Camp Red Bay Report – Day 1

After about a week waiting for the call to get our 36LA to a regular service bay, I was awoken from a sound sleep at 8:44 AM (Hey, I'm retired, OK?), and told to have our motor home in Bay 4 immediately.

Good thing we didn't have a lot of things connected and open. Water had been shut off on Monday due to freezing temperatures, and our main slide had been closed the previous evening for the same reason. We were trying to save some propane, and our RV was having some real trouble getting warm, even with TWO separate propane heaters installed. Despite our best efforts to reduce the volume of air to be warmed, and running our electric fireplace full bore, we could barely maintain 62 degrees inside the coach.

Even though we had list of things that needed to be fixed from to road damage sustained due to our Liquidspring rear suspension not working for about 1000 miles, we mentioned our inability to get warm the previous evening when temps had dropped to about 20 degrees with windy conditions.

Our two repair technicians in Bay 4 are David and Dave. Given my first name, I figured this was destined to be a great visit to Red Bay! They went through our list of repairs with us, but once I mentioned the heating issue, they immediately tossed our list aside to address our lack of heat. After confirming that our propane heaters were both working, they began to circle our home in search of openings where air could get in.

After the first few minutes, it was determined that we were living in the Tiffin Open Road version of Swiss Cheese.

Fully 60% of our basement bay doors had to be adjusted to close more evenly and tightly. Could have been the battering we took on the road, or could have been done during the initial build. No way of knowing. Other holes were areas where Tiffin probably should have used some foam sprayed in after assembly. Bottom-line, there was way too much outside air coming inside the coach, and it was overwhelming our propane heaters and fireplace. In fact, we used 20% of our total propane in just that one cold night!

Fortunately, David and Dave are not only craftsmen, they are perfectionists, and are EXACTLY the reason we bought a Tiffin. While a couple of things were knocked off our repair list, the majority of our first day in Bay 4 was spent closing up literally every place where air could invade the inside of our home.

And the results could not have been better. While the next night was not as windy or cold, it was still hovering around the freezing mark. Instead of keeping our main slide in tight, we decided to test the work done by opening it up to it's full living area. Setting the furnaces to 68 degrees, we sat in toasty comfort for the rest of the evening. Once we headed to bed, we lowered the thermostats to 64 degrees. It maintained temperature for the entire evening, and when we got up the next morning we found out it only used 2% of our propane!

These guys are truly miracle workers. They not only completely fixed the temperature problem, a secondary benefit will be that it makes the motor home quieter going down the road. Less wind noise, and less vibration.

Day 1 is in the books. Day 2 will address bathroom and washer / dryer issues, with Day 3 attacking our melted wet bay. Stay tuned!