My Trails

Unwanted hitchhiker!

I have been lucky in my years RVing to never suffer an infestation of rodents in my engine – until now. While camping on the Burnhardt Road just outside Rye, AZ., I was invaded by pack rats. I keep the engine hood open and put a light under the front end but it didn’t deter these little buggers.

One morning I peered down in the shadows of my motor and thought I could see some sticks and grass. I pulled the air cleaner out and sure enough the space under the alternator was full of sticks, mesquite pods, and prickly pair fruit. I removed everything I could reach with some tongs and packed up to get out of there.

I spent the night at Walmart in Payson, sure that I had left the pack rats behind in the desert. When I opened up the hood the next morning I saw a rat scurry back behind the engine. I couldn’t believe he could survive the drive of 20 miles the afternoon before. Not having any more options, I drove 80 miles down to Phoenix thinking the engine heat would make him drop out on the way.

After I parked at brother Daryl’s, I bought an electronic rat trap and some poison just in case he hitchhiked all the way down. The next morning the trap was empty but I could see where they were rebuilding the nest. I rebated the trap with peanut butter and offered a cup of poison for good measure. During the next night he wandered into the trap and met his demise.

I’m pretty sure he was the only one I brought down. I’m keeping the trap set just to make sure, but so far there has been no activity.

Sticks behind the engine.

Today I pulled out the engine cowling that allows access to the back of the engine to see if there were any nest building that I couldn’t see. I was shocked to see sticks and pods and fruit jammed into the back of the compartment. There were even cow pies and dirt clods dragged into the space. I spent several hours digging and removing almost a bushel of debris. It must have taken them hundreds of trips to bring it all in.

Box full of nesting material.

One thing is for sure – I must be a heavy sleeper to have not heard the invasion. So far I have not found any damage. Rodents are known for getting in engines and chewing wires. They can do hundreds of dollars damage. I will have to be more careful from now on and make sure I’m protected from pesky varmints.

Burnhardt Road Rye AZ

Payson weather was getting too cold overnight, so after a week at our campsite, we decided to move to a lower altitude. The ladies went over to Cottonwood and I drove south to a spot just outside Rye, Arizona.

Rye is only 15 miles from Payson but 2000’ lower in altitude. I figured that some daytime temperatures would be quite warm but nothing very uncomfortable. It turns out that a few days have been up into the 80s, a perfect temperature as long as you can sit in the shade and enjoy a beverage. The inside of Minnie, however, becomes too warm as the sun beats down and cooks the walls. With that thought in mind, I wanted to document here the homemade air conditioner I built.

If you don’t want to hear about mechanical contraptions you can skip this part.

I can’t fully take credit for the design of my evaporative cooler but I have long had the idea way before I found out others had similar designs. I have a large box fan purchased this summer that I would place in the window and use a mister bottle to spray the air in front of me. This worked ok but was tedious and inefficient. I tried soaking towels and hanging them in front of the fan. I tried blowing the fan across a tray of water. Nothing worked very well. Then I got the idea of placing a cooler pad in front of the fan and dripping water through the pad and catching it in a tray below. When I looked on YouTube, it turned out a few others had the same idea and explained in detail how they built one.

My first design had the cooler pad in front of the fan. Placing the pad behind the fan draws more air than trying to push air through the fan but I was worried about moisture getting into the fan motor. I finally rationalized that box fans are so cheap that even if they only lasted a couple years it was worth the increased efficiency to pull air through the pad.

Cooler unit

My final design (so far, I’m always tweaking it) uses a frame of pvc pipe with holes drilled along the top and a cooler pad held inside the frame. A small fountain pump circulates water up the pipe where it trickles down through the pad into a plastic tote. The whole frame and pad are attached to the fan and placed in the window. I cut the tote lid for shrouds to seal the unit to the window.

Circulation pump

Cooler pad and frame

Evaporative cooling works well when the humidity is low. On very dry days I have seen the air temperature as much as 15 degrees lower than the outside temperatures. When the humidity gets above 25% or 30%, the cooler will only take a few degrees from the outside air.

My swamp cooler would not be possible without the new lithium ion battery I put in. I have to give credit to the extra power it produces to run a box fan and fountain pump for hours on end.

Once everything is set up and running, all I have to do is add water every couple hours. It’s amazing how much water will evaporate into the air. And I guess there is a benefit to health too. Studies show that a slight increase in humidity is better for us than very dry air.

Woods Canyon Lake above Payson.

One thing I miss while boondocking in the summer is a nice warm shower any time I want. I don’t like to light my hot water tank every time I want to use a little hot water, and mostly I don’t like to burn propane to heat that water. Propane is one of the remaining luxury’s I can’t seem to give up in my quest to becoming completely independent of fossil fuel while I’m camped. My stove, fridge, and furnace all use propane, but the biggest use in the summer is my hot water heater. I could probably increase my solar capacity and eliminate the gas burning appliances by switching them to electric but for now I keep looking for practical ways to be a little more green.

For a few years I used a solar shower bag to heat water free with the sun. It worked ok but the bags didn’t seem to last very long and I had to put up and store the bag and tubing after each move. I wanted something more permanent that I could leave on the roof and connect up quickly. I was watching YouTube one day and saw how some people had used large plastic pipe on the roof of their vehicles to heat water in the sun for a shower. I decided to make one.

Black pipe really draws the heat from the sun.

Most of the projects were made with 4” pipe but I calculated that 3” would give me plenty of capacity for what I needed. They also used air pumps to pressurize the water for a forceful spray. I thought that gravity from the roof of my RV would be adequate.

My 10 foot pipe holds a little over 3.5 gallons. I pump the water up to the pipe from a fitting on my outside shower faucet. After a couple hours the water is hot enough for a nice long shower. Right now I run the hose down into my bathroom shower but I could run it outside if I was in a place without people around. It was working great with one exception- if I left the water in the pipe too long it would become scorching hot in the Arizona sun.

Mixing hose from my RV shower.

I solved the overheating problem yesterday by connecting a hose from my house shower to the solar shower with a mixing T. Now if the water gets too hot I can bleed in a little cold from my pump. I also installed a valve where I can catch the overheated water for dishes and washing out a few articles of clothes.

So far it seems to be working fine. It is definitely not for drinking as who knows what chemicals are in the pipe. If I leave water in the pipe for a couple days it takes on the smell of plastic. I have not installed anything permanent yet because I’m still experimenting with locations and setup, but I’m confident it will work.