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DUK/I learned about the coach from this!
This is a plumbing issue that has a electrical solution!
Back when I was flying regularly and even after I quit flying but had delusions of flying again I subscribed to Flying Magazine like many pilots did/do. At the time Flying had a regular column called “I learned about flying from that” which had articles written by pilots about experiences they had while flying that could be used as a teaching event in the magazine.
At two of the banks I worked at I tried to get a similar thing going on our intranet, but could never get them to get traction and take off. I called them DUKs … Did yoU Knows. I think there is a home for something similar to the Flying topic and/or DUKs in the PC Forum.
Similar to the “a-ha” moment that one of the members had when his generator wouldn’t run with less than 1/4 tank of diesel … I had an “a-ha” moment today. I’ll share the story.
Last fall I did an incomplete job of winterizing our coach. When we arrived at Jeff Rowe’s in January and hooked up to his fresh water we had water coming out of the Headhunter Mach 5 pump in a number of places that weren’t part of the original design. Jeff had one in stock, his crew replaced it, and we had great water during the next three weeks we spent in Florida.
Our coach didn’t have any Prevost or Liberty manuals when we bought it. While at the Tampa RV show I talked to Frank Konigseder and he had a manual for our coach sent to our home in Wisconsin. It has a really comprehensive section on “winterizing” which I closely followed step-by-step in early February upon our return to The Great North.
Last weekend we took the coach to Holland, Michigan and noticed that the breaker for the water pump kept tripping. Hmmmm …. something is wrong. Called Jeff Rowe today and he gave me a couple of things to do to trouble shoot the problem. One of them was looking at the amp draw of the pump. So I turned everything off on the leg the water pump is on, opened a faucet, turned the water pump breaker on, and noticed it was drawing about 16.6amps (that’s quite a bit for even a 20amp circuit). The pump ran for a while and didn’t trip the breaker like it did this past weekend. Hmmmm … probably solved? Maybe.
Then I closed the faucet, heard the pump turn it self off, the breaker still hadn’t tripped. Then I noticed that with the pump not running 9.6 amps were still being pulled. Huh. There should be no draw on the water pump circuit with the pump turned off. What is “wrong” now? Something else “hillbillyed” onto that circuit at some point? After going back to the water bay and looking at the plumbing and the wiring for the water pump and water heater I noticed that I had both the water heater and water pump plugged into the same circuit. There is a duplex box (four outlets) in the water bay and each pair of outlets are on separate circuits (#33 and #12). Once I plugged the water pump into the water pump circuit and the water heater into the water heater circuit, now the water pump circuit drew zero amps when the water pump wasn’t running.
Part of the Liberty instructions for winterizing was to unplug both the water heater and water pump plugs as part of the winterization process. Apparently when I dewinterized this spring I failed to get the water heater plugged into the right outlets.
So through this, I learned more about the wiring logic of the coach and how it impacts using the coach.
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11 Replies
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I cannot speak about all Liberty coaches, but my water pump and water heater on two coaches have been plugged into two different electric outlets, one of which had a marine type receptacle and the other a conventional home electrical outlet. That way the problem Dick describes would not have been possible.
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Not enough diesel guy here!! I didn’t know that either Dick. Seems there is a 1000 things I don’t know but with the help of the folks here on PC who are not ashamed to say when they dummy themselves will help greenhorns like me! I appreciate all your posts.
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Steve,
We will give you free dues next year if you can find a Prevost owner that knew it all when he bought his first coach. As a bonus we will give the second year of free dues if you can find an owner that did not learn some stuff on his coach the hard way (as in making a big mistake).
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I doubt I would be able to make use of your offer. I just hope my mistakes aren’t too costly! I have already donated to Jeff Rowe’s’ kids college fund, and plan on more!
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What college fund, Josh gets OJT daily and all the doughnuts he can eat… One thing for sure, if he sticks with turning wrenches, he’ll never be unemployed.
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Steve:
We bought our coach in May of 2014. I’m probably just as much of a Greenhorn as you are! Look into your water bay and check out the electrical box the water heater and the water pump plug into. They should be labeled with circuit numbers.
I wish that Liberty would have labeled the breaker switches on the panel with the wire/circuit numbers so they would be easy to identify … especially for Greenhorns.
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Tom,
I agree with you 100% on the never be unemployed. Even John D. Rockefeller didn’t go to college. Just took a 10 week book keeping course and I am not sure if he even graduated. Acutally Josh and I had the discussion about how few people knew about coaches like his dad and if he learned EVERYTHING he could from him he would do quite well in life money wise. College was not for me, and I own a bus ;).
Dick,I hope to not be so green on of these days, I just hope I survive the learning curve!! P.S. Since Jeff is installing a new poop tank and hot waterheater for me, I would bet it will be plugged in correctly!
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Steve, Dick and all who consider themselves newbies and who might be in awe of our coaches. Your are clearly in good company. I don’t care how long you have owned a specific coach, you are still going to have stuff you don’t know. I am realizing nobody can possibly know it all. First, we are all using a Prevost chassis, which in itself is an evolving product, and not the simplest assemblage of pieces and parts.
Then that chassis has a house stuffed into it. We all know that while our houses share common characteristics with outher houses from the same converter, no two of those are alike and they are just as complex as the chassis.
I find the comments made by our members almost every time are not only valid, they are the type that a designer would read, and follow with a slap to the forehead. Putting numbers on circuits that match the breakers in the electric panel sure seems obvious when Dick mentions it, but why hasn’t something like that been done?
The best we can all do is post our thoughts. It doesn’t matter how much experience or knowledge we have, just doing a brain dump from time to time is proven to be very helpful. As to formal education, we on PC run the gamut. We have folks whose education has been the school of hard knocks and those who are formally educated to a high degree. But it is not only educatiuon. Look at the career history of our members and the diverse backgrounds. This is a group I am certain that is capable of resolving any issue, not only those related to the coach.
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Yep …
I’ve been on this site a little over seven weeks and am reading everything that’s posted. I comprehend about 5%, probably less, when it comes to “fixing” items on your coach. What makes it more difficult is that I don’t actually have a coach yet so I can’t even go look at the “valve” Steve is referring to.
But it’s nice to know there are fine folks like yourselves willing to provide your expertise when “I do” ask that dumb question.
I can’t wait to get my coach by the end of this year. I’ll be the first to sign up for the “Know Your Prevost” workshop at Jeff’s. Even if I can’t fix it based on lack of tools, etc., at least I’ll be a little more educated to ask the right questions.
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Tim … go out and buy a coach now. Between that purchase and when you purchase your long-term coach you’ll learn a ton and move off your 5% comprehension level.
The comments about college and school are interesting. I think it was Jon used the term “education”, receiving “one” (i.e. “an education”) is much more important that attending college or going to school. One can attend college or go to school and NOT receive an education.
Since someone else mentioned Josh, we’ll keep the spotlight on him. After being at Jeff’s shop twice and I realized that Josh is receiving an education from Jeff. A real education. We’ve all heard of “home schooling” and believe that Josh (and anyone else who works for Jeff) is being “shop schooled”.
The members of PC have come from diverse backgrounds and have probably all been fairly successful to one degree or another. If we polled the group, we probably very diverse educational backgrounds. But one way or another, we’ve all received “educations” that were essential in our individual successes. Some of those educations were very formal and structured (college and graduate school for example) and others much less formal but with structure (learning to fly and obtaining ever increasingly complicated ratings comes to mind). On the other end of the spectrum are informal, unstructured, and often subtle forms of education. Shop schooling, learning by doing, and/or being on the ground floor start of a process or industry.
I’ve come to conclude that while some form of formal education beyond beyond high school is important (especially if you want to be a doctor, lawyer, engineer etc.), what is really important in the long run is that one receives an education. Besides the technical skills that someone would learn in college, a tech school, or through shop schooling its really critical that one learns really good problem solving skills and an ability to effectively work with others (co-workers, boss(es), subordinates, vendors and suppliers, and customers).
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Good post Dick!! I have been “educated” all my life and now that I own a Prevost my education will continue!
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