Jump to content

Leaderboard

Popular Content

Showing content with the highest reputation on 04/01/2019 in Posts

  1. 1. They smell good 2. They absorb liquids and expand 3. Pine pellets are used for kitty litter, so tried and true. 4. Result of an experiment. (see previous post). The idea is to find what works for YOU. Everybody is gonna be different. My wife drinks an enormous amount of tea and water and I think that changes things somewhat and so I need more absorption. Some will tell you to fill dry coir only half-high to stirs, the book says fill level to stirs. My two gallons of coco-coir and handful of pine pellets is a bit under level with the stirs and seems to work the best for us.
    3 points
  2. OLIVER FORUM GUIDELINES Welcome to the Oliver Forum, a great place for Oliver Travel Trailer owners and future owners to interact, share knowledge, solve problems, and most importantly, to develop friendships. Respectful and considerate responses help build this community. You’ll find a wealth of experiences here, and many owners willing to share their experiences. Have fun, but please keep others’ viewpoints in mind. Respectfully state your point, share your information, or ask your question. Keep it casual and friendly. Reread your post before you hit submit. Is it helpful? Thoughtful? Please try to stay on the original topic of the thread. Confusing the issue may cause the member’s original question to go unanswered. Start a new topic if you have a new question. It’s important for all members to have the environment and opportunity to contribute in a considerate manner, and to learn. Inflammatory and trolling comments shall be removed by a volunteer moderator. We encourage members to use the “REPORT” function (bottom right corner of each post) to help us, as we’re not reading every post, 24/7. If your post is removed, you’ll receive a PM about it. If there is a continuing problem, further action may be taken, up to and including your removal from the forum. Some inflammatory topics to avoid include religion and politics. We’re all about camping, and Oliver campers. Over the years, we’ve seen a few simple topics turn into heated debates. It’s natural to want to jump in, but honestly, it’s often better to let it go, and hit the report button, instead. We moderators are avid campers. Even as we write this, we are all out camping, some with limited bandwidth. We respond as quickly as we can, and the sooner we know, the better. Some have asked why our forum is linked to the Oliver website. Valid question. Since the beginning of our forum in 2008, Oliver Travel Trailers (OTT) has paid for our Oliver “sandbox”, including our web space and an administrator who knows way more than we do about maintaining the software, for which we are very grateful. OTT DOES NOT CENSOR OR INTERFERE with the moderators’ management of the forum content. Moderators are not employees of OTT. We are Ollie owners, and receive no remuneration. OTT does have a employee designated to read the forum for the purpose of improving the “Ollie Experience” for all, but that’s a few minutes a day in a busy job description. If you should ever have an issue or a warranty claim, call tech support. Your post might not be seen on the forum by an Oliver employee. With that in mind, we moderators ask you to communicate directly with the company and afford them an opportunity to satisfy any serious needs before flaming OTT on the forum. We are not asking that anything to be swept under the rug. Just, please, let Oliver Travel Trailers have the first shot to meet and exceed your expectations. Sometimes, communications here may be misinterpreted, because the written word just doesn’t carry the visual clues of face to face conversations. Should you believe a post is a little ill-mannered, consider the poster might be trying to be helpful, but isn’t able to put his or her words together the way you might. Forums work best when our skin tends to be a bit on the thicker side. Remember as well, whatever you post will likely be permanent, and picked up by automated internet software programs. Though this is our forum, it’s still on the world wide web. Our words may very well outlive us. Please, be especially patient with newbies. Our search feature is still being tweaked, and they may not have found an answer by simply using “Search”. You may remember your own newbie questions . . . of many years ago. If you have already answered the same newbie question as many times as you care to, relax and allow someone else to step up and reply. Help foster a community of teachers. We recommend all phone numbers and email addresses be sent in private messages and NOT posted. If you must post personal data, we suggest you post in a manner so trolling automated internet programs will not grab your personal information and use it nefariously. For instance, a phone number might be “8ThreeZero, 5one5, 9 2 eight seven”, or for an email address, something like “Bill DOT Fisher at flyboy DOT com”. Please reread this, and help us continue to make our forum a great place for everyone. We hope you enjoy our forum. Thank you, bugeyedriver, SeaDawg, ScubaRx, Mike and Carol, topgun2 , Mossemi Oliver Owner Moderator Team
    1 point
  3. Off topic: does anybody else start singing "Rockin Robin" in their head when they see the subject line of this thread?
    1 point
  4. We’ve been full-timing in our Ollie since April of last year. We opted for the composting toilet to better enable us to boondock. Having no black water and not wasting fresh water flushing helps us last at least four days out, if needed. Of course, it is my job to dump the shitpot when necessary and it is also my job to stir it when the waste becomes too difficult for Beverly to turn. I have found it to be a good practice to give it the occasional turn even if not being used heavily just so it lasts longer. Living in the trailer full-time I have found the composting material lasts anywhere from 10 days to two weeks depending of course on the weather and also what we have been eating. I have experimented a lot with different materials and mixes and so far the following is what works best for us: Into the toilet goes two gallon freezer bags of coco coir with a handful of pine pellets thrown in between bags. I also add a small handful of another material I cannot remember the name of that kills any bugs that might want to develop. So far that has not been an issue since I put a screen on top of the vent pipe to keep them out. I use a coco coir I purchase from amazon. (Link to pine pellets and coco coir included in this post.) When changing out the compost I put a separate brick in each empty freezer bag and as little amount of water as possible. It takes about a day for the coco coir to absorb the moisture and my manual crumbling of it into a dry and expanded material. I store the full bags in my truck until needed. I simply remove the entire toilet from trailer when dumping, as the first time I attempted the job inside the bathroom resulted in a poor result. A kitchen flex garbage bag works well in campgrounds and the bag can be tossed into the dumpster. When home, at our base camp, we scatter the compost waste directly into our woods for further decomposition and fertilizer.
    1 point
  5. I thought the object was to get recommendations from as many people as possible just to make sure that you get something completely different from everyone else. Then spend the next few years trying to get someone else to buy the same thing in order to justify your purchase.
    1 point
  6. Mine came empty. I tried the coco coir stuff at first, since it's more compact to carry, but could never get the mixture right. You can get that on Amazon. I switched to peat and it's been fine since. Get that from a Home Depot or wherever - just be sure to get plain peat moss and not something with Miracle Gro or other additive. On a three week trip, we carry enough to fill it once, which is about three gallon sized ziplocks, stored in the bumper.
    1 point
  7. So, are you actually suggesting that "I" should do my own homework before buying a truck? It really is so much easier to simply ask others and then blame them when I get a vehicle that doesn't do what I want it to. Bill
    1 point
  8. PS to Geronimo John's Engineering Perspective: Sorry, I failed to mention some other key perspectives: The longer the wheel base of your tow vehicle, the better it will handle your towed load. However, of course this "PRO", has some "CONS" as well. Really long TV's are a PITA to park and maneuver. The compromise for some owners with a need to favor people loads is to go with something like the F-150 Super Crew, 145" wheel base, with the 5 1/2' bed, or Super Cab with a longer bed if their needs favor cargo. In my original post, I (and several others) mentioned the importance of knowing your payload, and the specific ability of your truck to haul that payload. Along those lines is another required decision to ponder. That is how many people do you need to accommodate and/or how much weight you need to have inside the truck when towing. These considerations, along with those I (and many others) have posted previously are significant components of "Doing your homework" for the truck that will fit your needs best. As stated by others, cutting yourself short on TV capacity (Payload, Axles, Bed Space, Butt Count, Leg Room, FUEL CAPACITY, etc.) likely will result in a TV selection that will not serve you well for the duration. The important issue is that only you know what will work for YOU. So like Smokey the Bear ("Only you can prevent forest fires"), only you can determine your TV specifications. And knowing the basics before even looking at trucks is what "Doing your homework" entails. Again, good luck.
    1 point
  9. It rides nicely in the closet with room for two camp chairs bungeed against it. It has been used exactly twice in two years, it worked acceptably. I inspected it very closely when I received it and there is nothing at all wrong with its construction or design. It feels sturdy enough in use. OTH I do NOT recommend this ladder. I recommend the Werner convertible instead. Any ladder will kill you. But I carry this one. I weigh 160 lbs and I am very cautious when using it.... John Davies Spokane WA
    1 point
  10. A few thoughts from a Mechanical Engineer's perspective: With the advent of ten speed transmissions, the importance of getting a 4.XX rear end simply is not anywhere as important as it used to be. For example with a Ford 10 speed transmission, while towing an Ollie II, you will not generally be using the top gear or two. So depending on the rear end you pick, at high speed you may be in 7th or 8th gear. Pick an higher number axle and the transmission will simply run in 8th or 9th gear. Pick a lower number axle and you will be running 6th or 7th gear. Point is you can now get an axle that works really well for daily use as well as towing. For the Ford F-150 3.5L, many people are getting the 3.55 locker axle where they can use all ten speeds then daily driving, but also have the ability to drop down and keep their engine exactly where they want it based upon the trailer and cab loadings and the grade of the highway. In the past with 4 or 5 speeds this was impossible. When doing your test ride, make them as long as you can. Be sure to consider the daily ride of a 3/4 ton vs. that of a 1/2 ton. I really preferred the F150 with the FX4 package ride over the F250. After a few hours in the super duty, my butt was ready for a transfer! But loaded with about 9,000 pounds of trailer and its tongue weight, the F250 ride was excellent. So knowing your likely tow vs daily driving needs is important. Look at the curb weights of the trucks you are looking to buy. Remember having extra weight has pros and cons. The pro's are that the heavier the truck, generally the better it feels on the road when hauling a loaded trailer. In my case, one of the reasons I chose the mostly aluminum F-150 was to save hauling another 700 pounds of dead weight around. Above a certain point, weight is simply a extra load that you just don't need. As mentioned above, all the 1/2 ton trucks have pretty limited payloads. This likely will be fine with Oliver in tow, but not if your also plan on loading up the bed with ATV's or other such toys. So sit down and study your truck payloads to determine which class works best for your. Good luck!
    1 point
  11. To add to JD's comments on the topper - I researched the topic quite a bit, ended up with a Leer - very happy with it.
    1 point
  12. I posted a while back that we were having trouble with cold spots inside our Isotherm fridge. Basically, stuff under the freezer on both shelves would freeze more often than not. So I decided to add a fan just under the freezer to circulate the air. We'll see how it does. This is the fan I got - seemed much nicer than anything else I could find. It has two fans and connects directly to the 12v supply. You can keep the wiring in the fridge and connect to the light, if you have one, or if you don't, or don't want wires cluttering up your fridge you can do as I did and drill through to connect directly to the DC supplying the fridge. I drilled straight through the back behind the fan, ran the wire and caulked both sides. I tapped in to the DC fan supply on the side by the compressor. I had to flip the fans around in the housing since the fan kit is designed to blow into the fins on a dometic fridge. The fan has an on/of switch and seems to draw about 0.1 amp. You can hear it pretty well when you have the door open, but is completely inaudible with it closed. The fan isn't super strong but you can feel the air coming off of it even at the front of the fridge. I decided while I had the fridge out to add a layer of insulation all around. 1" in the back and ⅜" on the top and sides, which is all that would clear the cutout in the fiberglass. It was a tight squeeze even at that. I also spotted a couple fins on the coil that were touching the top of the fridge, which were probably what was causing an occasional buzzing, so I bent those back and generally made sure everything was rattle free. Drilling for the DC power - This is the ASU module on the side of the fridge where I tapped in to the DC. The wire with the white insulation sticking out is to the fan. The yellow bit is an inline fuse that comes with the fan. Not particularly convenient if it ever blows. All wrapped up in insulation. Cut the bejeezus out of my finger on that aluminum tape - And the finished product. I was fortunate that there is that little scallop in the fridge liner right where I wanted to put the fan. Otherwise I'd have had to block it out for airflow. Two screws hold the bottom, and the top is fixed with my favorite 3M 4200 since I didn't have access for screws. A little 4200 on the screws as always to hold them tight -
    1 point
  • Recent Achievements

    • TimD earned a badge
      Dedicated
    • francescaskinner earned a badge
      Week One Done
    • GreenFlash went up a rank
      Rookie
    • theOrca went up a rank
      Apprentice
    • ZLarryb earned a badge
      Reacting Well
    • HDRider went up a rank
      Rising Star
    • TimD went up a rank
      Rookie
    • ZLarryb earned a badge
      Collaborator
    • Aluecker went up a rank
      Rookie
    • LCH earned a badge
      Week One Done
    • LCH earned a badge
      One Month Later
    • LCH earned a badge
      One Year In
    • SecondTimeAround earned a badge
      Week One Done
    • SecondTimeAround earned a badge
      One Month Later
    • SecondTimeAround earned a badge
      One Year In
    • doc foster earned a badge
      Week One Done
    • doc foster earned a badge
      One Month Later
    • doc foster earned a badge
      One Year In
    • Lisa Rae earned a badge
      Week One Done
    • dhaig went up a rank
      Community Regular
×
×
  • Create New...