HOT Water!

Today’s main job for our tech Daniel was to replace the tankless water heater with a traditional RV type that runs on either electricity or propane.

Daniel first removed the tankless heater and disconnected the hoses and wires.

Only two wires were required for the tankless, but the other three wires needed for the traditional were included in the wiring harness, just in case. Daniel told me the first few coaches he did this swap on didn’t have the extra wiring, so they could only be wired for 12v and propane, not 110v. Glad that didn’t happen in our case; it would take a lot of 12v power to heat 10 gallons of water!

After disconnecting everything, Daniel had to enlarge the opening for the traditional heater. The cavity is plenty big, but the opening is too small. He measured carefully.

Then he sawed off a few inches to widen the opening.

The before and after. Click on the pics for a closer view.

The new heater was wired up and hoses were connected.

An electrician came inside to install the new switch. He had to enlarge the hole to be able to reach all the wires.

The old and new switches. Now we have lighted switches, so it will be much easier to see at a glance whether the heater is on, and which power source is being used. There’s also the option to turn on both propane and electricity to heat the water quickly, then turn one source off to maintain the heating.

The full instrument panel. Other Phaeton owners may notice that we had previously switched some of the controls around, primarily so that my 5’1” frame can reach the most often used ones more easily without climbing on a chair or stool.

A new access panel was required outside. This will be painted to match the coach later.

It was close to quitting time, so only the propane function is hooked up now, but the electrical, which requires a breaker to be added to the system, will be made operational tomorrow. In the meantime, we’re already enjoying really HOT water. It took very little time to run enough water through the system to get the air pockets out and soon we had water too hot to put your hand in. Our water was never that hot on the tankless, a negative feature I failed to list in my previous explanation.

Toward the end of the day, Daniel discovered another thing to add to our list. He wondered if we had any goldfish to put in our fish tank (right side taillight)!

Now to switch gears for a few notes about friends.

A fellow blogger Larry (Road Runner) who is a friend of friends of ours (Jerry & Suzy, Our Life on Wheels) stopped by briefly after dinner last night to introduce himself. He saw my blog post about being in Red Bay and figured out where we are parked. It’s a small world! We look forward to getting together with Larry and his wife and getting to know each other.

This evening we again joined our friends Jim & Donnalyn Vickers to have dinner at one of mine and Don’s favorite places, Speedy Pig, in Russellville. Three of us had the smoked chicken, and Jim had the BBQ pulled pork. And the food was really yummy!