Fridge Continuing Saga, et. al.

When we last left you, we had a non-working refrigerator in our new RV and we were leaving (thank goodness) Bath, NY. Before we left, I did some research and found out there was an RV dealer and repair very close to where we would be attending the FMCA rally near Burlington, VT. I called them and had them order a new cooling unit for our fridge. Unfortunately, we would not be able to get it installed until the Monday after July 4th. So we continued to limp along using a cooler and ice.

On our way to Burlington, we stopped of at Mom’s place in White River Junction, VT. We stayed at the Rest & Nest RV Park in East Thetford for two days and visited with Mom. She is doing much better now that she has gotten over her intestinal problems (TMI). She is getting back into socializing with the other residents again.

The first day there, we hung out in her room for a while and then took her out to the campground to see our new RV. She liked it very much. She agreed it is much more roomy that the Bay Star was. The we went back and Ellyn and Mom got in on the Quiddler game which was in progress. It ran late so they suspended the game with three more rounds to go until the next day.

The next day, we went back to finish up the Quiddler game and then they started another which I joined in on. My first hand was a hoot. I was dealt 3 E’s and, when I was offered the discard from the previous player, I turned it down, since it was yet another E. So I drew one from the deck and, you guessed it, the 5th E. The rest of the game went much better. After Quiddler we played a few rounds of LCR, a game we later played for dimes at the Good Sam Samboree on Prince Edward Island in Canada. We then had lunch with Mom in the Country Kitchen. Delicious and with birthday cake for dessert. It seems it is always someone’s birthday at Valley Terrace.

With said bye to Mom and headed for Essex Junction, VT and the NEA FMCA Rally. We arrived one day early and park in the campground at the fairgrounds for the night. The next afternoon, we met up with the other members of the Chai Chapter and parked our coaches together not too far from where we had camped, so it was a short trip to move the RV. It was rainy that day (of course. It is always raining on the day we arrive at a rally) but the following days were nice. Toward the end of the weekend, it started getting downright hot. But we only had 30 amps, so we had to keep it to just one A/C unit. When we had our potluck dinner one of the days, several coaches popped their circuit breakers when they tried to run their microwaves and A/C units at the same time. Oops!  We had a great parking place, right near a shady park of the park where we could meet and schmooze.

We got a call shortly after the start of the Rally that they wanted us to come in on Friday before the 4th to fix the fridge (yay!). So we did but the warranting RV dealer wanted them to do some checking first to make sure it wasn’t some problem with the installation. So we took it to them and they spent the better part of the day checking. They did find a couple of possible problems but the fridge would still not cool properly. By this time, it was too late in the day to do the cooling unit install so they told us to come back again on Monday and they would install it (ugh). So, one more trip back on Monday.

Four hours later we returned to the dealer to find they were still working on it, and were greeted with the seven words you never want to hear; “I have good news and bad news”. The bad, that they had punctured a cooling coil on the new cooling unit during install and ruined it. The good was that they scavenged a (supposedly) like-new unit from another rig in their lot and installed it instead. We left there figuring all would be well as soon as it had time to stabilize. No such luck.

The next day, not only was the fridge not getting below ambient, but the freezer was not going below freezing. Unbelievable! However, I had been noticing that the fans in the back of the fridge, which need to move air around in the space near the cooling coils because the fridge is in a slide-out and has no natural vent at the top, were not running very often, if at all. So I  jumpered around their thermostat and also did some research to see what the settings on the ‘stat were. It turned out to operate at way too high a temperature. With the fans running fulltime, the fridge had no problem getting down to the right temperature.

We returned to the dealer when we left the rally and got a proper thermostat installed. After that, no problem, even on the warmest setting.

Next stop…Canada.