Aug 02 2016

Conserving Water when Boondocking

These days about half of new Airstreams are sold to people who have never owned any type of travel trailer or motorhome before. That means there are a lot of people who are just now trying to learn all the tricks and skills needed to optimize their travel experience.

Boondocking

Camping away from hookups in remote places is an aspiration of many, but to be able to do it well you’ve got to adapt and adjust your expectations. In this occasional series on boondocking we’ll explore specific techniques, starting with certain aspects of water conservation. Showers and dishes are the two things that consume most of the water used in an Airstream.

Saving water on dishwashing is easy.

You can switch to paper plates when you are boondocking, or use campground dish-washing facilities if they are available. If you must wash dishes in the Airstream, you’ll have to learn to use tiny amounts of water to rise rather than just opening the faucet fully and letting it run, as many people do at home. For über-conservationists, a spray bottle is helpful for minimal rinsing.

The shower is a trickier problem.

At home your shower might have a cascade of water and hot stinging needles if you want them, perhaps even to the point of flooding the tub because the drain can’t keep up. That’s the sort of shower that many people like, not so much because they get cleaner but because it feels like a “spa” experience.

Low-flow shower head

You don’t get pummeled by hot water much in an RV; the shower heads are generally low-flow types designed to release only 2.5 gallons of water per minute. If you had a shower head that inundated you with water, you’d find that the gray water tank (the tank that holds used water from the shower and sinks) fills up too quickly.

Avoid using water.

That’s always the first approach. Some people extend their time between showers by using body (or baby) wipes for quick cleanups. This works well—just remember you can’t flush those wipes down the toilet because they won’t biodegrade in the holding tank, and they’ll clog macerator-type toilets. Put the used wipes in the trash instead.

In a campground with no hookups,

you may have access to a campground shower. Some people use the campground shower religiously, because they don’t fit in the travel trailer shower, or because they just prefer the “home style” shower when it is available. Personally, I like my Airstream shower and I hate using the campground showers, so I’ll go to some effort to be able to shower in the trailer.

The essential “Navy shower”

It’s a simple technique: turn on the water, get wet, turn off the water. Then soap up everything, and rinse off quickly. Don’t wash your hair unless it really needs it. Get really good at this technique, and you’ll find you can take a complete shower in less than three gallons, or about 60 to 90 seconds of running the water. That makes you an Admiral in the Navy Shower Fleet.

Get it down to a flat two minutes (five gallons) and you’re a Lieutenant, or about 90 seconds (four gallons) for the Commander’s rank. Even an Able Seaman should be able to do it in less than six gallons (just over two minutes). These calculations assume you have a typical RV shower head that delivers 2.5 gallons per minute.

The Airstream has a built-in warning sign if you blow it.

The hot water tank is usually six gallons. If you start feeling cold water, you’ve used all six gallons plus a bit more (because the tank is constantly re-heating) and you’ll soon be walking the plank when the rest of the family finds out. Even in a full hookup campground where you don’t have to worry about running out of water or filling the gray tank, the six-gallon limit applies.

Know the size of your gray water holding tank.

You can estimate how long it will last. The tank monitors are often misleading. For example, with a 39-gallon tank, three Admirals can take showers in a total of less than 10 gallons, yielding three showers each plus some tooth brushing and dishes, before running out of holding capacity.

It’s really not hard to learn the Navy shower technique. Camping without a full hookup does require some small sacrifices, but you can still have a satisfying shower. The loss of standing under a spray of hot water for ten minutes is nothing when you realize that small sacrifice enabled you to walk out your door into the landscape or a quiet beautiful place far from crowds.

Jul 04 2016

Cleaning your Airstream Interior

“How many of you guys like cleaning the inside of your trailer?” asked Jim Parrett, Airstream National Service Manager, during his Interior Maintenance seminar at Alumapalooza 7. To no one’s surprise, very few hands were raised. “Well, we’ve got a lot of tricks for you,” said Parrett. He didn’t promise you’d suddenly enjoy cleaning, but these factory tips might make the job faster and more effective.

No special products required

“There’s a lot of good cleaners out there on the market that you can use,” said Parrett. “All the things we use in our house, we can use inside our trailers.” Recommended household cleaners that you can find easily at the grocery or drug store include Formula 409®, Dawn®, Glass Plus®, Dow Bathroom Cleaner with Scrubbing Bubbles™, Fantastic®, Windex®, Lestoil®, Lysol® Brand Disinfectant Basin/Tub/Tile Cleaner, Mr. Clean®, TOP JOB®, and Clorox®.

Laminate surfaces

For everyday cleaning, use a damp cloth or sponge and a mild soap or detergent (see products listed above). Stubborn stains such as coffee or tea can be removed using any mild cleaner and baking soda, mixed together to form a paste. With a stiff nylon bristle brush, scrub the affected area about 15 to 20 strokes. Don’t use an abrasive brush or cleaner—that might damage the surface finish.

Impala Suede

The wall material in the new Airstream Classic is “pretty easy to care for,” said Parrett—but stains should be attended to as soon as possible. “If you happen to spill something like soda or anything light, the first thing you want to do is clean that spill up,” he said. Immediately blot excess liquid with an absorbent paper or cloth, then rub the fabric gently with a paper towel or a white cloth to absorb any remaining surface liquid or dampness.

Parrett recommends baby wipes, or a clean white cloth dampened with plain clean water. Use small circular motions, and don’t soak the fabric—that can cause permanent damage. “You don’t want to saturate it, or make it too wet,” he said. “An effective way of controlling the amount of water is to use a spray bottle,” he suggested.

Though the easy care Impala fabric is dubbed “anti-stain”, some discolorations may require a solution of roughly 95% water and 5% soap (“like Dawn detergent,” said Parrett). Allow the cleaned area to dry completely, then gently brush or vacuum the area using strokes in the direction of the pile of the fabric. “Don’t rub against it, or scrub real hard.”

Tenacious stains (like ballpoint pen or grease) may need a second treatment. After the fabric has dried completely, try cleaning again with a diluted solution of isopropyl alcohol and a white cloth. “Then once you’re done, just vacuum it up”—with a dustbuster or wet-dry vac—“again, following the direction of the fabric.”

Ultra Leather

Routine care for your Ultra Leather upholstery is easy. Just wipe it down regularly with soap and water, and attend to spills as soon as they occur with Formula 409® or Fantastik®. You may sanitize with a 20% solution of bleach to water. Simply air dry.

Accidents happen, and stains on your furniture from ketchup, coffee, red wine, tea, and (ouch) blood can be cleaned with an alcohol-based product like Formula 409® or a 5:1 water/bleach solution—“that’s one ounce of bleach, five ounces of water,” said Parrett.

Mustard and ballpoint pen ink on the seats are tougher to remove. Wipe with isopropyl alcohol, and rinse with clean water. Wipe dry.

As with many problems, Airstream-related or not, prompt attention is important for a successful outcome. “If the stain has sat there for days, it may not be as easy to remove,” Parrett said.

Aluminum interior

Microfiber is excellent for dusting and scrubbing because of the static-charged, woven fibers. The combination of polyamide and polyester is strong and soft, and microfiber towels absorb seven times their weight in moisture.

Use Pledge® Orange

—a cleaner that dusts, shines and protects—with your microfiber cloth. “That’s a great combination,” said Parrett. “Pledge Orange is the best thing! It’s multipurpose; you can use it on your cabinets, wood, aluminum…we use it on pretty much all the surfaces. It does a great job, and smells good, too.” Don’t worry about the orange in the product introducing acid onto the clear coat. “It won’t harm it at all,” explained Parrett. “The citrus is just a scent.”

Make sure you wipe with the grain of the aluminum, not across it. “That way, if there happened to be something on the surface or on the towel that might cause a light scratch, it won’t show.”

Oceanair shades

Small marks can be removed by gently rubbing with a rubber eraser—the very same square-ish “Pink Pearl” kind you used in grade school. Even the eraser at the end of a pencil will work. Make sure it’s clean, and take it easy; the metal on the end of a pencil eraser could scratch the blind. Rubbing alcohol is also an option for tougher stains. Rub gently, and naturally air dry.

Someday your shade may refuse to retract, but it’s possible to adjust the spring tensioner of the blind to alter the recoil effect. Pull the shade down and look to the left side of the top bar; a tension screw hides beneath the end cap. Remove the end cap fixing screw (without removing the plastic molding from the aluminum tube), and rotate it in a clockwise direction until satisfactory tension is achieved. Re-install the screw. Be careful not to “over-tension” and damage the spring.

If a blind gets wet, simply pull it down to expose it entirely and leave it to dry naturally.

If you’d like to replace your older style Safari cloth shades with Oceanair blinds, you can, but “it depends on the mounting holes,” said Parrett. “You just have to order the right sizes. It would have to be a special order.”

Horizontal blinds

Just like in your home, miniblinds are a hassle to clean, and there’s no magic answer; they must be dusted off one at a time. “Look for blind tools that at least do four or five at a time,” suggested Parrett.

Bathroom

Use any of your favorite household cleaners, including Lysol® disinfectant sprays, on your fiberglass shower stall, toilet, and other bathroom surfaces.

Sunbrella fabric

Water stains on your Eddie Bauer awning? Don’t use an excessive amount of liquid to clean outdoor textiles; that could cause a stain or discoloration at the “shoreline” of the puddle. (Your awning and outdoor furniture should also be dried after a rain to avoid the same damaging effect.) Hard water can also leave a mineral residue on fabrics. To solve the problem, “you can use a light solution of bleach,” said Parrett.

“Don’t use a detergent, as that might leave a film.” For deep cleaning of your awning or Zip Dee chairs (which are also made of Sunbrella fabric) get Zip Dee Washout Powder.

Jun 20 2016

What’s in a watt?

When you turn on a light in your house, the light goes on. That’s simple. But when you turn on a light in your Airstream while on battery power, it may seem like you’re suddenly expected to have an advanced degree in electrical engineering.

That’s because managing power is one of the biggest challenges new owners face when they start roaming away from reliable campground electricity. Volts, amps, watts, and strange jargon quickly become part of daily conversation.

As Airstreamer said to me the other day: “I don’t know what any of it means, and yet I’m expected to know just to operate my trailer.”

Discussing electrical systems in an RV can be endlessly complicated, but let’s just keep it simple for now.

AC and DC—Your Airstream has two electrical systems, one for 120 volt AC power (just like the power in your house) and one for 12 volt DC power (from the battery).

Think of volts as a measure of pressure, like water pressure in a pipe. The higher the volts, the more pressure. North America uses 120 volts for ordinary outlets, and Europe uses 240 volts.

The 120 volt system in your Airstream is functional when the trailer or motorhome is plugged in. It powers the air conditioner, microwave, television, standard electrical outlets, and the refrigerator (when running in electric mode). It also goes to the power converter, which turns some of that 120 volt AC power into 12 volt DC power. This is used to recharge the battery.

When the Airstream isn’t plugged in, those circuits are off—in most cases. Why “most cases”? Because some Airstreams have generators which can produce 120 volts, and some Airstreams have inverters.

An inverter takes 12 volt power from the batteries and turns it into 120 volt power (the exact opposite of what the converter does). Because this will drain the batteries pretty quickly, inverters are usually wired only to a few things like TV and microwave, just so you can use them while you’re boondocking. You can’t run the air conditioner through an inverter because it draws too much power.

So how do we know much power something consumes? That’s where “amps” and “watts” come in. Every household appliance has a label printed on it somewhere that shows how much power it uses. For example, take a look at the power adapter for your laptop converter, or the charger for your tablet computer. In very fine print it will say something like this: “Input 100-240v~ 1.5A 50-60Hz Output 20v 4.25A max.”

That means this device can accept a range of voltage from 100 to 240 volts of alternating current (AC) at frequency of 50 to 60 Hertz. In other words, it can be used on both North American 120-volt and European 240-volt electricity. That’s nice to know in case we decide to use it in Europe, but we are really interested in the amount of that power it consumes.

This part tells us the rest: “~1.5A”. That means the laptop power adapter requires up to 1.5 amps. Let’s go back to the water pipe analogy. If 120 volts is the pressure, 1.5 amps is analogous to the diameter of the pipe. More amps means a bigger pipe, which of course can carry more water.

The total amount of energy consumed by this device is the product of the pressure and the diameter of the imaginary pipe. This device consumes 120 volts X 1.5 amps, which comes out to 180 watts. That’s the number we were looking for.

(By the way, if you’re wondering about the “Output” numbers, you can do the same math. This adapter puts out 20 volt power for your laptop at a maximum of 4.25 amps, which is 85 watts. The difference between 180 watts input and 85 watts output is lost mostly as heat. That’s why the adapter gets warm when you’re using it.)

From light bulbs you know that a higher wattage bulb is usually brighter. That’s because it’s using more power. Watts tell us the total electrical consumption of anything, and we can use watts to compare different devices.

So why do we talk about 30-amp or 50-amp power cords? That’s the maximum your power cord is rated to carry on a continuous basis. A 30-amp power cord is really a 3,600 watt cord (120 volts X 30 amps) and we could refer to it that way but it’s standard to talk about it in terms of amps.

“Aha,” you’re thinking, “so a 50-amp power cord is really a 6,000 watt (120 X 50) cord?” No, because there’s a trick. 50-amp power in North America is supplied at 240 volts. So it’s really a 12,000 watt cord. I know, it’s not fair, but that’s the way it is. Now you know why the 50-amp cord is so much heavier: there’s a lot of copper in it to carry all that power. A smaller cord would melt!

That means an Airstream with a 50-amp connection has more than three times the power available to it compared to a 30-amp connection. Even if you’ve got dual air conditioners, you’ve got plenty of extra juice. Those air conditioners will pull up to about 4,800 watts at full tilt, leaving you with 7,200 watts for everything else. Our example laptop at a mere 180 watts is hardly even noticeable in the overall scheme of things.

Once in a while you may need to plug the Airstream into a regular household outlet, which generally provides just 15 amps at 120 volts (which is 1,800 watts). This is fine for keeping the Airstream charged and powering low-wattage AC appliances, like portable fans and laptop computers. But it’s a very bad idea to run the air conditioner on 15-amp power. It might seem to work, but long term it’s likely to damage the air conditioner’s compressor or cause overheating or even melting at the plug.

Now let’s look at the other power system in your Airstream. The 12 volt DC system is driven by the batteries, and it is responsible for powering everything else in the Airstream, including lights, water pump, furnace, “cigarette lighter” 12 volt outlets and USB outlets, fans, refrigerator (when running in gas mode), propane leak detector, stereo/DVD player, breakaway switch, etc.

By running most things on the 12 volt system, most power consuming appliances in the Airstream can be used anytime, which is convenient for roadside stops and overnights without hookups. Since the 12 volt battery is kept topped up by the 120 volt power converter, it will never run out of power as long as the trailer is plugged in. Only when the trailer is unplugged will appliances be working solely on battery power, and with a little conservation, battery power can last for days.

You might be wondering why we don’t have 120 volt batteries so that everything can use the same voltage. The reason is simple: 120 volt batteries would be extremely heavy and expensive. It’s much more practical to use a 12 volt battery, charger, and appliances—much like your car does. It’s also easier to design solar panels and generators that produce 12 volt power.

In the end, it doesn’t make much difference to most appliances. A light, whether running on 12 volts or 120 volts, will produce about the same amount of illumination for a given wattage. In other words, a 12 volt light that consumes 1 amp is about the same as a 120 volt light that consumes 0.1 amp. Both consume a total of 12 watts and both will be about the same brightness.

So a watt is a watt, whether that power is supplied at 120 volts, 240 volts or 12 volts. If you ever get confused about comparing power from your solar panels, generator, or the needs of various appliances, figure the watts (remember, volts X amps = watts) and you’ll have a fair comparison.

Rich Luhr is the author of Airstream Life’s (Nearly) Complete Guide to Airstream Maintenance, available at the Airstream Life Store. There’s a lot more about Airstream electrical systems, including maintenance tips, in this 220-page book.

May 23 2016

Fixing mysterious electrical problems

The worst problem you can have with any vehicle is not a total failure. It’s an intermittent failure. Those little quirks that crop up but can’t be reliably reproduced can drive you batty, especially when you haul the Airstream into the dealership and they come back to you with a note: “No problem found,” or “Unable to reproduce customer complaint.”

Of these, the most common are electrical problems. Flickering LED lights, problems with the refrigerator or electric brake actuator (if your trailer has disc brakes), short battery life, and dim lights can all be symptoms of one common problem: bad electrical grounds.

In 12 volt DC wiring systems, every device (light, water pump, fan, furnace, etc.) has a 12v+ (positive) and 12v- (negative) connection. The negative connection goes to “ground” (or “earth”) in British English) to complete the circuit. Generally, all of the ground connections in a travel trailer or car end up being attached to the metal frame of the vehicle.

When the ground connectors get corroded or loose, all kinds of strange problems can occur. Electricity wants to find a path, so if the ground is poor, the current may run in unexpected ways, even backwards through a circuit. This can cause appliances to fail, work incorrectly, or intermittently.

Late model Airstreams usually have one or two external grounding points that provide the main electrical path to the frame. On vintage Airstreams the ground may be inside. Once located, these grounds can be easily checked. On a late model Airstream one is usually toward the front, possibly beneath the A-frame where the propane tanks sit. Look for a thick bare copper wire that is bolted to the frame or to a propane gas line with a small copper clamp. The location may vary—on some trailers it is located near the front curbside stabilizer jack.

If this wire looks corroded or exceptionally dirty, unscrew the clamp that holds it in place and clean up the clamp and wire with sandpaper or wire brush. The copper should be shiny where the wire makes contact with the clamp, for a good electrical connection. Don’t paint it!

There may be a second ground wire located inside the rear bumper compartment, which can be serviced in the same way. After cleaning, you can coat the area with dielectric grease (or pure silicone grease) to reduce future corrosion.

Checking the grounds is not just a good diagnostic step, it’s good maintenance that might help you avoid mysterious electrical symptoms later. Since it’s easy to do with just a screwdriver and sandpaper, considering doing this procedure once a year.

May 09 2016

Digital Voltage Monitor

Should you care about the power that comes into your Airstream from the campground?

Absolutely. YES.

Even newer campgrounds can have problems with their electrical power. Outlets may be mis-wired or damaged in a way that can be hazardous to your health—and the health of your Airstream.

Especially on a hot and humid day, when everyone in the campground is running their air conditioner, you’ll need to know that voltage is high enough to avoid burning out your A/C compressor.

The best way to know you’re getting good power is to use a digital AC voltage monitor. Outside Interests recommends one of the best: the Prime Products monitor, available at the Airstream Life Store. It constantly displays voltage so you’ll know if the power is sagging, and it checks for common mis-wiring conditions:

Reversed polarity (which can cause a very dangerous “hot skin” condition
Open neutral
Open ground

It’s simple to use: just plug it into any available outlet in your Airstream while you’re connected an electrical hookup, and observe the lights on the display. You’ll always know at a glance that you’re getting good power.

This voltage monitor is something every Airstream should carry at all times, and is available from the Airstream Life Store. When you order from Airstream Life you’ll also receive Rich Luhr’s short instructional booklet, How To Avoid Electrical Problems At The Campground.