Kirk W

Before you go too far, examine all of the walls, ceilings, and floor for any signs of rotted wood as that RV most likely has wood wall construction. You want all traces of dry-rot removed before you start to reassemble things. That could be your biggest challenge. You want to be certain that the structural parts are solid and in good condition. You will be working with the RV inside, I presume?

Answer that one and you can become very rich and famous!

When I first saw this post I thought that it was a joke..... It seems that Amazon has a bunch of them so this must be real.

It very likely will be and you should be very careful about what RV shop you take it do as many RV techs are weak on refrigeration and air conditioning. You will probably need a new cooling unit and if the refrigerator is 10 or so years old it may make better sense to replace it.

Do you keep propane available to the refrigerator, as in the valve open, tank full, and the refrigerator controls set to auto? If not you should try supplying it with propane first to see if it will work. You will need to try at least a half dozen times to make sure that any air has vented from the lines. This is an important test as it will go a long way to narrow the possible causes If you know that it has propane available and then observe to see if there is a spark that attempts to light that propane, it helps as the two heat sources use the very same control systems. Yes, that is possible but it is only one of a lot of different things that it could be. Circuit boards are not inexpensive and if you buy one and install it you will not be allowed to return it for a refund. I know of no company that will accept a circuit board for return if the package has been opened. The reason is that they have no way to know that the circuit board was not subjected to something that will cause it harm. If you look at the service manual in the most common problems section, for your symptoms they list 6 possible problems. You should do some trouble shooting to narrow things down. If you have no panel lights, then they suggest it could be either of two circuit boards. If you can get it to operate on propane the possibilities change markedly. If you don't have propane available, the 120V heating element should be checked as it can cause it not to cool, with power available and the fuse good. The element in yours should read 44 ohms through it with power removed. Low DC voltage can also cause the unit to fail to cool. The voltage to the circuit board should be between 10V & 14V, even though the panel lights will continue to light up until the DC voltage falls to about 4V. For either circuit board, most RV repair facilities will test them for you as it is very difficult to do with an ordinary meter. There mat be a small charge for testing. If not the manual does have a procedure for testing with an ordinary volt/ohm meter.

You can get the service manual in .pdf format from Bryant RV, service documents website.

The 3a fuse for the 12V side would prevent any operation, but the 5A, 120V fuse would prevent it cooling on electricity but not prevent propane.

First of all, welcome to the Escapees forums. We will do our best to help you here. If you do not get many replies, you may want to post this again as a new topic, since this thread is now 10+ months old and so it may not draw much interest. While the power problems might be the issue, with refrigerators there are other possible problems. When you were without shore power for three days, did the refrigerator continue to cool using propane for power? And have you tried shifting to propane to see if it will cool then? The control circuitry of an RV refrigerator is powered by 12V-dc from the battery & converter system but the heat must be supplied either propane or 120V shore power. Since you indicate that the heater area is getting hot, that would seem to indicate that the 120V fuse on the main circuit board is not open(blown) but if I were you I would use a meter to verify that the heater is receiving 120V, and if you don't have a meter, just for fun look at the main circuit board and check the two fuses located there. In most cases there will be a 3a fuse for the 12V-dc and a 5a fuse for the 120V-ac to the heater. I would remove both 120V and 12V power before fooling with those fuses and they may be open even if they look to be good. An ohm meter is the only certain way to determine if they are good or bad. If there are any indications on the refrigerator's control panel, that would show that there is 12V available and that the fuse for 12V is good. There is no easy way to be sure of the 120V (5a) fuse. Let us know a bit more about this and we may be able to help you. If you also share the make and model of the refrigerator, there are service manuals available for most of them via the internet.

I don't think that I'd base my investment choices on forum discussions. Many posts on a subject doesn't make me an expert. Do your research looking at the professional opinions and choose.carefully. Remember that on the forums we are all able to claim to be anything we wish to with no documentation or proof.

Are you a member of Escapees or just of the forums? If a member of Escapees, have you registered on the site?

Those of us who participate in any of the forms of work-camping can do a lot to make this new service get more useful quickly by sharing this information with the agencies which we have worked for/with. Many potential employers or volunteer coordinators are looking for better ways to recruit good help and free services which reach good people are not all that available. Lets all help to promote this by sending a link to it to those we believe to be good places to work-camp!

So I gather that no resolution is yet available?

Are you sure that your problem is that valve? In most RVs the fresh water pump also acts as a check valve to prevent the city water from back-flowing through it to the tank. If the pump needs rebuilt it can cause the same problem. A quick way to test that is to turn on the pump with water in the tank and city water off or disconnected. If the pump then runs every few minutes or more it means that pressure/water is leaking back through the pump & into the tank.

Is this what you have?

I have a concern with what you seem to be saying here........ You can't change your domicile for education without changing it for everything. As several of those articles point out, you may only have one legal domicile for any/all purposes. If you want to educate your family under Texas laws, you need to move your domicile here with is what the booklet How to Become a Real Texan explains. But you must move all of your domicile and legal address to Texas in order to do this. On the education side of things, I suggest that you drop a private message to Kinsa and discuss the TX education issue with here and home schooling here as she does it and also spent a year on the road doing so. Better to get advice about Texas from Texans who have done what you are looking into.

If you do not have any home address, you will then need some address somewhere in order to register and insure vehicles and to hold a driving license, along with a number of other issues. You will also need some way to get mail and to pay your taxes and a host of other things. You must have an address in order to have health care insurance and any other type of insurance as well. Insurance premiums are based upon where your home, or domicile is. I suggest that you read this article from Escapee's magazine about choosing one as a good place to start. I also suggest that you download a copy of How To Become A Real Texan from the Escapees website. In addition, there are currently two threads active on the forums which address some related questions. One is on Driver's License & Registration and the other is about Question of Domicile and I believe that you may find them all to be helpful. After that feel free to come back and post any questions that you still have.

Engineers are usually who does structural designs. I don't know that they still have any but I met an engineer from Newmar RV at the Dallas RV show and I have also met one from Tiffin. Both were more than 10 years ago but in both cases they at least claimed to be engineers. Even if you buy a chassis there is still a lot more to design before you put it on the chassis. If there are no engineers in those RV companies, who does do the structural design?

You have brought up a manufacturer that I am not at all familiar with? I did a Google search and found nothing so thought that perhaps you might share a link to their website if they have one...

A valid question. Our first RV was a very mature pop-up that we bought from a good friend for $250 back in 1972. I would say that for the market it was in, it was a pretty good quality product, but it had also been well tested when we got it when it was about 10 years old or more and we were at least the third owners. At the time I knew almost nothing about RVs and had always been a tent camper. Of course, that RV was little more than a tent with wheels and storage. It had no appliances, tanks, plumbing or anything else other than a table, seats and one double bed. But it was a step up from the tent. We only kept it for 2 seasons and then bought a new pop-up. This time we knew a little bit, but not nearly as much as I probably thought that I did. Over the years since we have never had a really bad RV, but probably in most cases more by luck that knowledge. Fairly early in our RV experience I became friends with an RV tech and he taught me a great deal. I don't know that I really did as much research as I should have until we went shopping for our motorhome that we used for a fulltime home. With that one I had learned a great deal, did a lot of research and spent more than two years shopping and studying various RVs in different price ranges. That and our present RV were the only two that I consider I got more based upon knowledge of RVs and less on dumb luck. I do not equate price with quality as there are different levels of quality in most ever price range. I do believe that with good research and education you can choose the best quality product for the budget that you have. We did learn enough to know that the very lowest price group of RVs were probably not up to the demands of constant use for many years and so we adjusted our budget to reflect that, but our budget was limited enough that we could not just buy whatever we felt was the best quality. One of the reasons that I support the RV Consumer Group is the fact that they do their best to group RVs into price/market groups and so to compare and rate similar RVs against each other, rather than one ranking for all. You simply can't compare an entry level RV to the highest priced luxury RV. There is a legitimate market for the vacation use RV even though it may not be capable of permanent use as a fulltime home. The RV which we own today would not serve well in fulltime use, but we didn't pay enough for it to have any expectation of it. We did get a high quality RV if you compare it to the market group in which it falls and I expect that it will fulfill our expectations for our present lifestyle. I very much agree with you, but do not consider that to be the wisest approach. Do you shop for a car with the knowledge that you won't get the luxury of a Cadillac when you buy the cheapest Chevy? People usually learn to shop cars based upon more than just how they look, yet spend several times as much to buy an RV based mostly upon price and appearance. It seems to me that it would make a lot of sense to spend more effort in learning how to find a quality RV than for a typical automobile? The information is available, but you must dig to find it.

Are you saying no frame engineers, or no engineers of any kind? While I can't prove they do have, I just find it hard to believe. Can you support this or give a source for the information? I would have thought that engineers would be involved in design of the RV that rides on the chassis or trailer frame even if they don't design the frame/chassis?? I agree with this, but not just on the subject of frames. Customers buy based upon price and then complain that the cheap RV doesn't have the quality of those passed over because of cost. There is a long history in the RV industry of high quality RV manufacturers that have failed and disappeared into history because they could not sell their products in large enough numbers to continue in business. Each time the economy goes into the dumper we loose a few manufacturers and usually the higher quality, thus more expensive RV builders are some of the first to go. A few manage to hang on but most of us could make up a pretty long list of quality RV companies that failed and went away, if we have been watching them for very many years. It is sad, but true. Educating the potential buyer is the only way that this will ever change, if then.

As I read the DMV website on the subject, you will renew using the receipt from your current inspection and it will then last for an additional 12 months.

It will require that you remove the refrigerator from the RV. Once that is done it will then involve removing the entire cooling unit, which is the largest part of the refrigerator, including the boiler, condenser, evaporator, all coils and associated plumbing. It will mean removal of the propane burner & electric heater, as well as a number of other connections. An experienced RV tech can usually do the job in a couple of hours. Of course, once completed you will then need to put it back into the RV and connect 12V, power and propane again.

Most of them are good but check to see what sort of warranty the company gives you. Will you be installing it yourself? If not you also need to get an estimate of that cost before you make your choice.

Cooling units can be replaced but there is no proof yet that yours is the problem. There are also several circuit boards in the refrigerator which could cause the problem, but since the heat sources are operating but it isn't cooling would lead us to believe that it is the cooling unit. Have you done any trouble shooting as yet? Is it cooing at all? Do you have any fault codes? I don't know that I would agree that most of us are using household refrigerators, but there certainly is a growing trend in that direction. With the improvement in inverter & battery technology it will likely continue to move that way, but I really think that you should do some trouble shooting before we conclude that you need a new refrigerator.

The RV refrigerator has only a very small propane flame and no pilot. What you are seeing is the flame for heating. Is there any odor of ammonia either inside the refrigerator or in the rear access panel? What about any hint of a yellow powder or mud in the rear of the cooling unit? Either of these would be an indication that the refrigerant has leaked out of the cooling unit. To give anything more would require some additional information. If you see the flame that tells me that the 12V-dc power is available and the fuse is not blown. Have you checked the display for any sort of error codes? Are there any panel lights showing? Is there any cooling at all in either the freezer or the chill box? Does the interior light come on when you open the door? You can find a copy of the service manual for this refrigerator on the website of Bryant RV.