using electrical tape on all the wires. My trailer is 4 years old and the tape comes off and stains everything black. You can't touch that old tape without getting sticky black stuff all over them and everywhere else.

Last but not least - I bought these for the switches - https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

And these switches are what I used for everything (they are dual throw double pole) - I just used one side for the lights - https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

The switch holders are garbage. I will be replacing them as they don't hold in like they should. They keep wanting to fall out because the spring things on top and bottom are plastic and they don't hold well.

[WinnieView]

It sounds like you got it right. And that's why we also do our own work.

We have had a few motorhomes from a few different manufacturers and have seen a few "odd things" over the years.
Sometimes they will use what ever color wire spool is within closest reach at the time until it seemingly ran out, for every connection.
But we had one where every single wire behind the dash was clearly labeled and logically bundled.