Me 3 on the excited to go camping! We sold our old camper on CL in 2 days, the new one is ready to pack some food and clothes and go!

I installed the LED bulbs that Mark linked and they are excellent bulbs. A bit brighter than the regular 921 bulbs and about 1/6 of the power draw. Hopefully they will last a long time.

Andy, that mod will make you happy. Really makes the system work much more evenly.

 

So are you basically pluming it inline from the pump outlet to the main line? What will you need to do to winterize the expansion tank?

 

I started spring cleaning yesterday, can't wait to pull the camper into the driveway and give that a good cleaning! Need to go through the kids cloths, n give it a good cleaning inside and out. Setup the hitch for the pickup since its taller now, and you guys might have talked me into the expansion tank!!

 

Eric, glad you liked. I have been in my new (to me) camper two other times and I am very pleased with those bulbs.

 

Are the expansion tanks RV specific, or something I can find at the Depot / Lowes ?

Anyone got a link ?

 

I pulled the camper out of storage and started getting it ready for our trip to Disney at the beginning of April. I have a couple of mods to do including the expansion tank. I am also going to putting shelves and doors where the TV goes in the bunkhouse since we don't have tv in there.
Can't wait to get the camping season started!

 

For the first time since 2011, I'll be putting my camper in storage. Got laid off last week and it's been in the front yard killing grass haha. Get back home and have to do yard work, fix stuff around the house, clean garage etc. Life is easy on the road, especially since I eat a lot of pizza and use paper plates

 

Uncovered our TT today, will start cleaning inside and out this week and then we are heading down to TN on March 12th for a week, everyone is excited to get the camping season under way!

Taking advantage of the nice 68 degree weather here we also installed a set of roof rack bars and kayak mounts on the EX, got 3 new boats at Christmas and now we are all set to haul them along on our trips!
I still need to change over to LEDS in the TT, it's on the list.

 

I'm not exactly sure where I bought mine, but something like this. Just make sure it's made for potable water, most of the heating system tanks aren't potable.
I disconnect it when I winterize. I'll get some better pictures, but the gist of it is just put it in line between the pump outlet and the first connection to the trailer pipes.

I copied this mod from somebody on rv net, some good ideas over there.

 

Here's some better pics of how I set it up in the old camper.

https://www.ford-trucks.com/forums/1...l#post13176410

 

If a guy doesn't mind the tank on the back bumper (blends in with the other crap on the back bumper) a line could be ran to one of the external "drains" for the water system. Then for winterizing or any draining of the system you just unscrew the line.

I unfortunately don't have anything on my back TT bumper yet so I won't put a tank there. But for guys that do it would be an easy and fast way to add a tank to your system and have easy maintenance.

 

Finally uncovered the trailer and started cleaning it like the rest of you. I am actually taking it to the dealer next week to have it prepped for the season. Since it's my first time, I figured I'd let the shop do it. Well be heading down to Texas on the 17th.

 

Here's a better pic of the tank plumbing. The pump is easily accessible on mine and there is space for the tank right there. As Andy mentioned above, you can plumb it into the cold water side anywhere you want in the system and it will do the same thing.

 

Pulled our 5th wheel out a week ago. Caught it dry enough to get it out of its new home we built last year. Hope to get the gravel in next month. Will move it to the house Saturday. Start packing it for a 3 day camping trip next weekend.
On the pump, I put a rubber pad under mine. Then wrapped it in sound proofing material. Now if we have the pump on, it does not wake others up. But most times with a 40ft 5th wheel. We have water at the campsite.

Is it time yet?

 

Installed a new toy for the camper, a Trimetric 2030 meter. It keeps track of how much juice goes in and out of the batteries. Useless if you are plugged in all the time, but it will be nice to have when we are camping off batteries only.

Everything runs through a shunt and the meter reads off that.




Shunt needs to be close to the batteries, the meter can go wherever. Instructions didn't say anything about protecting the shunt, but I put it in a plastic electrical box and painted it black



The wiring (not shown) ran along the frame outside of the enclosed area underneath and then up through the floor in a convenient spot. I went for the path of least resistance and put it where I could install it without too much fuss even though the standard battery monitor system is in a different spot.







In easy mode it shows voltage, amperage draw, and percent of battery left. With more button pushing, you can see total amp hour draw since last charged, when it was charged, how much it was charged, etc etc.https://www.ford-trucks.com/forums/i...2/blahblah.gif

I still need to play around with it some, but I have learned a few things so far.

The trailer draws .1 amp just sitting there, gas detector I assume. The fridge on gas draws .5 amp. Main slide motor pulls 9 amps, stab jacks pull only 1.5 amps, of course those are very momentary loads. Radio .5 amp. Furnace about 6.5 amps. The standard incandescent bulbs draw 1.4 amps each. The new LED bulbs a bit over .2, I can turn on 6 to get the same draw as 1 of the old bulbs. With every light on in the trailer, it was drawing 9 amps with the new LED bulbs. Tried the TV on my old crappy inverter and while it was playing a DVD it was drawing 6.8 amps. In 3 minutes the inverter overload alarm went off, so I need something else to run that. Since I've never had a TV in my camper before, I won't miss it. With the truck plugged in, it was charging at 9 amps at idle. Not a very good test as the batteries were charged to begin with, but I'll get some more useful info from that once I've used it a few times.