We made a short weekend trip up to Gadsden AL and River Country Campground. Nice place. On a spit of land that sits between a river and a wide creek,
lots of waterfront spots. 3 different pools and a splash pad for the littles, a couple fishing piers. Really nice and clean, but a bit nickel and dime
and heavy on the rules.
Only about 90 minutes away, so we got to really test the new AC situation. Moved our Coleman Mach 15 into the front hole, added a 13.5 Dometic Brisk
Aire into the middle hole. EV6010 ran both with no problems. The Coleman, despite being 11 years old, moves a ton more air than the new Dometic.
Moving that forward really helped with heat in the cab. The Dometic was pretty cheap, $500 delivered, but doesn't seem to have the same build quality.
Part of that is their are 5 different directions you can blow the air. And none of them seal off very well. So if you want to blow front to back, side
to side, straight down, whatever, you can do it, but closing the other flaps still allows for a massive amount of leakage out of the "non-used" flaps.
It certainly saps the directional benefits.
Still, for our purposes it solves a problem. The Coleman helps with the cab, the Dometic with the straight down vents open, plus the back side of the
Coleman, really cools the sofa/dining/kitchen area. So my kids are nice and cool and the cab is a lot better. Next step is sealing up the chipmunk
cheeks, firewall holes, and everywhere else that we are getting hot air blasts from the engine. When the fan clutch comes on, you can feel the heat
pouring into the cab. Going to have Jeff Sirum do one of his seal up specials when we are down that way at Thanksgiving.
Doubling the ACs up front also allowed us to park in full sun and keep the coach close to 70-72 degrees on a 90+ degree day with high humidity.
Typically we've begged for shady spots, though the Coleman kept the coach in full sun at about 80, it just worked better with some shade. With both
ACs cranking, the coach was comfortable parked even at 2 p.m. on a roasting AL day. Night has never been a problem, but again, the Dometic just
doesn't have the power of the Coleman to force air to the back bedroom. My wife likes it frigid at night, so while I was happy not to be buried under
12 blankets, she deemed it acceptable but not as good as before. Maybe I should have gone with the 15K Dometic...
Anyway, a few other interesting notes. With both ACs roaring up front, the engine pounding away, and the Honda running in the back, I knew the kids
were not going to get the volume out of our TV they needed. They can watch TV when we are driving and when it rains, otherwise they are outside. But
the driving was going to be a problem. Our TV is over the front dinette seat, folding down from the cabinet. I ran a headphone cord up and over the
headliner, coming out by the couch on the far side. I then added a 5 way splitter, 4 sets of headphones, and the kids were cool, happy, and not even
bothering each other since they couldn't hear each other with the headphones on. It also mean I no longer had to listen to whatever garbage they were
watching and could instead turn on the radio or talk with my wife. This was a great victory.
Finally, our blanket cabinet had rotted out over the last couple years. Truthfully it had been in poor shape when we bought the coach 11 years ago,
and it was just getting disgusting. So I pulled it out and built a new one from scratch. I shrunk the cabinet section, added 2 cup holders to the
front side, one cup holder to the back end, and then moved the electric outlet from where it poked my wife in the head while she slept to a popup
socket on top of the cabinet. This scored me many brownie points as my wife was in love with the improvement. The pop up socket is water resistant,
has 2 USB ports and 2 outlets. We could plug our phones in without bringing extra chargers, and, I can't say this enough, they weren't poking my wife
in the head.
All in all, some good useability improvements. The kids and wife were getting tired of sweating while driving, so that's a major issue solved that has
the kids looking forward to more summer camping. It had been a problem for our last couple trips as it was approaching 90 in the cab and probably
close to 80 in the living area. Thermometer showed about 80 in the cab today, on a baking sunny drive home, and close to 75 in the back.
--
Thanks,
Jeremy Knezek
1976 Glenbrook
Birmingham, AL
lots of waterfront spots. 3 different pools and a splash pad for the littles, a couple fishing piers. Really nice and clean, but a bit nickel and dime
and heavy on the rules.
Only about 90 minutes away, so we got to really test the new AC situation. Moved our Coleman Mach 15 into the front hole, added a 13.5 Dometic Brisk
Aire into the middle hole. EV6010 ran both with no problems. The Coleman, despite being 11 years old, moves a ton more air than the new Dometic.
Moving that forward really helped with heat in the cab. The Dometic was pretty cheap, $500 delivered, but doesn't seem to have the same build quality.
Part of that is their are 5 different directions you can blow the air. And none of them seal off very well. So if you want to blow front to back, side
to side, straight down, whatever, you can do it, but closing the other flaps still allows for a massive amount of leakage out of the "non-used" flaps.
It certainly saps the directional benefits.
Still, for our purposes it solves a problem. The Coleman helps with the cab, the Dometic with the straight down vents open, plus the back side of the
Coleman, really cools the sofa/dining/kitchen area. So my kids are nice and cool and the cab is a lot better. Next step is sealing up the chipmunk
cheeks, firewall holes, and everywhere else that we are getting hot air blasts from the engine. When the fan clutch comes on, you can feel the heat
pouring into the cab. Going to have Jeff Sirum do one of his seal up specials when we are down that way at Thanksgiving.
Doubling the ACs up front also allowed us to park in full sun and keep the coach close to 70-72 degrees on a 90+ degree day with high humidity.
Typically we've begged for shady spots, though the Coleman kept the coach in full sun at about 80, it just worked better with some shade. With both
ACs cranking, the coach was comfortable parked even at 2 p.m. on a roasting AL day. Night has never been a problem, but again, the Dometic just
doesn't have the power of the Coleman to force air to the back bedroom. My wife likes it frigid at night, so while I was happy not to be buried under
12 blankets, she deemed it acceptable but not as good as before. Maybe I should have gone with the 15K Dometic...
Anyway, a few other interesting notes. With both ACs roaring up front, the engine pounding away, and the Honda running in the back, I knew the kids
were not going to get the volume out of our TV they needed. They can watch TV when we are driving and when it rains, otherwise they are outside. But
the driving was going to be a problem. Our TV is over the front dinette seat, folding down from the cabinet. I ran a headphone cord up and over the
headliner, coming out by the couch on the far side. I then added a 5 way splitter, 4 sets of headphones, and the kids were cool, happy, and not even
bothering each other since they couldn't hear each other with the headphones on. It also mean I no longer had to listen to whatever garbage they were
watching and could instead turn on the radio or talk with my wife. This was a great victory.
Finally, our blanket cabinet had rotted out over the last couple years. Truthfully it had been in poor shape when we bought the coach 11 years ago,
and it was just getting disgusting. So I pulled it out and built a new one from scratch. I shrunk the cabinet section, added 2 cup holders to the
front side, one cup holder to the back end, and then moved the electric outlet from where it poked my wife in the head while she slept to a popup
socket on top of the cabinet. This scored me many brownie points as my wife was in love with the improvement. The pop up socket is water resistant,
has 2 USB ports and 2 outlets. We could plug our phones in without bringing extra chargers, and, I can't say this enough, they weren't poking my wife
in the head.
All in all, some good useability improvements. The kids and wife were getting tired of sweating while driving, so that's a major issue solved that has
the kids looking forward to more summer camping. It had been a problem for our last couple trips as it was approaching 90 in the cab and probably
close to 80 in the living area. Thermometer showed about 80 in the cab today, on a baking sunny drive home, and close to 75 in the back.
--
Thanks,
Jeremy Knezek
1976 Glenbrook
Birmingham, AL
.
