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Here I am, sitting in a hotel room …
barely 1/2 mile or so away from Parliament/Coach Worx and you may be asking why?!??
Well, you may recall that I posted several weeks ago about having found a temperature alarm, which would notify me via email and text.
Fast forward, about 7 days ago, I had to go up North on short notice. I notified everybody at Parliament and figured all is well. One thing that was not well is the alarm. A couple of days prior to my departure, I had an Internet hick-up and it stopped sending alerts. I figure I am going to be away just a few days ….
Today … when I returned … I was very gently introduced to the idea, that there was a problem …
The problem being … sometime during the past 3-4 days, the power to the fridge was lost and … you can imagine the unimaginable …
Everything was removed from the fridge prior to my arrival but … it still stinks to heaven!
We set-up a couple of Ozon machines this afternoon. Hopefully,, this will help to remove the odors.
If you have any suggestions in this regard, I sure would appreciate receiving them!!!
As a result of the above, I am spending tonight in a hotel. Probably, the next 1-3 nights, too.
The lesson learned here is, that leaving anything at all behind in the freezer or fridge is dangerous. I think I was lucky in that I returned within about 2-3 days of when this occured. It could have been a hell of a lot more scary, if I had returned later.
I am half into a bottle of Los Vascos, a Chilean Cabernet Sauvigon. It is masking the odor quite well.
Hicks …
Cheers,
Ronald
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21 Replies
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Ronald,
That it terrible, sorry you are going through that..
I would have thought your batteries would have run your Fridge for a few days…. did it hurt your wood flooring at all?
Was it just the power to the fridge or the whole coach?
Hopefully you’ll be back in the bus and all will be smelling good before you know it.
Cheers, Diane
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I’m just curious as to how you left a coach unattended.
Was it connected to shore power? It was at Parliament / Coach Worx for some reason which I would presume was service. Did they have access to the coach and was anyone asked to monitor the coach?
How many days was it left unattended from when you left until you returned?
I ask this because I have no trust in ever leaving my coach unattended and expecting the systems to work as intended. Stuff breaks. This seems especially true of coaches because as they go down the road they seem to be trying to shake everything to death.
What failed? A tripped breaker? A complete circuit? All power to the coach? Was it left with the AC units on to keep it cool inside?
As has probably been seen by posts about my flip phone I have less than zero confidence in the latest and greatest technology, especially “alerts” that are supposed to call my flip phone. It sounds like you not only had a failure related to the refrigerator, you also had a failure of your alarm system. Are they related?
Over the years a lot of repairs to coaches have been made when the coaches have been left unattended. Batteries have been ruined because something failed and they completely discharged. Laminates have lifted from the cabinets because the AC systems quit and the coach interior got excessively hot. Mold and mildew damage has occurred because the pneumatic system no longer kept the slide seal inflated. The list goes on.
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Ronald, A bottle of Chilean Malbec will help ease the pain also, If you will be at OK rally I will bring a bottle of ours for you to try ” Gandolfo Cellars” we only bottle small batches, total about 600 bottles ayear, just a few Brunello, Borola, Montepulciano, Amarone, Old vine Zin, Good luck with the fridge odors, Gary
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Ronald, I thought I better clairify something we do not sell wine we just give it to friends and on special occasions for fund raisers, it is fun and we enjoy it!Gary
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Ronald,
The label on Gary’s homemade wine reads, “Squeezins, by Gary & Megan.”
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That is the worst thing to try to get rid of….sometimes lemon juice helps during clean up..
Good thing Gary doesnt give Tom a bottle of wine everytime he buys a new coach….just sayin
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There was a time when I was in the concrete burial vault business. I don’t want to sound insensitive, but there were occasions when there was an unattended death with time between death and when the body was found and the odors associated with that were masked by the funeral director to an extent. You might consider contacting one or two of them for some advice.
Since I seemed to have some really lousy jobs, another one was supplying grease traps. When we had to go in the field and deal with issues there were two ways we combatted the odors. To the extent possible we loaded it up with as much ice as we could. The odors were always more prevalent when it was warm so anything we could do to drop the temps we did. In the winter nasty grease traps had almost no odor compared to the heat of summer.
The second thing we did was to sprinkle a lot of cinnamon around. The odor didn’t go away, but the cinnamon seemed to overpower it to the point we didn’t gag.
It won’t be fun, but everyday living, cooking, cleaning, etc. tends to make the odor go away.
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Since Jon has taken to that place none of us want to think about…..during vet school, we would have to perform necropsies on departed animals, (some of which were in the field a while.) So to combat the inevitable, we would all mask up with drops of either eucalyptus or some other aroma on the front of the mask. Made a HUGE difference.
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Last night, I switched the fridge off and opened the doors to allow it to air out while the ozone machines are running.
12 hours later, this morning, the smell is defintely not as bad anymore and I am hoping that the ozone machines will furter reduce the smell as they will continue to run until at least Saturday afternoon.
Meantime, I have searched on Google to get some ideas about removing the odors even further. Charcoal has come up a few times, so I will try that later today.
To answer Jon, I have been told there were some bad storms during the past week and they have had power problems. This did apparently trip one of the inverter breakers inside the bus (Leg 1) and subsequently, over the next several days (probably from Monday on), with AC running, the batteries were drawn down to the point where everything shut down.
So I am assuming the fridge shut down sometime on Tuesday or early Wednesday.
Anyway, another lesson learned (the hard way).
Cheers,
Ronald
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Sometimes first responders apply Vicks vapor rub to face mask to off set odors.
Just one of the things carried just in case of discoveries.
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Ronald, go get yourself one or two brand new small implement tires(wheelbarrow etc) and put them in the fridge…it works !
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Try getting one or two ot the Lampe Berger type fuel burning lamps and some bottles of the fuel in a fragrance of your choice.
Put them in the coach and they will help get the odors out of the fabric and the ceilling material.
I use them in the house after cooking very fragrant foods or frying bacon.
Lamper Berger is a brand name but there are several makers out there.
P. S. Don’t burn candles in the coach, some of them will really suett (not sure how to spell it but smoke) up the place and all your fabrics.
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Total bummer. Whenever I leave my coach unattended, even in closed storage, I always set the gen to auto-on when the batts go down in case of a power failure. I think trying to get the diesel exhaust smell out and not having to replace the batts is probably preferable though I hope I’ll never actually find out.
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Ronald, you need to understand the difference between sh*t and st*nk.
Until you get rid of the sh*t, the st*nk will always return. I’m sure cleaning out the fridge helped a huge amount but you may need to totally remove all the bins, shelves, ice maker, etc to be able to clean behind things that you normall don’t have access to.
Using an Ozone generator is a great way to oxidize the sh*t you really can’t reach. Once oxidized and dried out, the source of the st*nk will be gone and it will get much nicer.
Covering up a smell is just that – a cover up.
Enjoy your dinner…
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Our refrigerator quit working and everything in the freezer thawed. What a mess. We cleaned out the entire refrigerator and filled it with waded up newspapers. The newspapers absorbed the smell in the refrigerator after 3 to 4 days. I can not give you a reason on why it worked.
Reese
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