Worth the price of admission

This little tale starts about two years ago, but really came to light last year in Newfoundland, the Hurricane heater and I had been having a few issues off and on. Well in Newfoundland the blower motor for the combustion chamber decided that it was done, so I ordered a new fan which had to come from British Columbia, so a full twenty days by mail. And as I had the manual out reading, it talked about an electric heating element for the hot water heater, so after a little looking I found it. But it had no power, I looked high and low for a switch to turn it on but just couldn’t find one, there was a breaker poorly labeled but I determined it was the correct one, so my assumption was we had a broken power feed.

As a temporary fix I connected an extension cord to the element and just plugged it into a receptical in the basement, and we had hot water, so I didn’t rush into pulling a new feed wire through the coach as it would be a major undertaking. The heater located right front, below and behind the passenger seat, and the breaker box located in a cabinet in the left rear of the coach above the bed, so a fifty or sixty foot run…not a task I was looking forward to would be a bit of an understatement.

Well last week we joined the “Beaver Ambassador Club” and one of the clubs big features is the forum that they run, now I have worked with forums before with very limited success, but I thought let’s throw the question out to the forum members.

Basically I was looking for a wiring diagram for our coach, but I asked about the heater issue to see if any one had experienced a similar problem, and in about twenty four hours I had a couple of responses and discovered a switch located inside a cabinet close to the breaker box that controlled the hot water element. When I took delivery of the coach, the tech had pointed the switch out but had mentioned it was for the power washer (yes our coach has a built in electric pressure washer with outlets at both ends of the coach but I did not have a hose and wand, so had never used the washer or the switch. And to my amazement this one switch does pressure washer and Hurricane heater…I guess it is designed so that you can only have one or the other on at once, neat idea but one that had kerfuffled me.

So as I have reattached the power feed line, and reassembled the covers after removing the extension, and flipped the switch to Hurricane heater, and the hot water elements starts working the way it was designed, the $40 fee to join the BAC (Beaver Ambassador Club) was a really good investment, as I know the wire alone would have cost more than the years membership.

Of course now since I was helped so quickly with good correct information, I now feel I have to check the forum regularly to pay back the help I received, it’s not a real hardship but is a little time consuming and I have such a busy schedule….lol