Non Trailer or Travel Post

 While we did have a beautiful day yesterday with almost 70°F weather and clear skies, and I finished most of the trailer projects & got a bit of Spring yard work done, today was in the 40's with rain off & on.  

I spend most of the day finishing a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle that I've been working on off & on for a week. The grass/bushes and rocks in the lower third were tough.  Definitely not a trailer project - it covered the entire surface of a card table.

On the other hand, it is one of the few recently purchased jigsaw puzzles (Springbok brand) that both had all the pieces, and none of the pieces and picture elements fit together even though they were wrong.  I gave up on a couple of puzzles purchased from Facebook ads that were annoying. You only discovered that what you had assembled was wrong when you tried to add adjoining pieces.  Another one that I managed to get through ended up with 2 pieces missing.  While the supplier offered to resend the sections of the puzzle that had missing pieces, I'd far prefer they include them in the original purchase!

In any case, this was my "productivity" for the day.

Until Next Time - 

Another Warm Day

 It warmed up into the 60's; the crocus are up and flowering, & the daffodils are a couple of inches out of the ground.

One project I've wanted to do for awhile is to change the Dometic thermostat.  The first idea was to replace the one in the trailer with their Bluetooth version.  The capacitive touch pads on the existing thermostat are difficult to operate - sometimes they switch, and other times they skip through a couple of touches with just one touch.  

Unfortunately, after waiting 2 months for an ordered thermostat, I received notice that Dometic dropped their Bluetooth version.

After visiting the Micro- Air website for an Easy Start to add to my air conditioner, I discovered that they make a replacement for the Dometic thermostat that has both Bluetooth & WiFi. 

After installing, I discovered that it also has a much better touch screen.  

After that I took advantage of the nice weather & trimmed the grape vines & cleaned up one of the flower beds.

Until Next Time - 

Spring Projects

 We are finally hitting 50°F days (although it is only 29°F today) so I pulled the cover off the trailer & started on some projects I've put off over the winter.  

The first was  fairly simple - I got tired of the trailer 7 pin plug falling into the mud, sand, etc when the trailer is disconnected from the truck.  No matter how carefully I wound it around the trailer jack, it usually ended up on the ground.  The solution? An AP Products Plug Guard. I mounted it to the front storage box & hope that it will keep the plug off the ground.

The next project was a bit more involved.  I decided to add a third Battleborn 100 amp hour lithium battery.  While I've been happy with the two, the third will let me go a week without needing sun to recharge them.  I removed the old battery box & built a battery holder - a piece of 1" X 12", some 2" aluminum angle, and a set of hold down straps.  I also added a piece of 1/8" styrene plastic sheeting to separate the batteries from the under seat storage area.  Wiring the #0 cables between the batteries was "interesting".  

After adding the third battery I reset the Victron 712 battery monitor to 300 amps.  So far everything is working.

I still have a bunch of projects lined up, but I'll probably wait until further into the weekend since the predicted temperatures are in the high 50's for Sunday.  

Until next time -