Underneath that stuff, I will post my regular daily stuff..... kinda sorta fun, eh?
So here it goes, we are up to the letter M now!
MOTORHOME MODIFICATIONS
STARTING WITH THE LETTER M
Maxx Air Vent Covers:
It's raining today so instead of staining boards, I thought I would continue with my Motorhome Modification posts.
On every RV we have owned, we have added these plastic funny-shaped covers over the crank-up roof vent lids. They are called Maxx Air covers and we sure appreciate them on our roof. See the two blue square shaped things in the center of our roof??
It's raining today so instead of staining boards, I thought I would continue with my Motorhome Modification posts.
On every RV we have owned, we have added these plastic funny-shaped covers over the crank-up roof vent lids. They are called Maxx Air covers and we sure appreciate them on our roof. See the two blue square shaped things in the center of our roof??
There are many reasons to use a Maxxair vent on an RV, whether it's a motorhome, travel trailer or fifthwheel. When it's raining, of course, it means you can still keep your roof vent lids open for fresh air without getting rain inside. Okay... that is the obvious one and makes sense.
Another reason is snow.... the weight of snow on the thin crank up vent lids can crack them, especially if they are more brittle after a few years of UV exposure. I can not imagine the horror of coming out to your rig after a winter's worth of snow was dripping inside, making a mound of snowy ice on the floors and furniture, and melting as the temps warm up. Again, if you had the Maxx air covers that would not be such a worry.
Our friends had suffered a broken vent cover in a horrible hail storm! So now when they went to the RV dealer to buy a new vent lid, they also bought a Maxx air cover to go over it for added protection. Guess that's another reason for the Maxx air I never thought of! Hail protection.
They normally come in white or black or smoke colors. No blue. That is why we painted ours, as I think it looks nice to have them blue to kinda match our rig. The Krylon "Fusion" paint is made for painting on plastic. This blue color was close enough of a match to make it look "spiffy" dontcha think?
Looks pretty good from the side profile too
Every fall we go through this process when preparing the rig for a winter rest. Mouse Prevention! It's removing any and all things can attract mice. We run a cord from the garage to get power into the rig, and we plug in three of these small mice deterrent devices that really work well. One in the basement compartment and one at each end of the rig. They are called:
Victor Mini PestChaser Ultrasonic Rodent Repellent
You can find them in most hardware and home improvement stores,
but also here is a link to them on Amazon.
Our RV friends Fred and Sharon told us about them. They live in the woods and battle nasty mice sneaking into their RV all the time. Mice do horrible damage, chewing wires in the walls, or into the pex tubing water lines. (that happened to us on our last motorhome, the Coachmen) Since our friends bought these devices, they have no problem at all. Fred said in a light snowfall, he could actually see the little mice footprints hopping up to their motorhome all around, but stopping about a foot away and turning around.. and going back into the woods! They get close, hear the ultrasonic sound, and run away from it! (our friends also have a dog who isn't bothered by it) We put them now in our house too, and our dogs don't seem bothered by it either. No mice, so we are good.
I would rather chase away the mice BEFORE they get into the rig. Opposed to catching them with traps after they are inside, after doing damage or eating poison where they die inside and stink! ewwwww
Mr. Buddy propane heater:
This is such a handy little unit and we used it a lot over the years. Since we installed a bigger Olympian Wave 8 permanently on the wall, we do not use this as much anymore. But it is worth mentioning because we do have it as supplementary heat source when needed. (like in below zero stuff) On one trip out west, we were in the high desert with cold nights and our Olympian went kerput. We used the Mr. Buddy until we got the Olympian Wave 8 fixed.
Original equipment RV propane furnaces waste a lot of propane and a lot of battery power if you are not on electric hookups. Not wanting to use the big propane furnace, we did what most RVers do… we called on a buddy… Mr. Buddy!
Steve piped in an extra propane line through the basement, over to the passenger side of the rig, up through the cabinet that is under our table (it contains the extra leaves for our table) … and added a shut off valve and flexible propane hose. Onto this hose we can hook our portable Mr Buddy heater. Because the Mr. Buddy can operate on high pressure propane tanks, it has a built in regulator. But so does the propane line in our rig. Guess we were being *double regulated* hee heee It would kick out when on HI. Soooooo we needed to alter the Mr. Buddy by removing it’s built in regulator to let both Lo and HI settings work in our rig.
(I also set it on an aluminum cookie sheet
to protect the table just in case.
This pic is for illustration purpose)
We have also used it in other situations. One weekend, my sister and I were demonstrating fiber tools (like my sockknitting machine and spinning wheel) at a festival. We were in a large canopy tent with a big open side for customers to come in. Brrrr it was a very chilly cold autumn morning. Note the Mr. Buddy behind our chairs, emitting nice warm heat onto our legs and tushies! LOL
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It is a rainy icky morning, like I said above. It's too damp to stain more of the fence materials in the garage. We did run to Menards last night and nab 50 more nice deck boards to do the horizontal fence pieces. We need 66 total but didn't want to overload the towing power of the Tracker. The gal at Menards gave an estimate on the computer that 66 of them would weigh just over 1,000 pounds. (our limit) So we chose to only take 50 and come back for another load today. We also have to start picking up the spindles. They come in bundles I think of 36, so we will weight one and calculate from there. We need over 500 of them to complete our fence.
Steve is driving his Old Fart Party Bus in two shifts today, with a couple hours off in between. Maybe we will run for one more load of wood on his break. We only have until Saturday to buy it all because of the rebate sale ending Saturday night.
Tomorrow, (Friday) we are helping with the fundraiser brat fry for the Calumet County Historical Society in the morning and Steve has to drive in the afternoon. Saturday we are helping at the museum in the morning ---- then in the afternoon and evening we are having ALL of our kids and grandkids here for Steve's birthday!!! Backyard cookout and family fun.... no fence in place yet, but it will get done as the weather cooperates.
I am pleased to report our new gel memory foam mattress is a winner! It is so comfortable that we don't really want to get up in the mornings. LOL .... and Steve has made the coffee and brought it back up to the bedroom and we sit in bed and watch the news. As depressing as the news is, we are at least comfy and cosy on our new mattress. hahahahahha
We don't get mouse intrusion inside our trailer, but when we took the cover off the wheels and trailer we notice some chewing of the fabric (Sunbrella) had been going on. It sounds like the Sonic PestChaser works keeping them away? I might have to give this a try.
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