As most of you know, I have full-timed before.....the difference was that my husband took car of all the maintenance, repair, driving, etc. That means I have a lot to learn and have been doing so since I started researching going full-time and even more so since I picked up The Lily Pad.So what is today's lesson? Routines and setting them. No, not the routines like getting up and brushing your teeth while the coffee brews or watching/reading the morning news while you eat breakfast. These routines are things you don't encounter in normal house living.
I knew about checklists and have been developing my informal list of things to do before leaving - I have horrors or driving off with my power or water still hooked up, or worse yet with my trailer hookup only partly done or forgotten. I haven't done the setup side yet, instead I seem to do things as they occur to me but will once the final (or somewhat final) departure list is done.
I know there are maintenance things that need to be done on a regular basis and I'm trying to get a handle on that. There are the things we expect with any vehicle - fluid & filter changes, for example. But those also apply to my generator. Toss in checking the water level in my three batteries. Oh, and now I have a motorcycle that is water cooled. There are things that need greasing, packing, spraying, measuring, wiping, waxing, cleaning...you get the idea.
I discovered this weekend that there are things I need to do every day. That may be overkill but I know that this is a case of better safe than sorry. In this case it's my monitor panel...I tend to look at it every couple of days, when I think about it. This is where I can check my tank levels - fresh water, grey & black tanks, battery level and propane. Previously I was pretty good about checking the black & grey tanks but kind of slacked off because the probes don't seem to be really working (not a big surprise since they are notoriously unreliable). Since I am on shore power, I tend to not check the battery level very often either.
I was watching the fresh water level since I don't really know my tank size - I've been guesstimating 20 gallons. I carry fresh water for drinking and it has stretched pretty far. One morning I noticed it was low and got the guys here to fill it for me. I need to watch how quickly I go through it now that I'm traveling (okay, so what if I'm not moving....
The last light on the panel is for propane, needed for the stove & oven (which you already know I don't use - in fact I have never lit it), my water heater (which I heat up before a shower or around 4pm when it's still warm outside and it takes less time to heat and lasts till time to wash my face & brush my teeth for bed) and my heat. The nightly temps have been down into the 30's for a while now and even though I turned the heat down to low-mid 60's at night and off during the day, Saturday morning when I check the panel......yup, on empty. I went outside and checked the actual propane gauge and it read empty as well.
Panic time? No, I probably still had some propane in the tank but I didn't want to run it completely dry not knowing if that hurt the system in any way. The good news is that I have a great little Honeywell space heater (I had picked it up on sale at Wal-Mart last spring). Saturday was a gorgeous day, warm enough to sit outside and read so I opened up my storage bins and pulled out the heater, still in the box. My neighbor in the RV next door (the one who woke my Sunday morning asking if I had power), brought over another in case I needed it.
Well, I survived the weekend, got my propane refilled and learned another lesson. Check the monitor panel daily - twice a day if something looks like it's getting low.
Till next time - keep on rollin',
Froggi/Donna
