Test 1: Initial Deployment.
Our first campground was to the Minuteman Campground in Littleton, Massachusetts for the month of May. The campground is located 20 minutes from the house in Carlisle, and 20 minutes from Barron Chiropractic & Wellness Center, where Deryl was still working.
We pull in, and Rob finds that he has no problem backing the trailer into our first website. We spend 2 hours, methodically deploying the electrical cable, the drinking water hose, and discover that the waste water hose we had did not have the correct elbow to mate with the waste water line. Rob dashes off to the closest Walmart and returns with a brand new sewer hose complete with clear elbow, which he hooks up successfully.
For the rest of the month, saw us out early and home late as we worked on getting the house ready for showing, and Deryl going to work 3 days a week. We had one Sunday, that we took off from working on the Carlisle house to relax and have a fire in the fire pit. Deryl continued to work for Barron Chiropractic until the last Thursday in May. Rob spent EVERY day working on the house in Carlisle.
Test 2: Move the Trailer and hook up again.
On June 1, we undocked the trailer, and towed it from Littleton, Massachusetts up to the Twin Tamarack Family Camping and RV Resort in New Hampton, New Hampshire. Our plan was that we would be able to vacation, and participate in Laconia Bike Week while staying very close to Laconia! Best laid plans…
Instead of vacationing, or riding the motorcycles, we commuted back to Carlisle to work on the house EVERY DAY for the first half of June. The house finally goes on MLS Listing on June 16th, with the showings scheduled for Saturday June 19th and Sunday June 20th. The realtor hosted an open house from 2 PM to 4 PM on Saturday, otherwise the showings were scheduled that Saturday and Sunday.
On Sunday evening we have had 4 offers! We accept the highest offer which includes a wavier of buyer inspection and a waiver of mortgage contingency. YEA!
But we aren’t done, we now have to EMPTY the house, and get the final building permit inspection, along with the usual water test, Title 5 septic system inspection, etc.
Back in the truck to our destination: Towing the RV to Twin Tamarack was not difficult, but Rob noted that the trailer brakes did not seem to do much. Deploying the trailer systems took much less time than at Minuteman Campground, but deciding where in our site was the best for the trailer took us several tries. But we are still learning!
Twin Tamarack is a lovely property and we enjoyed the camping, what little we were able to do around working on the house. We are getting comfortable with all the camper systems. For example, Rob determines that keeping all the waste tank valves closed until time to dump seems to do a better job cleaning out the waste hose.
RVs have holding tanks, not septic systems, for holding waste fluids. Ours has 2 gray tanks, the Galley tank for the kitchen sink, and the Bathroom tank for the shower and vanity sink. The trailer then has one black tank for the toilet. Since black tanks have more solids than gray tanks, the procedure is to dump the black tank first, and then dump the gray tanks. One convention is to keep the gray tank valves open until the day or 2 before dumping. The other method is to keep all valves closed until you have sufficient fluids to dump. After trying method 1, Rob determined that we have best results when we keep all the valves closed until one of the gray tanks is at or near full. Then he will dump the black tank, and the two gray tanks. (Another trick we have learned by experimentation, is that dumping dirty dish washing water into the black tank, after washing the dishes, is beneficial. First it reduces the amount of water in the galley tank (which is the smallest), and second it increases the amount of liquid in the black tank. This increases the liquidity of the black tank contents.)
Test 3: Move to Oxbow.
As per plan on July 1st we move the trailer from Twin Tamarack down to Oxbow Campground in Deering, New Hampshire.
On route to Oxbow, we take the trailer to the Sullivan Tire Commercial Truck service center located in Bow, New Hampshire. Sullivan tire installs new 4 new tires on the trailer, replacing the original 2017 tires that came with the trailer. We then stop at the nearby CAT scales and weigh the truck and trailer. Truck and trailer weights will be a regular event for us.
Oxbow is a wonderful campground, meticulously maintained, large sites, and friendly people. While most of the sites are seasonal renters, the seasonal renters are welcoming to the transients.
We are booked into Site 2 for all of July and August, which is on the top of the hill with full hookup including 50 Amp electric, and over looks the upper field of campsites. We quickly make friends of the owners of the trailer next to us, Louise and Jerry, and their lovely dog Lady.
On a personal note, Rob and Deryl celebrated the 12th anniversary of her moving in with Rob, and the 7th anniversary of their HandFast commitment ceremony, by getting married on August 16th.
Repairs:
While on Site 2, we schedule and take care of 2 trailer problems.
Brakes:
The first and most critical repair issue were the trailer brakes. Rob found that no matter what he did, the trailer did not seem to apply its brakes. Hence Clyde has had to do all the breaking when coming to a stop. So far he has been able to safely stop the truck and trailer, but this is not a safe way to drive a 14,000 pound trailer around. We had performed a few experiments while at Minuteman, and at Twin Tamarack campgrounds to try and pin down what might be the problem. Our conclusion was that the problem had to be the brakes themselves, and not a problem with the truck or trailer’s electrical part of the braking system.
Rob then did some searching of the internet for possible causes, and then researching for solutions. On the RVForum, Rob learned that there had been an issue with the axels for the trailer, during our trailer’s year of manufacture. The issue was that the axel hubs, as supplied by the manufacturer, had a defect that allowed axel grease to leak into the brake drum assembly. Rob crawled under the trailer, and with a Q-Tip poked into the brake adjustment port on the back of the brakes. He discovered that there was grease where there should not be grease.
We then contacted the manufacturer of the axel assemblies. Rob supplied the technician at the manufacturer with the VIN for our trailer (and the serial number off the axel). With that information the tech at the manufacturer was able to pin down all of the parts we would need. The manufacturer had new pre-assembled, pre-greased hub and brake assemblies available. Rob ordered 4!
We then went to work finding a mobile RV service tech that could come to Oxbow Campground and replace the assemblies on site. We ended up connecting with the Manchester, New Hampshire, Sullivan Tire mechanic we had used when Clyde last needed service. This is a wonderful woman named Emily! Emily is not only a ASA certified mechanic, and an ASA certified Diesel mechanic. She is working on her Master Mechanic certificate, with the goal to become a World Master Mechanic. She is very knowledgeable about all things automotive, and a joy to work with. Her can do attitude impressed us when Clyde was at Sullivan Tire earlier in the summer.
Emily took one of her Monday’s off from working at Sullivan Tire and drove up to our campground. Rob brought a number of his own tools from storage to facilitate the replacement work. Then Rob acted as Emily’s scrub-nurse, making sure she had anything she needed. Sure enough 3 out of the 4 hubs had leaked, and those brake drums were coated in grease. The 4th hub had not leaked, so it had done all the breaking for a long time, to the point where there was nothing left of the brake shoes or drums. The brakes were just metal on metal, hence, no braking there either!
Luckily the new brake and hubs were built into easy to install assemblies. Three hours later, all four brake & hub axel assemblies were replaced. Emily even volunteered to dispose of the old assemblies! Yea, Emily! Problem 1 solved. <(Tom the owner of Oxbow Campground is so impressed on how little impact there was on his guests that he wants Emily’s contact information.) >
Air Conditioning:
The second issue was that the main air conditioner for the trailer did not produce cold air. The fan blew, but something in the compressor side was not producing cold. Unfortunately the AC unit is one assembly, with no replaceable parts. Rob called around to various dealers to see which if any RV dealership had a replacement AC unit. Luckily, Cold Springs RV (which is located only 12 miles from Oxbow Campground) has a unit! Rob buys the unit and sets an appointment for a technician from Cold Springs, to come out to Oxbow and install it.
The Cold Springs RV Tech arrives and starts the replacement, only to discover that the AC unit he was issued was broken! It had been dropped or bashed in shipment. The tech has some very fine words for who ever sent him on a call with a broken part, and heads back to the shop. He calls later in the day, to reschedule, having found a good unit at the shop.
A week later the tech comes back to Oxbow and is able to replace the AC unit with the new one. Poof! we now have cold air from the main AC unit. The bedroom, small AC unit, can now go back to doing it’s job of cooling the bedroom. The rest of July and August we are able to be comfortable on the hot days.
Final Test – Dry camp test:
Back in February, when we made reservations to stay at Oxbow, we didn’t think through when Labor Day was this year. We also didn’t have the cycles to plan out the dates properly for our Maine vacation. Therefore we needed to extend our stay at Oxbow Campground by a week. Luckily Tom, the owner of Oxbow, was able to accommodate us, but we had to move from Site 2 with all the facilities to Site B, a water and 30-Amp electric only site.
On September 1, we unhooked and moved from Site 2, down the hill at Oxbow to Site B. Tom apologized that he didn’t have anything better, but from Rob’s and Deryl’s perspective, Site B would give us experience in how long we could go on our waste tanks. It would also teach us about what we could and could not use on 30-Amp electric service versus the 50-Amp service we had at Site 2.
The week at Site B, was mostly uneventful, with the only “Oops” being when Deryl started the microwave while also baking a potato in the toaster oven. Oops, we tripped the 30-Amp circuit breaker on the pedestal.
Rob had purchased and installed a small water meter on the hose into the trailer. This recorded how much water we used during the week, enabling us to learn what our usage is prior to having to make our fresh water tank be all the water we have. While on Site B, we did not try to ration our water usage, and Deryl even took her normal long shower to wash her hair. At the end of the week we had only used 48 gallons, which is well below the 60 gallons our fresh water tank will hold. We now know that we should be able to boon dock, meaning be without any hookups, for a week if we are careful with our water usage.
Since Site B did not have a sewer hookup, we also learned if we would fill our waste holding tanks in a week. The trailer has two “Gray Water tanks”; a 30 gallon “Galley” (Kitchen Sink) tank and a 45 gallon “Bathroom” tank for the shower and vanity sink. It also has a “Black tank” which is a 45 gallon tank dedicated to the toilet. At the end of the week we had not filled any of our tanks! Another test for enabling us to boon dock, passed.
During this time, we register our vehicles in the state of New Hampshire, and get our New Hampshire driver’s licenses.
The tests done, now to see if we can actually GO camping. Read more on the Shake-Down page.
Or review the pre-flight pages: