Now working inside the camper
November 18, 2018
First some good news - the leak is finally fixed! I went berserk on the back of the camper with a new tube of caulk - and found a seam that it looks like the factory caulked NEAR the seam (not covering the seam) which is probably what was leaking the entire time. The good news is that I have super duper caulked the entire back of the camper - so I don't expect any new leaks for quite a while!
After finishing up the final caulking and most of the back deck, the weather started turning which made it all the more nice to move inside where we can turn on some electric heaters and work in relative comfort.
This part of the process is proving to be fairly slow (especially since the days are shorter and colder which just wrecks motivation).
First project which turned out to be slower than expected was just upgrading the thermostat that runs the air conditioner and furnace . . . . It turns out that the original thermostat is wired to the air conditioner and is a "smart" thermostat. What this means is that the air conditioner does not contain normal wiring but instead talks to the thermostat through a communications bus (which mostly means that you can't run it without their proprietary thermostat). . . . . .
hmmmmmmmm . . . .
Then - looking inside the air conditioner main unit we find output wires to control the furnace - so at least I could pull some new wires from the furnace to the new thermostat and get that working because it uses standard wiring - so that is a win.
Back to the air conditioner - after searching around on the internet for a while - it looks like there isn't a really good solution except replacing the air conditioner with one from a different manufacture . . . or trying to buy an old control unit and replacing the one in brand new air conditioner with an old one . . . . neither sounded like good options . . .
Plan B - Turns out - random person on the internet was pretty creative and figured out that the special thermostat that goes with the air conditioner will start up after a power loss in the same state that it was in when it lost power . . . hmmmm . . . put that together with the fact that standard thermostats have relays inside them to switch power for signaling the air conditioner to turn on . . . . and we get the solution! You remove the old thermostat and move it somewhere else where you just can't see it (in our case it is now mounted under the bathroom vanity). Then you run the power cable for the old thermostat through the "air conditioner" contacts of the new thermostat - so the only time the old thermostat is on is when the new thermostat is calling for air conditioning. . . . THEN you set the old thermostat to air conditioning mode and set the temperature as low as it will go (this tells it to run the air conditioner whenever power is applied) . . .
As long as the old thermostat doesn't stop working completely we should be in good shape. After testing it looks like the new thermostat properly controls both the heat and air conditioning.
Whew - what a fiasco - just to put in a better thermostat!
Next project up - starting on the wall cabinets over the couch near the back wall.
Basically everything is made out of dimensional 1" x 2" lumber except for a couple of supports made of 2" x 2" lumber. Everything is held together with pocket screws (using the Kreg R3 jig) which makes it look really nice - it all has been going together really well.
Next we moved to the pantry that attaches to the side of the couch as well as the cabinets over the window next to the door.
The cabinets over the window will have 3 doors, the ones above the couch will have 2 doors.
The couch goes in under window on the right in the above picture.
The area between the two windows becomes a pantry (accessed from the area right in front of the window on the left in the above image).
I admit that you have to use your imagination a bit to see it right now - but if you go back to the posts with the 3D renders it will become obvious what is going on here!
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