Bill and Nancy

Its been in the 20s the last few days and it seems to be working like it should. What a difference it has made and it was a relatively simple fix for the cost of a $5.00 switch, a $35.00 batterie operated thermostat and a little bit of wire. Bill

Hey bill I would be interested in what other mods you did to your heating system I plan to run a new return and possibly supply lines after the holidays. I to am considering the Truma AC. Merry Christmas Bill

Check out this link these connectors are great and can be configured any way you want. connector

It will be a tight fit but I think it will just make it if your carful. With out looking up the specs I think its 9 feet wide by 9 feet 6 inches tall. Dont forget the length 26 feet is about as small as you want I wish I built my pavilion 30 feet incase I decide to side it. . John is correct if you want to work on it it needs to be much bigger but the door size of 10 x10 may just make it but not by much. My pavilion is 14feet wide 12feet high and 26 feet deep. Bill

We got 6 inches last night the average for the winter is usually only a couple feet or so. We haven’t had a good Nor’easter in about 5 years

its funny you mention Bird proofing my winter house my wife and I own a wild bird store and we help people with this type of thing all the time. Bird poop washes off I’m not to worried about it right now but if it becomes an issue I’ll do something about it. it’s usually the Easter phoebe that is the problem for us but they are pretty easy to deal with. nice building and driveway good job 👍 . Bill www.thebirdstoreandmore.com

Yes hydrogen fuel cells combined with next generation nuclear reactors is defiantly a step in the right direction. Iceland is very big on hydrogen powered vehicles do to the large amount of geothermal heat to make electricity making hydrogen production cheap. Elon musk announced his Hydrogen fuel cell powered car a few days ago. He also said that Tesla will be all Hydrogen by I think he said 2025.

I spent this summer working on Olies winter home and just finished it this morning just before it snows tomorrow.

Yes I agree with your definition of short cycling, I am experiencing a different problem. When the temperature in the trailer gets close to the temperature displayed on the thermostat the flame goes out then re-lights anywhere from seconds apart to minutes apart, this will continue 10 or more time in less than 8 minutes until the desired temperature is reached. But I do believe there is more than one problem so I need to figure out why the flame keeps going out first, then move to the next step.

I have the Dometic furnace and thermostat. When I get a minute I plan to isolate the two wires that go from the furnace to the controller in the AC. I will then use a volt meter to determine when the thermostat is calling for heat. If the flame goes out and I still have 12 volts on the open side of the switch then its not the thermostat causing the problem it would have to be something internal in the furnace. I need to Isolate one problem at a time I ruled out air flow both on the supply and return. At this point I believe its in the control board in the AC but I need to dig a little deeper to be sure.

Mark where does the error code show up?

I’m extremely busy this time of year and I don’t have any free time. But after the holidays I hope to get to the bottom of this. I’ve been all over the place with Oliver and Domestic on this issue. I’ve already spent a lot of time doing diagnostics. I picked up a battery operated thermostat with the intentions of bypassing the existing thermostat completely. I will update with what I find but it most likely won’t happen until after new years . Merry Christmas

Hi guys just something you might want to think about. We bought a Laveo Dry flush toilet and we love it. I have never used a compost toilet so I can’t compare nor have I ever used a black tank enough to make a judgment call. But a few camper friends of ours have switched from their black tanks and bought Laveo Dry Flush toilets after using ours. I guess the only draw back is it cost about $1.00 a flush but once you use it a bit you only flush it when you go #2 and about every 3 pees or so. You can flush it about 10 to 15 time before changing a cartridge. We spent 10 days on the road and between using public bathrooms we went through 1 full cartridge and 2 or three flushes on a new cartridge. So it cost us about $2.00 a day but no black tank pump out charge. We love it👍Go out to YouTube and type Laveo Dry Flush toilet there is a bunch of reviews. Funny thing Nancy and I were at a RV show and we saw this toilet being demonstrated and we thought it was so cool and different that we decided to buy it at the show. The funny part was we didn’t own a trailer at the time we were there just looking at stuff for something to do. If you decided you might want one there is this powder you can get from Amazon called smell-ez I’m not sure if that is spelt correctly but you will find it. It comes in a little can and you sprinkle a little in after you pee and it turns it to jellow. Then you only need to flush about every 3 pees or so. The other thing is you can throw feminine products in the toilet with out any problem. And they are USA made in CT Have fun building out your Oliver

We did the same thing it works great

Thanks for the information I will look into it. Do you have gas or diesel in your Canyon? The Diesel pulled way better than I expected we left Oliver and drove over the Smokies with no problem and the Jake brakes work very well. I was impressed to say the least. We got 28 mpg on the way down and about 20 pulling the trailer, it’s a good thing with Diesel at $6.00 a gallon.

John look up fit RV on youtube the guy is crazy meticulous and does a good job with reviews about his installations. He did a whole episode about the back up camera and he uses it as a rear view mirror, I plan to watch it again when I get home tonight. I forget what it was its been a while since I watched it, it may not even work on an Oliver. He also does a real good job of explaining lithium Batteries. I think its one of the best explanations Ive seen from anyone. I suppose if Bar-tailed godwit can make the trip I guess you can do it in an Oliver. Bill

I thought it was kind of expensive from OTT and there are a lot on the market for less than 1/2. I didn't think it would be necessary but after getting off the wrong exit on the way home and ended up in the Bronx NY I wish I had one. By the way I crossed the George Washington bridge and the toll was $72.00 Yup you read it right $72.00 There is a guy and wife on youtube called fit RV and he does a ton of modifications to his camper. I know that he installed a back up camera basically to replace his rear view mirror. I will have to watch it again to see what he used. Bill

John we have a GMC Diesel Canyon it was very easy to tow no problem at all. Altho I do find the mirrors a little small especially vertical, its hard to see the curb and side of the trailer at the same time I constantly re adjust them while backing up. I was wondering what back up camera do you have is it the one offered by Oliver? Thanks Bill

My wife is going to kill me for posting these but it won’t be the first time.

I spent better part of a day again and I think I’m going to bite the bullet and buy a new control board. Mike from Oliver is going to call some service centers and try and twist their arm and get back to me. I found that if the trailer temp is say 50 degrees and you set the thermostat to 60 degrees the fan will run and the flame stays lit for 15 minutes until the temperature is reached or almost reached. Then the fan stays on and the flame goes out then re lights then goes out sometime only seconds apart and other time minutes apart. In any case it will do this for up to 10 minutes before shutting off. I can’t imagine it could be anything else than the control board or a messed up thermostat. I’m looking into seeing if I can put a totally separate thermostat to run just the furnace and leave the AC on the other one. A nice simple on off thermostat just for the furnace.

Odds are it’s where the return air is located. I did a smoke test and the hot air is trapped under your bed and is getting sucked back into the cold air return and over heating the furnace. Just for a test duct tape over the return air vent. Turn the defuses on the supply to face forward. Now take the front seat cover off of your dinette seat and let the return air return through the open seat and under the floor. I think you will be surprised at what a big difference it will make. I plan to put a cold air return on the front of the rear seat of the dinette along the floor. This will draw the air from the floor back to the furnace. The new 2023 elite II has a return in the bathroom but they leave the main return open in the back. That doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me. You end up having an 8 x 10 inch opening right next to the return of the furnace and a 3 inch opening 20 feet away in the bathroom. I can’t see how that is going to change much of anything. Even if it did help, in a house you never put a cold air return in a bathroom. It will cause the toilet smell to be sucked into the entire trailer along with moist air from the shower and possibly cause mold to form under the floor.

I figured I would give an up date. I spoke to Dometic today and they said that I need to bring it to a Dometic service center to have it fixed under warranty . They gave me the name of 3 service centers within 50 miles of me. None of them will work on the furnace under warranty because they do not sell Olivers. However they will work on the furnace at shop rate and none of them can look at it until January the earliest. One guy felt bad and told me that the way the warranty works is they get paid by the RV manufacturer not Dometic and the RV manufacture gets re reimbursed Dometic, so I get it its not their fault, but that kind of hangs me out to dry. I called Dometic back and they spoke to a supervisor and they sent me a furnace performance checklist to fill out and if I fill it out and send it in they will send me a new control board if everything checks out. So I said ok but I will need a wiring schematic so I know where to test the voltages at. They said we can't do that because of liability issues you will need to bring it to a service center and have them fill it out. It's just one big circle so I ordered a propane test gauge so I can test the gas pressure and I watched a dozen or more videos on things to try and I found some manuals on line. This is going no where. I called and left a message for Mike at Oliver tonight and told him what was going on and asked him to call me. My thought is to bring it to a service center and have them fix it even if I have to wait until January. I will pay the service center for the repair then forward the bill to Oliver for reimbursement and let Oliver fight it out with Dometic. We will have to wait to hear back from Mike to see what he thinks I should do.

Unfortunately I don't believe the Counteract filtered valve stems are the issue. The wheels already have them installed. I believe that I caused the problem by attaching screw on tire pressure monitors. They allow the valve stem to remain open at all times and the balancing beads bypass the filter mechanism and get stuck in the valve core causing it to remain open. I have Counteract beads in my motorcycle tires and its never been an issue, but I have internal tire pressure sensors. So I think I will either remove the beads or install internal sensors before spring. Either should solve the problem. Thanks for the feed back Bill

I read your post and Im wondering if I may have been the cause of some of the balancing bead issues. On the way back home from TN to MA this past October and two days after we took delivery of hull number 1265 I decided to take off one of my tire monitors to add a little air to one of my tires. When I removed the monitor I noticed that the valve was leaking and poking it with a pin would not stop the leaking. So I screwed the sensor back on to stop the leak and we looked for an auto part store so that I could get a new valve stem and buy the little removal tool needed to take the stem out. . When I went to change the valve stem I could not remove it, it was stuck, it would unscrew but would not come out. So rather than fussing with it while on the road I decided to put the spare tire on and deal with it when I got home. When we got home I called Oliver and spoke to Mike and they had no Idea what could be going on. So I called a local tire garage and asked them if they ever had this happen. The first word out of his mouth was do you have balancing beads in your tires and I said I have no idea. So I called mike again and he said they no longer used them but I believe my trailer still has them in it. I then decided to check all my tire and sure enough another one was leaking and once again I couldn't get the valve stem out. But this time I was home with a shop with an air compressor and more tools and I finally got the valves out and replaced them. My best guess is there is beads in my tires. So I think I will pull them off this winter bring them to the garage and remove the suspected beads. On another note we also begged and asked Josh from the day we order our 2022 trailer on multiple occasions if we could wait and pay the upgrade for the Truma furnace but we got no for an answer, l guess we didn't beg hard enough. The fact that we are having a problem with our Dometic furnace makes it is even more annoying. Hey its all good, life isn't perfect we will navigate the bumps in the road and figure it out. All in all we love our little house and for the most part Oliver has been great.