Tuesday, July 8, 2008

I'm never plugging in again!

Well, the rally's over, and we're back here at the Moose Lodge in Gillette Wyoming. I'll post some pictures as soon as I can steal some from John. You know I forgot to take my camera most of the time.

I was plugged in to 50amp electrical service all week at the Cam-Plex, only the second time I've done so since September 2007. I'm boondocking here at the Moose, and when I turned on the inverter, I got quite the surprise.

Normally when I turn on the inverter, I see a reading of 50-85 watts, depending on what is plugged into 110 volt outlets and their phantom loads. But now when I plug in, I see a reading of 1000 watts. Yes, one thousand watts! AC watts, and it drains the batteries in a matter of minutes. I quickly shut it off.

I called Coachnet, my emergency roadside service, and they are just great. Can't say enough good things about them. It was a Saturday of a holiday weekend, no place is open, but their technician talked me through a lot of diagnostics before he ran out of suggestions. So Monday morning they called back and had gotten me an appointment on Tuesday afternoon. The great part of that is the repair place is less than a block from the Moose lodge; I'm looking right at it.

I called the manufacturer who gave me some more diagnostics to tell the repair facility. We will quickly be able to tell if it's the inverter or not. So I'm confident that soon I will be up and running again. Thank goodness all the truly important things in my motorhome are 12volt - water pump, water heater, fridge, lights, 12volt outlets, etc.

I'm convinced that the inverter is angry at me for bypassing it this week. So, I promise, no more plugging in, ever again!!! Well, maybe...

1 comment:

Barbara and Ron said...

OMG! You poor thing! I hope you got it fixed this afternoon and it wasn't too traumatic. I'm sure the inverter will forgive you in a month or too.