Residential Refrigerator Installation

 

Wesley Chapel, Florida  (high 65, low 42)

 

Stratton Mobile Rv arrived about 9am Tuesday to begin the installation of our new residential refrigerator.

We didn’t have much choice in refrigerators that would fit into the space previously occupied by the Norcold, which was sitting on top of a compartment that housed the furnace and a few wiring harnesses.

This is the old Norcold.  It turns out those wood front panels were custom made for our coach and are the same walnut  that the rest of our cabinets are made from.  We kept them thinking maybe they will be useful in trimming out the new refrigerator.

 

We had to find a refrigerator that was no taller than 64 inches high.  Most are a minimum of 66 inches.

We had about 3 choices and the only real differences we could find on those three were the handles.  Since our refrigerator is located in the hall to the bedroom, and would extend further than the Norcold, we decided recessed door handles would be better.

Here is a the new Hotpoint.   Someone asked the model number.  This is from Home Depot.  We bought it on “sale” for $449, but afterwards they had it on “sale” for $430.  Now it’s on “sale” again but for $478 this time.  

 

The first step was to remove the living room window, being careful not to drop it.

They covered the floors with canvas and put boards on top of the canvas to protect the floor.  The furniture and window sill was covered with blankets, as well as the side of the coach.

He had a lift gadget to raise and lower the refrigerators.  It was pretty handy.

The next picture is the Norcold leaving.

Good riddance Norcold.  In the picture below you can see the yellow/green powdery substance that leaked.  The Norcold was cooling perfectly fine one day, and then it just quit.  Tim said part that went bad would have cost about $2400.  I’m not sure it that was with labor or not.  A new Norcold like we had was over $4000.  

 

This is the Norcold without the custom wood door panels.

I took a few pictures of the empty spot.  I didn’t realize there was wiring running down both sides of the walls. 

 

The next step was to bring the Hotpoint inside.  Tim was doing some measuring on the Hotpoint and doing a little head scratching.  Uh oh.  Did we measure wrong?  Was the Hotpoint  going to fit through the side window?  We certainly didn’t want to have to remove the front windshield.  

Fortunately, his measurement was right on and the Hotpoint slipped right in.

The problem with the installation is that the Norcold is about 4-5 inches wider than the Hotpoint.   So now with the Hotpoint installed, we have a gap wide enough for a nosy kitty to get where he isn’t supposed to be!

We found a friend of a friend who owns a cabinet shop and has been highly recommended.  We were hoping to have him build us a pull out pantry/spice shelf in the gap left by the Norcold, but unfortunately after measuring it and figuring out how much space he would need to install brackets and shelves, we would have less than 3 inches of shelf space and at a cost of $300, we decided to skip it. There is a a gap on the top and both sides that need to be covered and trimmed out.  He took the measurements and one refrigerator panel to help him match the color of the rest of the cabinets.

In the meantime, I had to stuff pillows on the side of the Hotpoint to keep Mr. Nosey out of trouble.

 

I think we’re going to be happy with the new refrigerator. It’s nice and cold and we even bought ice cream just so that we could actually have hard ice cream for a change!

So, if you have a Rv refrigerator, I recommend you do some research as to your options if it should fail.  Like I said, we got absolutely no warning that ours was failing.  I’m glad it didn’t wait until we got down to the Keys.

There are other options if your Rv refrigerator fails, besides  a residential refrigerator.  Some people choose to have an Amish Cooling Unit installed. Your rv refrigerator will still run on propane just like the Norcold or Dometic, but they are supposed to be safer and better made.  I’ve also heard that there have been some early failures on them too, so do your research.  They aren’t particularly cheap either.

Many of you are happy with their Rv refrigerators and have had many years of good service from them.  I’ve heard the older Norcolds were better than the newer ones.  That may be true because ours was only 3 1/2 years old.  All I know is that ours was working fine one day and the next day it died.

The installation labor cost to remove the Norcold and install the Hotpoint was $516. Part of that was the mobile service charge.  Nothing is cheap with rv repairs.   The cost to reframe the new one is supposed to be about $100.  I’m sure we could have framed it ourselves, but we wanted it to look nice.  :)

 

Now that the refrigerator is installed, we are concentrating on wrapping things up here and hopefully we’ll be down in the Keys soon.

Waiting for Service

Tampa, Florida

On Wednesday, we got up early and had the coach at Lazy Days in time for our 10:00 am appointment….then sat in the parking lot until 2:00 pm when they finally put us in a service bay.  Grrrr.

I was getting a little frustrated sitting in the parking lot with the generator running, but I was trying to be patient.     We understand how things work and that sometimes repairs take longer then they expect, or an emergency comes in…like no a/c, or a leak. 

Wednesday they checked a few things for us and everything checked out okay.  The new Norcold refrigerator tested out okay.  I guess sitting in direct sun in 90+ degree weather isn’t the best thing.

The main issue we had was the loud clunk we heard when we braked moderately hard.  Our generator is in a slide out, and they had previously done some work on it because it was loose in the cradle. We had them check to make sure it was secure.  It was.

I went on the Rv-Net Forum to get some suggestions on what the noise was.  From my description several people thought it could be the “s-cams.”   That is an invaluable tool to have and I use them frequently.  You get a lot of opinions…. but you know what they say about opinions, though!

On Thursday they took it over to the chassis area and the  tech took it on a test drive with us.  He was able to replicate the noise we had been hearing.  The first thing he said was that the “s-cams” were sticking and needed lubricating. 

We felt pretty confident that we found the problem.  I’m not exactly sure what s-cams are, but they are related to the air brakes in the front.  Apparently, it’s quite a big job and the entire brake assembly has to be pulled.  It’s a $750+ job!  It is normally not covered under the 30 day warranty because it’s considered a maintenance item.  However, we felt it should be covered since when we first drove the coach we noticed a clunking noise.  They thought they had solved the problem, since the noise didn’t happen on a normal test drive.  You had to brake fairly hard to get the sound.  Anyway, Lazy Days stepped up and agreed to cover the s-cams at no charge to us.  Yea!  I must say, I am pretty happy with their customer service, even though things seem to move at a snails pace.  Some jobs are done by the regular technicians, and some have to go to the chassis area.  Of course moving from one area to the other always causes additional delay.

Since the s-cams weren’t going to cost us anything, we   decided to have them do a full chassis lube and change the transmission fluid.  We aren’t sure when it was last done and these are two very important maintenance items.  We currently have Transynd  transmission fluid in it now, and we will put the same in.  It’s very expensive synthetic fluid, but recommended by Allison.  One thing we have learned with diesel motorhomes is that you don’t buy oil or transmission fluid by the quart.  You buy it by the gallon.

Once the motorhome went to chassis, we got booted out and weren’t being allowed back in since it was going to have to be raised up.  There was no way for us to get inside to check on the cats, so we grabbed a few things and the kitties and invaded Mom’s house.  We thought it was just going to be for one night.  Yeah right!

So it’s now Saturday and we still haven’t gotten back into the motorhome.  The joys of full time living in an rv, I guess.  At least we’re not sitting in a parking lot like Judy and Emma. 

We are hoping it will be finished today and we can go back home!  I miss my own bed!

Troublemaker

Lutz, Florida

Boy, is this baby kitten wearing me out!  We haven’t had a kitten for 14 years.  I had forgotten how energetic they are,  how much trouble they can get into,  how fragile they are,  and how fast you can fall in love with them.

Little “no name”  is so small, but he’s starting to climb like he’s a big boy.  I have to constantly worry that he isn’t up somewhere high, where he can fall off and get hurt. He gets into everything.

I have soup cans under my rocker/recliner to keep it from rocking and injuring him.  He likes to get under the chair, and any movement from us would squash him.   We have been avoiding that chair as much as possible for fear of hurting him.

We had a pretty quiet week-end.  On Saturday, we did a little laptop shopping.  Best Buy will look at my laptop for $180….just to look at it!  If any parts are needed, they would be extra.

So far my laptop monitor is still working, but I know it’s just a matter of time.

Sunday was football  day for Al.  He was happy that the Tampa Bay Bucs won. I’m not a football fan so I stayed out of his way and watched movies in the bedroom.

Monday night before bed we took a walk and then decided to go sit in the hot tub for a while.  It sure felt nice!  We were going to do it again last night, but there was some pretty ugly lightning in the sky.  Tampa is the lightning capitol of the world!

We leave here on Wednesday for Lazy Days, but haven’t decided yet on where our next stop is.  I’m still hesitant on making firm decisions because they always get messed up.  Al is still voting to go back to Vero Beach.  I think we have ruled the Florida Keys out for now.  The nice thing about being full-timers is that we can go where the weather is the best!

The picture below is another one of the little trouble maker. I can’t leave a cord around for fear of him wrapping it around his neck, or chewing on it.  I think his name might be “Fuzz Butt.”  It was one of the first things we started calling him and it seems to be sticking.  Fuzzy for short.  It fits, doesn’t it?

 

We’ve been going through all of our owners manuals on the motorhome  (again), trying to sort through all the things that need regular maintenance.  Boy, is there a lot on a diesel pusher!  We’re just learning about air brakes, air bags, ride height, slack adjusters, air canister, s-cams…..whew! 

What do you all do,  or have done regularly?  Of course we know about tire pressure, oil and air filters, but what about all the other stuff?  Have any of you replaced your original shocks?  Just how many are there?   Have you checked and adjusted your ride height? 

We just learned something on our refrigerator.  First, thing is we’re not big fans of Norcold.  Our Dometic in the other motorhome ran just fine.  Of course it was a much smaller unit, so I guess there was less to cool.

Lazy Days put in a brand new Norcold in our motor home and it’s been running fine….until we got back to Tampa.  We defrosted it thinking that was causing the problem.  We’ve kept our thermometer in the unit and have had temps in the 40’s.  Before we had low 30’s.  After we defrosted it, it seemed to take forever to cool back down, but we’re still in the low 40’s.  We decided to put it on LP and see if that helped, but it wouldn’t light on LP.  I finally read the Monaco manual (the Norcold manual didn’t tell me this).  It said if it didn’t light on LP, to turn the unit off and then on and try again.  I did that and the first time it light right up.  Before we just kept hitting the LP mode.  I don’t know if turning off the power resets something, but it appears to be running on LP now.  We’ll see if it cools any better.  Margie calls them , Notcolds!   I think she might be right!  Of course we are parked right out in the sun and it’s been in the 90’s every day.  The refrigerator side gets full afternoon sun.

New Laptop?

Lutz, Florida

A little while back, I was getting up from my chair with my laptop in my arms.  It was sitting on a laptop lap pad.  I tripped and both the laptop and pad fell flat to the floor.  I didn’t see any damage on the laptop and it was still working…thank goodness.   There are a  few black scuffs on the laptop pad, from the laptop, I guess.  It hit pretty hard but was sitting on the pad which has a thick pad. 

Lately, when I start up the laptop, the monitor won’t light up.  I can hear Windows opening up, so I know it’s just the monitor.  I have had to tap on the cover, open and close it a few times,  and mess with it a while before I can get the monitor to light up.

The good news is that I do have a Personal Articles Policy on the laptop and my camera.  Since my camera goes kayaking with me, I felt it was a good idea.  It’s very cheap, so I went ahead and bought the policy a couple years ago.    It would be covered if  the damage was caused by me dropping it.  I just don’t know how to know, or prove it.

So, my questions to you guys is:

Do you have any ideas on why the monitor doesn’t light up?  I have so far always gotten it to work, but it seems to be getting harder and harder.  Could it be any kind of driver?  Is there a way to check where it connects to the computer?

Do you think it could be the drop, even though there is no visible damage to the laptop?  It did land pretty hard, but was cushioned by the laptop pad.

Would a repair shop be able to determine the cause? 

Any ideas of where to take it?

I assume I will be buying a new laptop one way of the other, since  I cannot be without a laptop.

I would prefer the old style monitor.  The one with the matte screen verses the shiny new kind.  I love to sit outside and use the laptop and these new style screens just have too much glare.  I hate them.

Any suggestions for brands?  Processors?

I saw one online, with the icore processer 2nd generation, I think it was called.  What should I look for….specifically.  I know to get as much memory and hard drive as I can find.  Of course I want to keep the price down.  I prefer a 15 inch monitor.  I had one of the larger 17 inch screens (Toshiba) and hated it.  I always have the laptop in my lap and the extra weight made it very uncomfortable.  I want the numeric keypad and a cd/dvd burner.  I don’t care about anything else.  Or do I?  

I’m hoping for some suggestions, so I don’t have to spend a lot of time looking.

I have another question.  This time is about our Norcold refrigerator.

When we were traveling Wednesday, we kept the refrig on electric since we were using the generator for the air conditioning.

When the generator went off, I turned off the Norcold to stop it from beeping.  It beeps when it gets no LP or power.  I forgot to turn it back on for a few hours, and it might have been off 4-6 hours.  It wasn’t getting real cool, so we decided to defrost it, since it was pretty frosted up.  We thought maybe that was keeping it from cooling properly.  We did one side of the freezer at a time and turned it off when we did.  It seemed to take forever to get cool and is only now back in the upper 30’s.  I checked our Norcold manual and noted a step in the defrosting process that I hadn’t done.  It said to take the hose out of the little overflow cup in the back of the refrigerator and put it in a gallon bucket while defrosting it.  We didn’t do that, but we did put towels in the bottom to absorb the water.   Remember this is a brand new refrigerator.  We had a Dometic before and if this is normal for a Norcold, then I’m not impressed.  I know they take a long time to cool, but it was 48 hours!  Did the fact that we didn’t pull the drain hose cause this problem?  Al checked it last night and there wasn’t any water in the little cup behind the refrigerator.

 

Little no name kitten is doing just fine.  He seems to be getting more playful every day, which is not always good.  Last night he didn’t want to go to bed when we were ready, so he spent most of the night in the living room.  I worried about what kind of trouble he was getting into, but I think I have the place pretty well kitten proofed.

What Now?

Seffner, Florida

Guess where we are? 

Yep…Lazy Days.

Okay, here is what has been  happening.

First and most important we are having some major problems with little Squeaky.  She is home now and appears to be feeling better, but we’ve had a rough few days.

The vet we took her to last Friday was convinced most of her problems were due to a hairball that she had been unable to pass.    He felt even her “hypoglycemic event” could have been caused by the hairball.  I was hopeful this was indeed the cause of her problems.   He released her Saturday afternoon.  She was bright eyed and seemed much better.  As the day wore on she started looking worse and worse and we ended up having to take her back to the emergency animal clinic on Sunday afternoon.   We have now had some experience with the low blood sugar issues, and we are finally starting to recognize the symptoms.  Unfortunately, by the time I’m sure what the problem is, it’s almost too late.  When we got her to the ER,  she was starting to have  seizures and was really, really bad.  As soon as we walked in they recognized we had a major problem and came rushing out to get her, ignoring the other people that had arrived before us.  I quickly told them that I thought it was hypoglycemia and that she needed glucose fast.  To their credit, they started her on glucose immediately and she immediately improved.  Then they came out to get more of a history.  They kept her on a  IV glucose drip all night and monitored her blood sugar.  This is a great place.  They have overnight medical care, with doctors and a nursing staff.  It’s just like in a hospital, except I think you might get better care.  If you ever have a critically ill animal and the vet wants to keep them overnight, this is the kind of place they need to be.  I’m sure most major cities have some kind of animal ER.  They are expensive, but do a good job. In a vets office, the doctors  go home at 6 pm and the animal is left on their own all night.  At this place, there is a doctor on duty along with overnight nursing staff to watch the animals.  I read the charts and they actually checked on her many times overnight.

So Monday, we took her back to her vet.  He was off that day so we had two other doctors in the office looking at her.  Dr. Drake thinks the hairball was secondary to her real problem.  She is fairly certain she has lymphoma (cancer).  She did a needle aspirate of her spleen and its been sent to the lab for confirmation.  The good news is that it can be treated with Prednisone (steroid) and chemo drugs.  Evidently cats tolerate chemo drugs very well and it’s not too expensive (yeah right).  She would take a pill 2-3 times a week, so it’s something I could do. The vet was clear that this is a fatal disease and the best we could hope for is some time.  We certainly don’t want her to suffer though.  If this will help her to have some quality of life we’ll do it.  Of course we don’t have a definitive diagnosis yet.  We’ve come to accept the situation though, and we’ll deal with it.

She’s been home since Wednesday night, and so far we’ve managed to keep up the blood sugar.  I’m having to force feed her a little though, but she’s starting to eat on her own a little now.

Sooooooo….

 

The other news is that we are back at our “favorite” campsite….Camp Bayview at Lazy Days.

This is our view.

Beautiful sunset, huh?

We had some issues with the big living room slide-out. We had a guy named Johnnie Cook work on it.  He’s the slide out king, I guess.   He said after years of bouncing along, the slide just needed some adjustments.  He really knew what he was doing and the slide out is much quieter when we are putting it in and out. 

In the meantime, during the process of getting the slide out taken care of and having the toad brake installed, we just kept watching our refrigerator temperatures.  We had been having issues with it all along and Mike made several adjustments hoping that would fix the problem.  The problem with rv refrigerators is that since they don’t cool like a household frig, they have to give it 12 hours to test what they do.  The problem with ours was that after the 12 hours it would seem to be working fine for a few days and then we’d get a high temp again.  Finally last week-end we started having fairly consistent temps in the upper 40’s.  They scheduled us to come back to “Bayview”.   We weren’t able to get Mike this time and the guy we got, John, isn’t our favorite tech.  We will definitely try to not use him again.  Anyway, he had to go through the whole test and sit procedure before he could diagnose the problem.  We pitched a small fit and said we had the numbers written down and this has been done too many times.  It’s time to get it resolved.  Mike told him to pull the refrigerator out and check the box.  Some Norcold 1200 refrigerators had a problem with condensation getting between the box and the outside protective coating.  This caused delamination of the box and loss of cooling.  He finally got it removed on Thursday and after an approval from his boss, we got the okay for a brand new refrigerator!    Of course this meant another night in Bayview because they had to order it.  So it came about 2pm yesterday and he got it installed by 6pm. 

Here is a picture of the bad refrigerator.  Note the sides how they are bowed out?  That is the problem I mentioned.

Replacing a frig in a motor home is not quite like doing it in a house.  The first thing they have to do is take out a window! It’s too big to get through the door.   That involves removing the valance and day/night shades, which are all one piece (good to know for future reference).

Here is a picture from the inside with the window removed.

There were about 5 guys and a fork lift involved in this process.  It was interesting to watch.

Here is a photo of the old one being removed.

And the new one being brought in.

We had to stand outside during the process and we found this interesting moth on the side of the motor home.  It looked like he was made of wood.

Once they got the new refrigerator inside, it was hooked up pretty quickly and the window re-installed.  Of course we couldn’t leave…they have to wait 12 hours to make sure the temperature goes down to where it should be.  It’s currently 35.4 degrees, so we think all is good.  He has a few things to do on the outside unit today, but we’re hoping to finally leave Lazy Days today.   I know, I just jinxed it, right?

We can’t really complain I guess.  This refrigerator cost over $4000 and with tax and labor it would probably have cost us $5000.  John said our extended warranty would only have covered the cooling unit…not the box, so we are very lucky Lazy Days stepped up to the plate and replaced it for us.  I know they really didn’t want to, but they did once they were sure what the problem was. 

We’ve had a lot of wear and tear/maintenance items replaced and repaired on their dime.  Hopefully we got it all!   We have been frustrated, but now that we got the new frig, we are thankful it worked out like it did.  The new frig looks exactly like the old one and they were also able to use the beautiful cherry wood panels we had on the old one. 

And one more sunset picture from “Camp Bayview.”

Our “jello” plans to go to Vero Beach are postponed.  It’s almost time for Al to start on his pest control accounts, and with Squeaky’s health issues, we don’t want to go too far from “home.”  We will (hopefully) leave today and go to another campground…..NOT Lazy Days!

Wish us luck!