- We're up here on the
roof, because it's time to do some AC maintenance. - That's right, it's gettin' hot. (energetic rock music) (bright guitar music) We're gonna be doing a
series in collaboration with our friends Todd
and Stephanie Henson. They run the National RV
Training Academy in Texas. - Yes.
- Did I say that right? - I guess so, yeah, it's a tongue twister. Todd is an instructor there,
so we're in good hands when he walks us through all the different RV maintenance tasks
that you'll need to do throughout the year on your RV. - That's right, so we're
gonna have a pro behind us. - Yeah.
- It's not gonna be me just wingin' it,
- That's right. - And lookin' on YouTube.
- Yeah, I mean, we're still gonna be wingin' it on our own when it comes to the hands on part, - Yeah.
- Because Todd and Stephanie are in Texas, but at
least we've got somebody that is on standby in
case we need some help. - We're gonna be doing a whole
series on RV maintenance. We're gonna cover things
like AC maintenance, which is really important right now. - Refrigeration.
- Yep, refrigeration. We're gonna look at the
axles and greasing hubs, and all that good stuff. - And we're gonna take a look
at generator maintenance, and the heat pump furnace. - We're gonna start today
with AC maintenance. - We know right now a lot of you are experiencing a heatwave,
so what perfect time than now to share with you how to maintain your AC for the optimum performance?
- Yeah. Check out our little chat
with Todd and Stephanie and talking about what
we need to do up here, and then we're gonna actually
put it to work today. - That's right, roll that virtual chat. - We're fortunate to have
Todd and Stephanie Henson with us throughout this series, because Todd is RVIA, did I say it right? - Yep.
- RVIA certified? - We wanted an expert
to bounce ideas off of, and discuss how we do some of the stuff that I don't know how to do. - You know, when it
comes to RV maintenance, it's good to have
somebody who really knows what they're doing alongside us. So that we can show you the right way. - Hey guys.
- Hey, how are you? - [Chad] Maybe introduce yourselves? - I'm Todd.
- I'm Stephanie. - [Todd] And we're Two Beards and a Babe, and we're happy to be here with you guys. - Yeah, thanks for having us. - [Tara] Where's the other beard? - We're sitting in a classroom at the National RV
Training Academy right now, so she's at home. - [Todd] She steals all the
attention, you know, so ... - Yeah.
- Got two attention hogs here. - That brings up the other thing is the National RV Training Academy, is their NRVIA Certification
Course, and where is that? - We're located in Athens, Texas, which is about an hour
south east of Dallas. We have a facility here
where we do training classes for people that want to
become certified technicians, but also certified inspectors, and then we have classes for consumers, that just wanna be able to
take care of their own rigs, - Oh, okay.
- That aren't really looking to take a business with it. We have a 12,000 square foot
classroom and base space that we are able to pull in RVs and actually do the hands-on training, and we have dozens and
dozens of refrigerators, and air conditioners, and
all the different appliances that we teach, so that our
students not only get the theory in the classroom, but they
also can get the hands-on training part here on location. - That's awesome. I also wanna tell you guys
that forgive our choppy video, 'cause we're in the mountains in Montana, and so it's kinda spotty. This kinda goes back to
our FAQ video, part one, where we talked about different ways that you can make an income
living full time on the road. This is a potential
opportunity to do something, - Yeah, do you guys
get any full time RVers that travel full time, they get certified and just start to work
in parks as they go? - I would say that's probably
the most common student that we have. - Another reason why
working with these two is perfect for us is because
they also have a Momentum. - A 397 at that,
- Yeah. - They're very, very
smart people like that. - Yes. We will now pass it off to Todd. - How often do you recommend that people do this kind of maintenance for their AC? - Two different sections
here, we're talking about cleaning the filters and
thinning the registers, we wanna do that once a season. - Okay.
- Beginning of every season, so four times a year. When we're talking about
getting up on the roof, and cleaning the coils,
probably about twice a year. - [Chad] We're about a year behind. - I was just gonna say, we're
a little bit behind on that. - Okay. But it also depends on where you're at. If you're in a place where a
lot of dust and dirt blows, you may wanna do it a
little bit more frequently. Well, let's go over the
things that you would need. Really, two different
types of cleaning agents. - Okay.
- One is for your evaporator coil, and one will
be for your condenser coil. You wanna make sure you get the one for your evaporator coil,
'cause this is the air you're gonna breathe. Don't wanna use a chemical
that you may not be able to breathe too well, so when you do clean your evaporator coils, you wanna make sure it's actually for evaporator coil. It's a disinfectant, it's anti-fungal, so we can actually breathe a lot better once we clean the coils. - Awesome.
- You can use this to clean your condenser coils, but this is about three
times more expensive than your standard
condenser coil cleaners, so the smart thing is, is to get both. The great thing about the foaming cleaner is of course it comes with its own brush. - Oh, that's cool.
- That's cool. - We use this a lot more
than we use our fin combs. Fin combs are important when
we're talking about cleaning, and we'll get into that,
so we do need these. You can get these in a variety of sizes, you'll get a pack of those,
and we're gonna just buy which one fits your
particular air conditioner. I would definitely recommend some gloves, because as we're beginning
to clean those fin combs, they're sharp,
- Chop out the knuckles? - Sometimes. And then finally, when we're
talking about maintenance, we need to get some good
foil tape for our ducts, and I'll go over that. - As always, we're gonna have
links to all the products that you're gonna need to
do this kind of maintenance in the description.
- Yep. Let's go to a demo. - So, with the standard
Dometic air conditioner, this side's gonna be our condenser coils, on the other side, you
wanna come over here, we take our shroud off,
but you also have a shroud for your evaporator coils. We'll take that off, and so we
expose our evaporator coils, so we have evaporator
coils, and condenser coils. (energetic guitar music) - Oh, and it should be
noted that we did shut off AC and DC power to the whole rig. - Yes, we have two forms of
electricity coming to this AC. We have 120 volt, but because
we have our wiring harness that's also 12 volt,
- Oh, okay, - [Todd] So you need to cut the power. (energetic guitar music) - [Tara] I think this might
be the moment of truth, where we see what kind
of condition it's in. - Yep.
- Just let it be known guys, that we have been very bad
at maintaining our ACs, because this is the
first time we're doing it and we've had this RV for
over a year and a half. - This side will be our condenser coil, and this one'll be our evap coil, because this is the part
that goes into the RV. - Don't look too bad. A couple of little spots,
but not anything bad, really. - No, some bugs.
- Yeah. - I like that the condenser
coils are facing backwards versus forwards, so
there's not bugs and birds and whatever hitting it. - I'm not a big fan of
being up here on the roof. Just sayin'. (bright guitar music) - Actually not lookin' bad at all. Yeah, evap coil's lookin' pretty good. We only have a couple of
fins to straighten out, maybe a few bugs, doesn't seem like this should be routed underneath
here, it was kind of tight. I think that's what
was making this crooked and pulled halfway off.
- Yeah. - So I don't think it
was a bad connection, but we'll make it better. There, nice and flush.
- Yes. - And some slack. Actually, our ducting
looks pretty good, too. We'll check it from underneath. Seems to be a pretty good seal on there, there's nothing bleeding over
from one side to the other. Gonna remove this, so
we can spray in here. Looks like they tried to
put it here and missed, and then stuck it here, so we'll straighten these fins here. - Problem with the box is,
that when we get up here to clean the coils, we want
to do everything that we can to go get a water hose
and spray this down. We're used to doing that to our homes, because of course, our
evaporator or our condenser is outside, so, so simple
to go grab your water hose and spray this. The problem with doing that on an RV is of course, we have
holes that go straight to our living space, and so
we don't wanna do that. So we can just simply take our spray foam and spray it on our coils. Now, this doesn't foam up near
as much as the other stuff, but it does is, it releases the dirt, releases the grime, and
that's what we're lookin' for. Now, you'll notice this
stuff doesn't foam, so if it doesn't foam, we
really don't need to rinse it. (bright guitar music) - [Tara] Oh, shouldn't we
have like a mask or something? - Are you kind of downwind a little bit? - You can see the dirt
- Cimon' out? Yeah. - [Todd] This actually goes
down into our cabin area, right? - Right.
- Now normally, you'd want to cover this up, but once we expose this, we wanna cover this up,
so no matter what we do doesn't fall down in here. But this stuff is so great
that you really don't need to rinse it. If you really want to rinse it, this is what I would suggest. One of two things, get you
one of those little pumps that you can fill up with
water and just simply spray it, so pump it up and spray it. That's all that you need. - Just a little bit of a rinse. - I'm not that real big
on taking your water hose all the way up there, because one, you have to take it up the ladder. Two, if you're off, you
have a lot of electricity that you have to worry about. You do have your drip pan here. As long as you're not
putting in too much water, your drip pan will take
care of everything. We can already see the
difference in the coils, just by spraying that on there. - [Tara] Oh yeah. - [Todd] So now we have some
issues where we have our fins are kinda blocked up. One inch of broken fins is one eighth of a degree difference - Wow.
- In temperature. We definitely want to do what we can to straighten this stuff out. You should be wearing
gloves when you do this. But just to show you
how the fin comb works, you wanna put that in there,
and you just lightly find where your grooves are,
so you see how it goes in? Pull up and get that dirt out, and you're gonna straighten this out. Now, this takes some time. You don't wanna do it too quickly, 'cause you can damage these fins, so I prefer using this right here, especially if you're new to this. Just simply put it in and pull it up. And you see all the dirt coming out? - [Tara] Oh yeah. - [Todd] That's what
this will do right there. - Hey Todd, with the
section that you just did, do you use the combs or that
brush before you use the spray or do you do the spray and then the brush? - So if you can actually
see for a little bit, yes, this would be great to
go ahead and help this out, and let the chemical get
into the part it needs to. - Okay.
- Now, if it's covered up in here, it would be
really hard to figure out where your combs go, 'cause
they're all blocked up. If they're really bad, what you wanna do is use your spray first,
get a lot of that off, then come back with your brush - Okay, got you.
- Or your comb, and then probably spray it again.
- Okay. - Look at that, straightened
those right out. (bright guitar music) The fact that these are so much shorter, you get a lot more leverage
with it, so like right here, boom, straightened right out. We don't really have any bad
areas, that's pretty good. - Is that it for this, that part? - It's pretty much it. Let me get, there's a few, few on that side that
were a little crooked, I mean, very minor.
- So, you don't really even need the comb, right?
- No. - That's good.
- That's real good. - That'd be a really big pain in the butt if you had to comb the whole thing out. - Yeah, like that one, that
one you guys showed us. - Yeah, like that one Todd had? - That was all beat to hell. A little note of something that I noticed, whenever taking a cover
off or something like this, get the ones that are obvious,
like around the edge here, you'll notice that I
didn't take these out, 'cause they didn't look like
they would be in a location that would be holding
this on, and I was right. They're holding this on. - About that chunk right there. - I mean, we could at least
see which comb we would need. That's not it. And we just smushed them.
- Oh gosh! Whoa, time to use the comb! Made it worse.
- This actually works best. - Yeah.
- So you can see, as a test, I flattened some
to see if this would work. A general inspection, we
don't have any mud daubers or bugs or spiders, or
anything like that in there. It's a Grand Design, good job on this one. - It's probably because we
took such good care of it the past year and a half. - Sure that's it. They haven't taped the corners and stuff. - Oh yeah. Figured we might as well clean
it off while we're up here. - [Todd] If we move over
to our condenser side, I'm gonna use the foaming cleaner, and it kind of does the
same thing, it foams up. We're letting the foam do its thing, and we're just gonna lightly pull up to help loosen up everything
that's located in there. - Next step is to use the cheap
stuff in he condenser coil. First off, all the dust and
stuff that we had on top here from Lone Rock Beach and
other boondocking dusty places in the desert southwest,
not a bit inside there. - Yeah, look. Hold on, I'll show you. - [Chad] I was talking
about this part here. - [Tara] Oh, but I mean even in here. - But even in here,
- There's not, - Yeah.
- Really anything. - [Chad] Yeah. It's pretty good.
- I know. - Now we're going to
do the condenser coil, which is right here. It's not very bad at all,
just a little bit of dust here and there, this
looks like daisies here. It wouldn't be up here, but ... (bright rock music) - [Tara] You need the comb for that? - Maybe. - [Tara] Still haven't
figured out what size comb. - Yeah, I'm trying to just
kinda size them up here. Oh, there it is. - [Tara] So, tell 'em
what size comb it is. - The 12 per inch worked really well. Can kinda see that it goes right in. - [Tara] Todd made it look easier. - This is good, we're done. - Only two more to do. (bright rock music) - So your standard air conditioner, you have your return, and then of course you have your inlet valve. We'll close this off, since we're vented. What we wanna do is we wanna take a regular thermometer,
digital thermometer, - Got one of those.
- On our AC, and let it run for about 10 to 15 minutes. We wanna get a good cycle going. And the first thing we're gonna do is we're gonna set it in here
and we're gonna get a reading of our return here. The way AC work is, they don't just simply blow cold air in, but
they suck hot air out. For this, I should have one temperature, and then what we wanna
do is close this register and then read our temperature here. Okay, and this is what
we call our Delta T. So in this, in Texas, and in Florida, we're gonna have a lower Delta T than, say, in Colorado. 'Cause an air conditioner does two things. Not only does it pull the hot
air out, and put cold air in, but it also takes out the humidity. The hotter the air, the
more humidity we have. - [Chad] Yeah, and thank God in Florida. - [Tara] And Texas, too! - You want to test your AC to figure out how it's performing. You're looking for a Delta
T, that this should be, this air right here, going
in, should be anywhere from 11 degrees to 20 degrees warmer than the air coming out here. - [Chad] So 20's a good Delta T then? - 20's a good Delta T. 11, you're in Florida, or
you probably got a compressor that's being overloaded. When I also said that
you want to service this, this is a one-time buy,
cost you about $25. Unfortunately, this is the
part where I think OEMs could do a lot better job. What we have up here, whatever they put in my air conditioners, they put it on after the roof is already made. So what they do is, they
cut through the hole and then you have your roofing material, which is either the TPO or
the EPBM, the rubber mat. - Right.
- They just simply fold it down and staple it. And then whatever air is
in here gets sucked up and goes through the
system, but the problem is, all of this should be taped up. Airflow is king when we're
talking about air conditioning, so everything we would wanna
do is all around airflow. That's the number two reason why the air conditioners go out. Number one is poor electricity. Now that would be another topic. - These just pop off really easy. Little dirty, little dusty. - [Tara] Oh my goodness, look at that. - And this is what we were talking about, making sure this is a good seal here. And it is. I'm just gonna rinse it off
in the sink and let it dry. Same thing with this side. - [Tara] Wooh! Oh my gosh, it's embarrassing. - I have a pretty good idea already that this is not too bad, based on how it looks from the top. But we're never up here doing
this, do it all the way. - [Tara] There's something
that could be added. - This is the part that
goes into the ductwork for the rig, and you can see over here, that could be just at least
pushed back out of the way. I'm probably gonna put some extra tape at this ducting area here. There's a little gap back in here that just goes to an empty area, which of course would just go into the attic space, not good. Tiny little hole here,
little blocked thing there, it all adds up. (bright rock music) I'm gonna add a little
bit of extra seal here, between the cold side
and hot side, like so. (bright rock music) Got a good seal all the
way around the barrier between the two sides. Mounting plate's clean,
now I'm gonna just clean the filters and cover. Got the cover all cleaned
off, inside and out. Got all of the grooves
inside the thingies clean. It is interesting to see
though how these work. The air pumps out right
here, you'll notice that the intake is still
sealed off, intake here, exhaust here, cold air out here, and then there's a
little channel right here that will feed both of these things. And so if I have those
open, you're gonna see the bulk of the air
will come straight out. You don't wanna leave it
like that all the time. I hear it's not good for it, you could probably ask Todd about that. When they're closed up,
the air's forced to go to stay in there and
then go into the ducts, and then it comes out, I
don't know if you can see the duct over there. Then of course, all over the place. Grand Designs have a racetrack system, where it's a circular
duct going all the way through the whole rig,
which is how we can leave this AC on at night, and it's quiet because it's out here
away from the bedroom. And it still pumps cold air, or hot air, into the bedroom and of
course everywhere else. (bright rock music) Okay, filters are clean. (bright rock music) So now, this AC is operating
at peak efficiency. So, the other thing that
we wanted to ask you guys to talk a little bit about
is the Road Life Project. - [Stephanie] What Road
Life Project is about, is bringing an online community of RVers, but helping people with
the common pain points that they experience
when they're getting into the RV lifestyle, but also,
Road Life is launching the first ever group
healthcare plan for RVers. - [Chad] That's exciting,
that's really cool. - We actually just went through
our second enrollment batch, now we have several people
who are on insurance, who did not have insurance
- Awesome. - Before Road Life was
able to secure this plan. But we also have something
called Digital Pen Pals, which for families who road school, who are looking for an online
social interaction system for their children, kindergarten, 3K, those ages, all the way
through high school, kids will now have a
platform that they can go and play games with each
other, we can have book night, book clubs,
- That's awesome. - Story time, things like that. We have a large group of
parents who wanna volunteer to help moderate these activities, so you don't have to worry about your kid just logging in online. - Let's say you're just couples, well, let's do something for couples. - Yeah, we have a group
called Chasing Adventures, and that group is all about
taking your bucket list and ticking things off, but doing it with like-minded other couples who also wanna go and do those activities. We wanna be able to tell people about how to make an income while you travel. - Well, thanks so much guys. - Thank y'all for having us. - We'll chat with you again here soon, when we get to, what did
we say we're doing next? - Next up is refrigeration. That wraps up the first video
in our maintenance series. And the first task that had to be done. - Yeah, it really was not that difficult. I think the big thing
is just inspecting it and seeing, is anything amiss up here? Do I have a bunch of bent
fins, do I have bugs in there, there's a dead squirrel
in there, whatever. And, yeah, squirrel. If a dead squirrel's in there, you've probably had some smells. - I think we got lucky that Grand Design apparently did a really good job when they installed the AC unit, because we hadn't touched
them this whole time. - About a year and seven months. - Yeah.
- And yeah, it wasn't that bad, especially considering some of the conditions
in which we've camped. - And I'm glad that we did
this maintenance video first because I've been wanting
those AC filters cleaned for a long time. - I wanted to wait, so
we could show you guys how bad they can get. Actually, they can
probably get a lot worse. That's probably the third or fourth time I've cleaned those filters, maybe third. - If there are any maintenance topics that you'd like to see
us cover, comment below. - If you have any tips or
tricks that we didn't cover, or don't know about because
you haven't told us yet, comment below.
- Right. Don't forget to click the
Like button and subscribe. - Give us a thumbs up,
check out our website, changinglanesrv.com.
- Facebook and Instagram. - Check out these outtakes. - Bye.
- See ya. - (gasps) So what are we doing up here? - I don't know. - See if we can get through this without our neighbor's
dog interrupting us. - While they sit there on their phones, - Right next to the dog. - (mumbles) I don't even hear my dog. - [Tara] Talking too much? - Talk too much. Should I fall off backwards
for a good outtake? - Nope. It's rough on the knees, folks. The roof, the roof is on fire. - The roof is what we
call the flight deck. 'Cause it's technically
the roof of the ship. - We're already goin'. - We're already on tangents.
- We're already going. - I can't laugh, 'cause it's shakin'. - We just started, you're already going. - Yeah. Wonder what this button does.
- Don't do it. - [Chad] Alternating current, or ... - [Tara] See, here we go, Stephanie. - Or half the band of AC/DC.
- Yeah. - Good to go.
- Good to go! - Flying doggies!
