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Zip Dee pain in the butt awning
So my good friends, what’s the secret when these awnings start acting up? When I opened mine today it wouldn’t open using the Creston so I used the switch inside the control box. It opened but it opened very slowly. Tonight I tried to bring it back in and the extention arms retracted but that was it and at first they didn’t even come in. It was delayed. I’ve tried bringin it in with the switch in the control box but nothing happens. I am aware of water getting in the arms when it rains so I have drained the arms every time it rains. -
16 Replies
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Check the battery voltage. Those two little alarm batteries don’t seem like enough to me, but I ended up replacing them twice.
Then, when that no longer worked I called Tech Support. They walked me through discovering that I had a bad mother board and how to get it replaced.
Good luck!
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Inside the control box on the top of the plastic blue box is a breaker, verify that has not tripped. Check voltage across the batteries this should be 24v+ Do you have the jumper wire that plugs directly into the motor?
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I put new batteries in and found the charging board in the control box was bad and had to order a new board. Painful, 5000+ for a tiny little control board. Like Jeff said, if you have the jumper (you can make one) apply 24v direct to the motor.
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Here’s a picture of my control box. I’m an idiot when it comes to electricity so you’d have to explain how to check the voltage. I do have a volt meter just learning how to use it. I wish i were more mechanical. There are 3 switches on the board where all the wires plug in. The top one will open or close the awning, the middle one is motor only and the bottom one is an on/off switch. I’m going to guess that it is a battery issue. Either a need for new batteries or a charging issue with these because the last few times I’ve opened and closed it, it has moved very slowly. Please explain as best you can how to jump power directly to the motor. To me I just see a mess of wires and don’t have an understanding of how it works. Sorry for being so clueless. I promise to learn quickly.
Thanks!
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Dean:
Unplug the motor from the two wires at the barrell end of the awning, run two jumper wires to a car battery and it will close…. Been there and done that, changed out to a manual awning on my previous 2003… That awning and its operation will make you lose your mind!!
The $5k expense to change out to a manual awning let me sleep at night!! Good luck. (check in your coach supplies and may have the long jumper wires as mine had them.) Unfortuneatly, didn’t find them till after my trip to Autozone for wire and (4) alligator clips!!
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Thanks Brady,
We are working today but I’ll try that later. Here’s one for you. I came outside and the awning was back in the full open position. No buttons had been pushed. Ten minutes later, again no buttons pushed, it went back to the position shown in the picture above. Go figure.
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I skipped that generation of ZipDee awning and nothing could make me happier.
I have the latest version of ZipDee awnings which are cantilevered off the roof. So far they operate quite well. But the winner in reliability is the original manual awning. On our coaches since 1990 until we bought the present coach that is the only type we ever owned and it was reliable. We had to replace a couple of brakes which involved a few pop rivets, but beyond that the awnings worked every time.
I agree with Brady. If you switch out to the original style manual awnings the frustration you feel will go away.
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Jon: The manuel awning occasionally requires only a couple of Advil to operate!! The joy in peace of mind….Kind of like that flip phone you carry as i still carry a Blackberry and often criticized for not using a current Iphone…..
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I was a highly skilled awning operator so no Advil for me.
I freely admit it is much nicer to press a button. But the manual awnings and the ZipDee tool were quick and easy to operate also, but not as easy as the button pushing method. Since getting the new awnings I have now improved my skill level and can operate them with a variety of fingers on either hand.
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just realized that my picture of my control box did not show up on my earlier post. Here it is. I’m not sure how to spin it around.
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See the 2 batteries on the bottom of the compartment? Disconnect the 2 leads on the batteries that are easy to reach toward the outside of the compartment and check the voltage on the 2 exposed battery terminals…should be over 25 volts. If not, the Zip-Dee is not charging your batteries properly or the batteries are kaput (much more likely as Zip-Dee considers 2-3 years to be normal battery life.
On a side note, although Zip-Dee says it won’t work, I have by-passed my batteries and hooked into chassis for power. I’m still in the beta testing stage.
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Dean,
As Joel said, check your voltage. Remember, you have (2) 12 volt batteries wired series/parallel for 24 volts. if your charge board is working, you should see 26 + volts according to Zip Dee. You’re correct in the switches, one is open/close awning should your remote take a crap, motor only is just that, opens and closes the awning, we used that in FL to drain the water from your arms. The bottom switch PLC cuts all power from the control box.
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Well Doug with Excalibur is on site and looked at the awning with me. Turns out it is the charger for the batteries. Guess I get to call Zip Dee for a new charger. Oh yeah!!! 🙁
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Can someone familiar with these awnings explain
why the control system can’t use 24VDC power from the coach? -
Mike,
It can with no problem, I actually thought about that, but didn’t have an easy source of 24v in the compartment. The charge boards were on back order when I discovered my problem, so I just wired a 24v battery tender to the batteries and that solved it temporarily.
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