Archive for the ‘The Great Outdoors’ Category

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New Appliances

Tuesday, October 22nd, 2024

Made it to Quartzsite for the winter. The calendar says it should cool down now but the southwest is still hot! Here’s hoping that November will be cooler.

It was a nice time in town last week. Richard’s celebration of life event was a wonderful tribute to a his time with us these last 77 years. Several relatives gave testimony of the love we all shared with him. He will be missed.

While I was in town Daryl helped me install a mini split air conditioner and a new fridge. With the crazy weather we seem to be experiencing now, I wanted to be prepared for whatever Mother Nature wanted to throw at me. With a mini split you can not only cool a room, but they also serve as a heat pump for those chilly mornings. I’m trying to get away from propane as much as I can so I bought more solar panels to beef up my system. I now have 1600 watts of solar for my little motorhome!

I have been using a chest type DC fridge for a couple years now, but I never really liked it. You have to dig through stuff to get what is always at the bottom, and I never liked the location I made for it. The new fridge is an upright that fits in the hole where my propane fridge went. It is also a DC compressor cooling system so takes a tiny bit of electricity to run. I like having a door that opens to shelves and a separate freezer that will keep my ice cream frozen.

I will update with a review after I’ve used both appliances and know more about them.

Posted in The Great Outdoors | 1 Comment »

Hot Water

Sunday, December 10th, 2023


Part of my quest to go total electric is figuring out ways to heat water without burning propane. A few years ago I mounted a large black pipe on the roof of Minnie and let the sun heat my water. It works quite well when I have good sun and it’s not too cold out. The only problem is that you have to use the water late in the day and long before the sun goes down. If you wait too long, the water cools quickly to an unusable temperature. In the cold days of winter, it’s sponge baths or burn propane for a shower. I longed for an occasional shower right before bed without burning propane.

I started exploring small electric hot water tanks that are made to mount under the kitchen sink and give you instant hot water without waiting for delivery through long pipes from the main hot water tank. These tanks usually hold only 3 gallons of supply and recover quickly. I found a prime deal of 20% off on one and ordered it for a Christmas present to me.

I puzzled over where to mount the unit and came to the conclusion that pulling the propane water heater out and installing it in the same place would be easy and give me hot water to all my sinks and shower.

I spent the last two days disconnecting the old unit and installing the new electric one. Parts here in Quartzsite are twice what they cost at Home Depot, but the hardware store is close and had Sharkbite connectors I like to use. Four connectors and a propane plug cost me almost $50.

I have been testing it out today and I think it’s going to work fine. With all my batteries and solar, heating the water only uses a small percentage of my power. I timed my shower and came up with 4.5 minutes of hot water. That’s plenty for me( I don’t spend much time washing my hair). The only thing that concerns me is the fact that it takes 1850 watts of power when heating. That’s almost maxing out my inverter. The specs said 1500 watts. I’ll have to be careful to turn everything else off when I use it.

As with everything I tinker with, I’ll undoubtedly find out more as I use it. I’ll try to update how it’s working in a later post.

Posted in More Stuff, The Great Outdoors | 7 Comments »

Knee surgery

Sunday, November 12th, 2023

It is time to document my latest ordeal with my health issues.

On October 18, 2023, I underwent surgery for a total knee replacement. My knee has become progressively painful in the last few years, to the point that walking any distance further than into a store was unbearable. I was faced with the option of becoming a “couch potato” for the rest of my life or doing something to fix the problem.

I weighed two scenarios that were basically cons, and one that was most important for a happy lifestyle. Any surgery at my age is a risk. A young body will heal faster and recovery is a lot easier. The second drawback I faced is a steel rod that was inserted 35 years ago into my tibia and needed to be removed to allow room for the prosthetic knee parts. The rod in my leg bone was the scariest part of the operation and could cause severe damage trying to remove it. I weighed the negative aspects against the one positive outcome of the surgery- walking and hiking without pain – and decided the risk of the complications did not outweigh the hope of a better lifestyle.

I’m three weeks past my surgery now and so far everything is going good. My surgeon found that he could place the artificial knee parts without removing the rod. I was in terrible pain for a few days and had to rely on pain pills for a couple weeks. I used a walker for a week, then a cane for a few more days, and now I’m walking unaided and increasing the distance each week.

I’ve had a couple setbacks. I still have a hard time sleeping and I wake often, all tangled up in the bed covers like I was wrestling with and intruder, until I realize that my knee is hurting from placing it somewhere it doesn’t like. I had some sore muscles and joints that I blame on a zealous Physical Therapist that doesn’t realize I have not used those muscles very much in the last couple years. And sometimes I just don’t feel well for no particular reason.

All information I research shows that I am way above the curve in recovery. I’ll try to update my progress in a later post. The one thing I want to say is that none of this would have been possible without the aid of my sister Donna. She opened her home, provided me transportation, fed me meals, and nursed me back to health. I so much appreciate the care she so generously provides me to this day.

Posted in Pieces of my Mind, The Great Outdoors | 2 Comments »

No Trails Yet

Wednesday, May 17th, 2023

Its been quite a while since I posted a blog entry. I like to make an entry once in a while to document what I’m doing, but my age and physical ability seems to dictate a different lifestyle than what I would like. I still try to stay active and work on improvements to my motorhome. But I take things slow, partially because I can’t do the work, and partially because everything cost money.

I’m not traveling a lot or hiking trails like I used to and I miss that. My knee is to the point where I will have to have something done or relegate to a sedentary lifestyle. I have appointments for a doctor that will hopefully do a knee replacement this fall.

With gasoline costing $5 a gallon and a motorhome that likes to drink it, I have been staying mostly in southern Arizona for the last two years. You can regulate the seasons by going up into the mountains in summer and scurrying down to the desert when cold weather moves in.

One thing I’ve definitely noticed as I get older is how we depend on our doctors a lot more frequently. In the last couple years I’ve had several thing in my body sputter. I won’t get into that now because I remember when I was young and healthy, how I hated to hear about all the old relatives and friends illnesses. Lol!

Right now I’m camped slightly below Payson, Arizona. It has been quite warm here but my AC is working well. I want to move up higher towards Flagstaff or Show Low but it is still quite chilly up there. It was a wild and snowy winter in the high country and all the snow has not melted yet.

That’s enough for now. I want to tell about a costly mistake to my electronics, travel plans, and of course, all mine and my siblings illnesses. 😉

Posted in The Great Outdoors | 4 Comments »

Refrigeration

Monday, October 10th, 2022


The newest addition to my rig is a 12 volt chest refrigerator. It’s called an Alpicool X40. I’m sure it’s made in China, but looking at reviews of people that have them, seem as good quality as ones costing several times more. Even if I can only get a few years of service out of it, the price spread out over time is not too painful.

the nice thing about these chest fridges is that they only use a few watts to run. With all the solar and battery power I have, the 4 or 5 amps it pulls put very little drain on my electric system. And unlike my propane fridge, it only runs part of the time until the temperature turns the compressor on again.

I have never been a fan of propane refrigerators. It never used much propane but over the course of a couple years, what I spent for propane could pay for my chest fridge. I think more than the cost of propane, it was the hassle of finding and filling bottles all the time. Lots of places have gone to swapping out bottles instead of filling them. At least I modified my rig to use portable propane bottles. If I had to drive my rig to a propane dealer, that would be even more of a hassle.

An upright refrigerator is a little easier to get things out of than a chest fridge. Getting what you want seems to always be on the bottom and requires some digging to get to it. Fortunately, I don’t stock groceries for a family, so that helps keep the inventory down.

The freezer on my propane fridge would never get cold enough to keep ice cream hard. Sometimes things in the refrigerator compartment would freeze. My absorption propane fridge has served me well, but it is on its sixth year since I replaced the coils on the back, and many say that the life of an absorption fridge is about 7 years.

My plan is to get another smaller chest fridge/freezer ( most can be used either way) after a while to use exclusively as a freezer. I still have to remove the old fridge and build a cabinet for the new ones. As with all things I do, I’ll update how they are working and if I’m happy with the new setup.

Posted in The Great Outdoors | 6 Comments »

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