Month: November 2008

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The Little Discussed Gem of the Class C

I’ve read a lot about Class C RVs. We owners of them are quick to extol their virtues. But there is one feature I’ve never seen discussed: the view from the overhead cab.

Think about it. Miranda is about 11′ tall, not counting the air conditioner and antenna. So, when I’m lying in the cab, right up against the ceiling (since I have a particularly thick mattress), I’m pretty much sleeping at a height that is equivalent to the floor of a second story.

One of my favourite parts of the day is to peek through the curtains up there first thing in the morning and watch the sun rise or the rain fall. I get a long distance view right clear across the park and to the mountains. I’ve had gorgeous views (middle of nowhere Transcanada, Vérendrye Park), views that were okay (Cochrane, here), and views that sucked (Edmonton, any Walmart). What a treat it is to be able to survey my new home or check out the weather before even getting out of bed!

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Winter, Is That You?

November 26th. No sign of snow, although we have plenty of pea-soup fog. Still warm enough out most days to just wear a sweater and fleecy coat (although I do pull out my winter coat when I do the gates at 11PM!). No need for boots. Only the odd bitterly cold wind betrays the fact that we’re less than a month away from the official start of winter.

Tonight, we’re going to reach the lowest temperature I have yet encountered while living in Miranda: minus five. I’ve got both heaters running full blast after running the furnace for a couple of hours. The heaters simply don’t reach the farthest reaches of the rig, such as the back of the cabinets, but the furnace does. Miranda is now nice and toasty, so I should have a comfortable night.

As for the outside, I’ve got heat tape on my water hose, so I don’t think it will freeze. I’m not worried about the holding tanks since they would need a stretch of several days below zero before freezing. It still rises to well above that during the day.

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Propane Is No Fun At All

I went back to Osoyoos yesterday afternoon and finally got the proper hose. I returned home, installed it, checked for leaks, then followed the instructions before trying to light my stove. It got a bit of gas, lit, then conked on. I tried this a couple of times, then went back out. My neighbour saw me poking around and asked me if I needed help. I walked him through the steps I had taken and he confirmed that I did everything perfectly. He said that there was probably a lot of air in the hose and to try to light the stove every couple of minutes until the flame took.

A couple of hours later, he came to see if my stove was firing up. Nope. So, he told me to close the valve on the auxiliary tank, turn on the stove to drain the last of the propane from the hose, and then open the tank sloooooowly so as to trick the flow-limiting valve.

That didn’t help either.

But the flow-limiting valve was something I didn’t know about. It’s a safety feature that prevents a huge amount of propane from getting into your systems and becoming a fire hazard. I Googled that last night and found a suggestion that I simply shut off everything, remove the hose, reattach it, then reopen the tank valve sloooooooowly.

I did that and, this morning, I had a lot more propane coming to the stove, but it still wouldn’t stay lit. Same thing this afternoon.

I decided to try to reset the system one last time before admitting defeat and conceding that I might have seriously screwed up my propane system. I closed the valve on the tank, unhooked the hose, rehooked, then just nudged the valve. For the first time, I heard a bit of a hiss. I waited until the noise stopped, then I slowly and evenly opened the valve the rest of the way. I could finally hear propane flowing!

My stove lit up fine and stayed lit for a couple of minutes, so the next step was the hot water heater. It fired up in one try. Woohoo!

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Shower Snobbery

Having no hot water, I used a resort shower tonight. They’re quite nice and very clean, definitely better than any shower I’ve ever had… except Miranda’s!

Miranda’s shower has several features that make her particularly luxurious to me:

1) The angled design means more width. I can stretch out and turn comfortably. It seems to be a more efficient use of square footage;

2) It has a door instead of a curtain which tends to flap around. I used to find such doors high maintenance until I discovered the squeegee! Now, I just squeegee the doors when I’m done and the doors stay sparkling clean;

3) Storage space!

shower

The caddy has just enough room for all the things I use in a normal shower and there’s even a little shelf for extras. I had never before seen a shower or bath with proper storage!

4) The shower head on a hose is very useful for accessing those difficult to reach parts of the body.

Ah, be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home. 🙂