A Quick Repair......

Happy Sunday evening everyone.  Can you believe it was raining earlier this evening?  It seems we can hardly go two days without a rain shower here lately.  At any rate, we hope everyone has had a great weekend.  Our weekend was busy, we spent quite a while Friday evening and Saturday morning doing some back-to-school clothes shopping for the both of us.

Our blog post this evening is about a quick repair Rob had to do to Pod this evening.   This is our fourth season camping with Pod.  We usually start our camping season in March, with the last trip as late as the end of December.  During the warm weather months, we tend to camp in the mountains where it is much cooler.  So normally we don't really use our A/C very much.  

This summer we've been to the beach twice, and the mountains twice.   We definitely needed the A/C at the beach, and also used it for a bit in the mountains.  But it seems our Dometic Analog Thermostat has been having some issues this year.

To the left is a picture of our thermostat.  It it supposed to work just like the one in your house, controlling the A/C and the furnace.   We don't use the furnace because it is very noisy and is located underneath the bed.  

It seems this summer, the thermostat lost the ability to control the A/C very well.  It would let the A/C run and run until the temperature in the Pod was unbearably cold, shut off, only to restart in only a few minutes to a few seconds (the latter being very, very bad) later.

After reading about how the thermostat operates, Rob built a cover out of a paper plate this last trip to the beach.  Believe it or not, it did help.  But we would still have to cut the A/C off and on manually at night.  So Rob did some more research, and decided to replace the thermostat.  

A new one just like the current model we have costs in the neighborhood of $50.  To upgrade to a Dometic Digital Thermostat, requires an upgrade kit.  Not only does the thermostat have to changed out, so does the A/C controller in the unit.  The price for this kit was in the $175 plus range.   

Another option Rob researched was to replace the original Dometic thermostat with a simple battery powered digital thermostat.  So off to Lowes this afternoon to get a new thermostat.  The cost was a much more reasonable $25.

Once starting the install, the first thing Rob did was too make sure the breaker to the A/C was switched off.  Then taking the cover of the old thermostat, Rob took a picture of the wire hook-up, and he also wrote down the color/names of the wires.  Then we disconnected the wires, and took the old thermostat off the wall.

The next step was to connect the wires to the new thermostat and mount it on the wall.   The holes for the old thermostat lined right up with the mounting holes needed for the new thermostat!  

Here are the wire colors and what they mean:

Red:  12 volt DC to power thermostat.  Not needed so taped.

Yellow:  Control for A/C.  Connected to terminal Y.

Brown:  Low speed fan.  Connected to terminal G

White:  Control for furnace.  Connected to terminal W.

Green:  Ground.  Connected to Terminal R (Rc) and jumpered to terminal Rh

Blue:  High Speed Fan.  Not needed so taped.  We never use the fan on high speed, so Rob didn't connect this wire.  This can be switched if needed.

 

Then it was a matter of putting the 2 AAA batteries in the thermostat, verifying the thermostat setting, and attaching the thermostat itself to the back plate.

This particular model of thermostat has a five minute "rest" cycle between run cycles for the A/C.  This allows for the head pressure to dissipate so the A/C compressor doesn't have to start under a load (BAD).  The thermostat also displays the actual temperature, and controls the furnace also.

Rob then spent about an 90 minutes just hanging out in the pod to verify proper operation.  He is glad to report all is good now.  He also made the bed and straightened up a bit.

Thanks for checking by today.  Have a great Monday.

Until next time, stay safe out there.....-R,T,&J.