- If you happened to see our part one of our quarantine projects/modifications - [Both] /upgrades, - This is part two because we were in
quarantine for a long time. - That's right here's a hint. We're sitting on one. (upbeat music) - The first project
that we're gonna cover, we're sitting on, it's our patio. - We caused this. - Yeah, you know, you're not supposed to leave this out on the rain. If you read the manual or ask online, Grand Design and probably
every toy hauler manufacturer will recommend that when it rains, you close the patio. Well, that's a bunch of crap. (laughs)
- We don't like to do that. Who wants to put their patio
up every time it rains? 'Cause it rains a lot. - We're lazy. - Yeah. So we've had our patio out
almost 24/7/365 for 2 1/2 years. - Right. - And it's done really well, we haven't really had any issues. We did, however, start to see
some of the corners and stuffs getting a little bit of separation, where the sealer was. And
I was a little bit worried about where some of the bolts are and the connections for the patio. Ideally, I would have liked to have done this back in
time when we first got the RV. Just because you know, why not
do it while it's still fresh then you know it's sealed really well. But you know, we see
all of these commercials for Flex Seal-- - It's like a handyman in a can. - And if you can make a
freaking boat out of it, you know it should be
able to seal our patio. - After a day on the water, not only does it stay afloat, but the inside is completely dry. - So I did a little test corner because I wanted to make sure it worked before I covered all the edges in it. And it seemed to work really well. And I kind of liked it. So the idea here was all around the edges, where there are joints,
and where there are bolts, and little connectors and
things to hold the patio rails and things together, where you just get all that
sealed really, really well. The main surface here is kinda like-- - [Tarra] Grippy. - Yeah, it's not really nonskid. I mean, we had nonskid on
the flight deck in the Navy. (airplane engine roars) This is much more forgiving,
it's not gonna to tear you up. It's more like a bedliner material and that is sealed pretty well and we can see water pool on it and it beads up it's fine. - And you didn't wanna do the Flex Seal on the whole thing because it would be a little
too sleek for the bike. - I did think of that and I thought maybe it would turn out okay. But after doing (laughs) - The sun's killing me. - After doing the test corner, I realized it is a little
bit of a rubbery feel. But once it cures really
good, it's a little smoother. But when it gets wet,
it's really slippery. So I didn't wanna be
riding the bike up it. - No - And also it does tend to
show fingerprints and footsteps and things like that. So, again not something we wanted to have on the entire deck. But I did tape off about an inch inside of the actual frame here and just taped it off and covered it. I took all the hardware off,
I scraped up all the labels. (upbeat music) I sanded some parts that had a little bit of corrosion underneath the paint. That's kind of what prompted this was, I could see that at the corners, where the joints were,
some water was getting in and there was a little bit of corrosion between the paint and the surface and it was causing it to bubble up and I wanted to take care of that. Along with scraping off
all of the warning labels and things like that, I also scraped the corking off the edges since I knew I was going to
reseal that with this stuff. I took off the hardware
for the patio door mounts and everything else I just
kinda coated right over. But it was a pretty easy project and we have a really
good seal on here now. (upbeat music) I might entertain recoating this center
section with some bedliner. I'm just not sure I'd
want that on the edges. - So now we can leave it
down again, during the rain. - We've always left it down. We never close this thing. (rain pours) - A bit off topic but related
people ask us all the time about our back patio door and obviously that's
super easy to break into. And what do we do about that? Do we worry about it? - Oh, we have a vicious guard dog. - (laughs) Yeah. - [Tarra] Hey Daisy. - [Chad ] Daisy
- [Tarra] Come here. When she growls--
(laughs) - that's gonna scare anybody away. - Yeah. (Daisy growls) - [Chad ] You're gonna get them Daisy. (Daisy growls) - [Chad ] Who's there? Who's making noises out there? (Daisy barks) Like a barking squirrel. - Yeah. - We have a ring alarm system. (alarm rings) And really, it's just a matter
of, if anybody did break in the alarm would go off, we'd get notified. You know, granted they could-- - And we'd catch it on camera. - We catch it on camera. Also, one thing I noted
that I never really noticed before I did this project is the handles that locked down the door when the patio door is closed, there are some rubber grommets in there. And the crazy thing is
they sit in their nice, but as soon as you open the door and-- - Look who just busted out. - Oh, it's the guard dog. - Oh. - Did you break out? - See how fierce. - Oh nobody's-- - She's fierce because her
breath is fierce because-- - Are you gonna breathe on them? - Yeah every video we say, "she's dirty." 'Cause she's always dirty. - She is, she's always
very dirty when we film. She's getting a bath today though. Those rubber grommets around
the part that comes through, as soon as you release it, it pushes the grommet right out of there. There's nowhere for the
grommet to go except for out and then it's completely useless. So now what I do is,
after I put the patio down and get it set up, I reclose
those, so that it pulls that thing back down and then I push the grommet
back and it goes in real easy once that thing is out of the way. And that way it's all sealed up on that part for the rain also. - Alright, enough with the patio, right? We're done with that? - We're done with the
patio, let's move on. - What do you wanna do next?
- Let's move on to the awning - Lights. - Awning lights. - Awning lights. - So the other thing
that I worked on during this whole stay at home thing was this awning light it's-- - This hempramental awning light. - Yeah. It's got an LED strip
along the end over here is that's real nice,
lights up this whole area. So if I'm cooking on the
Blackstone or whatever, it lights it up really nice
and it just looks cool. The issue was, it would
just sometimes work sometimes not work. And when you've got something like that, it's almost always a shorted
or open wire, usually open. A short usually will blow a fuse. So I knew it had to be
somewhere in the wiring between the RV and the light. It runs out that arm and
I knew it was most likely either at that end or that end. So all I did was I got up on a ladder and I just started pushing on wires. And as soon as I started pushing up here, it came on and off. I knew it was probably the
connection right up there. I can kinda feel, you can
kinda see right there. It's got some cuts in it. It's probably been a
hitting up against here. I may file down that
corner while I'm up here. The fix was really super
easy, it's just two wires, like all DC wiring, it's just
a positive and a negative, red and a black. So all I had to do was
get a real simple splice, splice them together. Yeah you'll notice that
I staggered these a bit short on black on this side,
short on red on this side, just to kind of stagger these
larger cramps just a bit. I did wanna put heat shrink over it, but the heat shrink that I
had was a little bit large, so it wouldn't shrink down far enough. So I ended up using
electrical tape, which is-- - Not your favorite thing to do. - No, I like to do things right,
but electrical tape works. I don't like using electrical
tape if I don't have to, but I had to. It's not my most awesome,
proudest repair ever, but it is what it is. I also found that up
there, where that wire was running past, was
a sharp little corner that was probably the
cause of the whole thing to begin with. So I took a file, I filed that down. It's been good ever since. - High five, good job. - That wasn't a high,
get up here (laughs). - So while we're here,
let's just go ahead and talk about the plumbing. - Yeah 'cause it's actually inside here. We're not going to take you in there cause it's all full back up with our stuff from our basement. - I always feel bad when
you have to crawl in there and spend hours in there fixing stuff. - Hey listen, I've seen
other RVs' basements and we got it made. I can sit up in there
fine, I can climb in there, climbing in and out it's a pain, but it is what it is. We got a big work area down there. In a previous video, you might've noticed that we upgraded our water pump. Do you remember what the year that was? - That was our Three Problems in Two Days. - That's right. - Fun time.
- That was a good time. But during that, we
upgraded our water pump and it worked really well. But a lot of you wrote in and mentioned that you saw in the Amazon reviews that the water pressure was way too high. So, I was a little concerned about that 'cause it did seem like it got to a pretty good high pressure. - It did. - Yeah. I contacted RemCo about it and they said, "No, it should be 65 PSI." And they weren't sure why some
of those comments were there. If they were maybe old
pumps from old distributors or maybe there were some other thing that got confused with them. But it's supposed to be 65
PSI, but I wanna check that. So, I bought, on Amazon, a little pressure gauge with a sharktooth PEX Adapters that I'm going to install down here. And then I got to thinking, "Why do I want a pressure gauge down here? "I should put one up
underneath the sink somewhere." So I bought another one. Another thing that was in the comments, or maybe it was on the
RemCo website comments, people said, "Oh, you shouldn't
use an accumulator tank "with that pump." I couldn't find that
documentation anywhere. Again I asked RemCo about that
and they said it's no problem using the smaller accumulator
tanks like I have. They just don't recommend using
the large accumulator tanks because they could apply
too much back pressure and kind of foul the, the sensor that allows us
to do variable pump speeds. And they can kind of, foul that up. I am here at the kitchen sink and you can see we've got some of that hard PEX tubing right here. And we have the same
thing under the bathroom, but this is more easily accessible. And I've turned off the pump
and released the pressure. So all I should really have to do is make two cuts to fit this in line. Try to put that right here so I can read the pressure on the line and see how that goes. (upbeat music) It should be good. And yeah, it was a little bit high. It was like 90 PSI, which
still shouldn't be a problem. So I reached out to RemCo and
they were very responsive. And I explained our setup and they thought, well, let's try a different accumulator tank. Their tank versus the one that I had. So they sent that out, I put that in. And it was exactly the same. Yeah, nothing had changed 90 PSI. I also tried taking the accumulator pump completely out of the
picture and bypassing it. And it was still 90 PSI. So I knew it wasn't that. Put the accumulator take back in line. And they said, well, "Let
us send you a brand new pump straight off the factory." I pulled the old one out, but the new one in and cranked it up. - 90 PSI. - 90 PSI (laughs). So, I reached back out to them like, Hey this one's exactly the same. He thought, "Well, that's really odd." Because he personally tested that particular pump that they sent to us on their test bench
before they sent it to us. But he thought, "Well,
the pump has a check valve "on the output." That's basically there
designed to when you're on shore water to not let any
backflow into your fresh tank. Not a huge deal to get some fresh water. in your freshwater tank. So he said, "Let's try taking that out, "it just, it just pops right out." So I did that and boom, 65 PSI. - Nailed it. - Now, (laughs) I was still really curious though why a check valve would cause that. So I put the check valve back in and guess what? - 90 PSI. - 65 PSI. - Oh (laughs) - So, right now the
check valve is still in, the pump is still in, the
accumulator tank is still in. - So wait. So you, after doing all that, and then you took the valve
out and it went to 65, but then you put the valve in and it's been staying at 65 ever since? - Yes. - Why? - I don't know. I don't know. I emailed the guy at RemCo,
he doesn't know either. All he knows it's correct now. Like don't like it when
things don't make sense. 'Cause that doesn't make sense at all - I wish we had a reason to tell them. - We don't. But we can say, if you
get one of these pumps, it works really well. But if the pressure seems
high and if you happen to put a test measuring device on it, like I did it and it's high, contact them. Or maybe just try pulling
that check valve out and see if that fixes your problem. - [Tarra] And then put it back in. - [Chad ] And then put it back in. - Hopefully it stays there. - Yeah it's been staying there. - Yeah. - We were just mooch docking
and using our water pump for a month and it was solid. 65 PSI the whole time. - And then didn't you do something that helped take the loudness
and the vibrations away or - Yeah.
- 'Cause it was bad, It was loud. - Yeah. We did note that it was really like, like it would just shake the RV kinda loud whenever the pump would come on. And I thought the pump
shouldn't be that much louder. I decided I would try some
special mounting options. I just went and got some rubber stops that were about that big around. And I thought well, "I'm gonna mount it "on these rubber things
to see if that helps." But while I was down there
doing all this plumbing and re plumbing the accumulator tank, I noticed that my line from the pump to the accumulator tank was resting against a
structural wood frame member. So what was happening was
when the pump would come on, it would do its normal level of vibration, but that vibration was
being transmitted directly into our--
- To the frame - To the frame of the RV.
- So I kept telling him, like it feels like the
whole RV is going like this. And I think that he thought I was exaggerating a little bit, but it really was going like this. - Yeah, it really was. Also I noticed that the
spot where it was rubbing was starting to rub on
the hose quite a bit. So just a little board of caution when you're doing something like this, make sure your lines aren't
rubbing up against anything, particularly the ones that
are going into and out of the pump because that's
where the most vibration is. And as soon as I moved that away, I had to move the pumps a little bit and move the accumulator
tank, It was good to go. I still use the rubber
things cause I had them and they might help a little bit. I don't think so. But the biggest thing was
not having the hose rub up against the wood. And I also have double shut off valves that I want to put behind our toilets because whenever we have to
lube that seal down in there or do some cleaning where we have to open up the gate and we don't want water gushing in, it would be nice to be
able to shut off the water right there behind the toilet
versus having to go outside and shut it off for the whole RV. Got that installed down here. As you can see, simple style, off and on. That was really easy to
put right in line there 'cause it came right off here. - What's next? - Next, we are going
to talk about DC wire. - Okay that's where I step out. (laughs) No I don't know,
I might just hang out, - Just hang out. - But I, you know, you start
talking about that stuff and it goes (mumbles). - The DC wiring project. This was an upgrade to our DC wiring from 300 amp to 400 amp capacity. And here's why. You might remember in our
Two Days Three Problems video that we blew a fuse and that
caused all kinds of confusion. And then we figured out what it was and we had to get a new
fuse in, I had to bypass it. So I'm down here, where all of the massive
high amperage DC wiring is because this is where our battery bank is, and this is where the inverter is and all the high amperage
cables are right in here. Real quick note on why this was necessary. When we upgraded from the 2000 watt to the 3000 watt inverter, my initial calculations were that 300 amp wiring should be fine. And it is for the
constant use at 3000 watts that equates to 250 amps DC, less than 300, good to go. The issue that I ran into and the issue that we ran
into on our travel day, three problems two days thing, is that both the 2000
and 300 watts inverters are capable of surging
beyond their rated capacity, 3000 and 2000 respectively,
for short periods of time. And what was happening, is when the heat kicked on
that time and blew our fuse was the inverter tried to surge beyond its 3000 watt capacity, which is perfectly capable of doing, but the wiring wasn't up to spec for that. So the fuse blew and then it blew again. So what I did was I had
upgrade the entire DC circuit from a 300 amp rating to a
400 amp rating that included. And I'll just show you in here. That included upgrading all
of the battery interconnects. Technically these probably
didn't have to be done, but I did them anyway. It included the DC cable
from the battery bank through our shot for our battery monitor and to the bus bar. All that had to be upgraded. The bus bars are already 600 amps. So they're good. Also from the, bus bar up to the inverter on both the negative and positive side, on the positive side, I also had to upgrade that switch that is now rated for I think, 500 amps. And of course the wiring
and the fuse is now 400 amps and all of the rest of the DC wiring, including from the fuse to the bus bar, from the bus bar to the
master cutoff switch and then up to the battery. All of that wiring is now 400 amp rated, the fuses 400 amp rated, the
switches are 400 amp rated and we've not had a problem since. We were just recently boondocking and using our inverter for a good month in power-share mode. We were actually
moochdocking not boondocking, and it was solid. It's good to go. We haven't had any problems, but if I do blow a fuse right back here, bam. 400 amp Class T fuse. Also a real quick note,
several people asked when we had that first problem and replaced the fuse and it
was kind of an expensive fuse and all of that. People ask, "Why not put a
circuit breaker in there?" Well, a circuit breaker
isn't really up to the task for this type of situation. You need a Class T fuse, which is designed to blow
very fast and shut off power before things go array. Things can go bad really,
really quick with high amperage. So you don't wanna have the slow reaction of a breaker in that circuit. You want a Class T fuse. - Anytime things change from information that we've told you
guys in previous videos, we update the blog posts. So, you know, we try to
keep everything up to date and can't go back and
change the videos of course, but we can update the information. - We try to also update
the description on YouTube and sometimes we'll put a
sticky comment at the top and you'll see them down there, like, "Warning signs,
read this" kind of thing. So, always check that before
you start on these projects. If you have any questions, just shoot us an email through our website and we'll try to get back to you. - And then we have one more, right? Before we tell you what
it is, please subscribe, click the like button and click the bell so you're always getting
notified whenever we put out some new content. - What she said. - Right. - So this other one is
also kind of an update to a previous video and we're
gonna go inside for this. - [Chad ] Hey Daisy, are
we finally coming in? Are we finally coming in?
- Oh boy, Oh boy. - [Chad ] Oh boy. - Come in, come on lets go. - The next we want to talk
about is this guy right here and you'll notice he's kind of loose, like very loose. And, this has to do with our Moochdock Like a Pro video. If you remember in that video, we talked about the fact that we could do 15 amp plus 15 amp, and that leg one could
actually go above 15 amp, because of the power-share
feature on our inverter. You know it's a temporary thing. It uses our batteries, etc. But basically it allows
us to keep the AC running off of our one of our 15 amp legs and run things like the microwave, or anything else on that leg without turning off that AC it can go over the 15 amps. The problem is this guy
is a little too smart. This guy's whole thing. This is a Precision Circuits
Inc. power control system. This came with our RV, by the way, its whole purpose is
to help us manage power without us having to think about it. And it does that by
detecting the type of power that you have. And it's only really geared
for either short power 50 amp, short power 30 amp, or generator 45 amp. It looks at which one of
those things are operational, it looks at how much
current is being drawn, and then if you try to
draw too much current, in one of those situations
it shuts them off, it sheds that load. So for instance, if we're on 30 amp power and we turn on two ACs and we're fine, and we turn on a third AC, it's going to go through
its priority and shut off one of those ACs, basically it just shuts
off the compressor. The issue is this thing does not know that we have an inverter and the way it detects current is downstream from all of that anyway. So even though the inverter
might be supplying some of our power supplementally it thinks holy crap, you're over current. I'm going to start shutting stuff off. So, we got to get this guy out of the way when we're running in
moochdock mode, particularly. And what I've been doing is this unplugging the data cable so
it doesn't have any information and it just thinks, oh, you're not even on power. That's a bit of a pain. As you switched from
moochdocking to generator back and forth like we
have to do sometimes to run three ACs is
when we're moochdocking. So all I'm going to do, you might notice this. It looks a lot like this. And all I'm going to do is there's a red wire here that is the positive
side of the power source. I'm going to cut that, splice this in, put a switch right here. And that will allow us to turn this. Let me see that there (laughs) that will allow us to
turn this on and off. Get it out of the way
when we don't need it, when it's actually hurting
us versus helping us and turn it on when we do want it. (upbeat music) - So even though that's not
done while we're filming it, it'll be done before Tara
puts this video together. So you'll see some of that. - [Tara] Better be. - It went to the top of the
project list just now (laughs) That's gotta sign wrap up. - [Tarra] I thought Daisy's bath was the top of project list. - Let me get it Daisy. - Daisy.
- [Chad] Okay Daisy. - Do you thing, show off. - Daisy you just got moved to the top of the
project list for bath. - Come here lemme fix your face, here. Come here. Oh, you didn't like it. (Chad laughs) - [Chad] You're doing it wrong. - Look at this. She needs a summer cut. - [Chad ] We'll do before and after. Hey Daisy this is before this is before. (mumbles) (laughs) - As you can see all these
projects, were all Chad. - I'm the project guy - Last go around, I did some organizing and redid the pantry and that kind of stuff. So if you're interested in that, go check out that video, but you know thank you
for doing everything that you did. High Five. - Real quick off topic. We've gotten some comments
from some people that are upset with us about some kind of political ad here and there on YouTube. It doesn't matter what affiliation it is. We have no choice in the matter. YouTube just puts ads on there, so we don't choose them, so don't get mad at us. - Yeah, it's political season. You're gonna see political ads probably. we have no control over them. Sorry. - Just wanted to clear the air. - See I'm trying to point at it. - You are not good at that. - No I'm good I can see it right there - No but I noticed going through
footage when you're trying to point at something. - It's hard, it difficult. But they won't come on up. They will. God this hard. Where they indicated, Oh,
(footsteps) go away, dude. I don't want none of this go seriously. - It's just doing my, you know, toning it like toning it out. (laughs)
Is that what it's called? Toning you out?
- Tuning me out - Tuning. - Tuning.
- I was just tuning him out. - Get outta here. - [Chad] You can do it.
You can do it come on Push it, push it. - [Chad] Get out of here bee, get. As you can see here, I have it all. Why do I have such a hard time with that. As you can see here. - Don't trip. - That's like yeah. That's like - [Chad] It's time for the bath. You're ready for your bath? We're you going? - [Tarra] This is the
worst part, ain't it puppy? (water runs) - [Tarra] Oh (water runs) (fan blows) - [Chad ] You feeling frisky? (laughs) (fan blows) (dog pants)
