INTRO

How to test your RV wall thermostat. This is Eric Stark with TheSmartRVer Podcast, delivering the smarts you need to enjoy the freedom of the RV lifestyle without the fear of breaking down. We’ve got a great show planned today. We will be talking about RV thermostats and a nice upgrade. Also, how to create a budget and save money while you're traveling.

And then we're going to head off to White Sands National Park. So, we got a lot to do today or a lot of things we're going to talk about.

LIVING THE RV LIFESTYLE

So, let's get started and go to the living the RV life section and talk about creating a budget and saving money while RV. So, Alexis, besides spending more money at SmartRVPartscenter.com, why would someone budget while they're traveling?

Alexis- Right? Well, you stay on the road for as long as possible. That's the kind of RV lifestyle if you can do it. So, we're going to talk about a couple of ways to help you save while you're on the road, one of the ways you can do that is by looking for either inexpensive campsites or even free ones. There are several websites. If you just type it in, free campsites, wherever you're going, you can find ones in your area. And a lot of different national parks and state parks offer discounts for seniors. Uh, citizens from military personnel and other groups. So that's kind of one thing to keep in mind,

Eric- Right. So, there's a, so it's not like asking somebody to do something hard to do. Yeah, exactly. It's just putting a little effort into it. Yeah. Yeah. And once you kind of get into the groove of that, I think more and more of that just comes your way, natural, you know? You bring it up when you're talking to fellow RVers.

Alexis- Yeah. Or you go to a campground where they have some discounts and special rates. And then they tell you, hey if you go up here, there's this other campground.

Eric- Right. Word of mouth. Yeah. Right. So that's a good way to save some money. And so, what's the benefit of saving money while you're on the road?

Alexis- I mean, it allows you to have a little more freedom. You're going to be able to travel longer, you know, spend a little more money where you spend it. So, it just kind of frees you up in that way, which makes it nice. That's kind of what RVing is about, being out there, and yeah. Yeah. A lot of times it only applies to a full-time RV where they're out.

Eric- Yeah. Whether you’re a full-time RVer or you go out for a weekend or a week, sometimes that's not as important. Then what the trip is? Exactly. Exactly. And so, what I was thinking too is if you're a full-timer and maybe you're saving all this money on campgrounds, then it, and even meals, eating out, things like that, yeah. You can put that money towards things that maybe bring you a little more joy. Yeah. Buying memories, you know? Yeah. You’re in a store and you see this cool gift, you buy it, you know, something like that. Yeah. or if an emergency comes up, always good to have. Yeah. The RV breaks down, you know, that suddenly is not, you know, you're just strapped for the cash.

Alexis- Yeah. You got some money put away. A lot of people are on a fixed income, so it's a little different. Yeah. So, they must plan a little bit better.

Eric- Exactly. You know, or you know, you're an area like in the desert. In the wintertime, you know, it's, the wintertime is still hot there. Your awning fabric dies, and you need a new one. Well, you don’t wait, so that would allow you to get one sooner. Yep. So that's a great way to save some money. And there are memberships out there and the membership stores and. You know, the coupons, all that kind of stuff. Oh yeah. It all plays into it, you know? And if you know you need something and it's going to be on sale, just wait until it's on sale before you buy it. There's a lot of planning you can do.

Alexis- Yeah, there is. Yeah. So, it keeps you on the road longer, has fewer headaches, and has more money to spend when you need to spend it, whether you like it or not.

Eric- Sometimes. That's right. All right. Very nice. So that's going to help you stay on the road longer.

STAYING ON THE ROAD

Now that brings us in too, staying on the road, and we're going to talk about testing your RV wall thermostat. So, you know, right now, today when we're doing this episode, it is like two degrees out, something like that, or zero degrees out. So, it's very fitting. And in the wintertime in Montana, we get a lot of people that repair furnaces, in fact, during the summertime as well, it gets so cool at night. Yeah, sometimes you need a furnace just to break the chill so, it's cold outside you. You go to the thermostat, you flip that switch and nothing happens and you turn it off, you turn it back on, you turn it off, turn it back on.

Nothing happens. The furnace just doesn't do a thing. The blower does not come on, nothing. So, you know, you need to keep your RV warm. You know, there are water lines in it that are going to freeze. You're going to freeze; your pets might freeze. Oh no. So, you need to keep that furnace going. And sometimes you have alternative sources of heat, but sometimes you don't.

A lot of people live in an RV with just a furnace, and that is it. I recommend having those backup heat sources run those heat sources to help the furnace not use so much propane. You know, and keep a, uh, dehumidifier in the RV if you're living in it, out of that reduces the moisture in the air and makes it warmer in the RV.

Good idea. Okay, off subject, back to subject now, wall thermostats. All right, so you, you, you know, you turn it on and off, nothing happens. Now you need to get going. You need to get this fixed, right? Out of you can't let the water lines freeze, you know, whether you're living in it or you're out for a weekend.

And also, if you're out for a weekend and it's someplace cold where you are. You know this is this type of thing could be so simple sometimes it's not a big deal. I'll walk you through it, how to get you through a weekend without even having to replace the thermostat if that's what the problem is.

So you can call a technician out, you know, at a hundred bucks an hour, 110, whatever it is, plus there's a service call, or you take a tow shop, whatever it might be. So you're going to spend a lot of money on something that's pretty. So, this is something you can do yourself. It's that simple.

Most people could do this. You can diagnose the problem and be a hero. Save the day. Yep. No problem. Water's working. It's hot again. The RV's warm. This is nice. Hmm. So, if the furnace is not coming on, so in other words, the blower, the fan doesn't do anything. You turn the thermostat on, and nothing happens.

So that was going to tell you that it is probably the wall thermostat where the problem is at. It's not going to be in the furnace more than likely. And so I want to emphasize this, is when the thermostat, when you turn the thermostat on and the blower doesn't come on. . , and I'm emphasizing that out of so often things get explained to us very wrong and we go down this rabbit hole of bad information trying to figure out a problem.

Yeah, and we waste time. Sometimes people buy things out of we can, you know, they can explain it to us completely different than what the real problem was. They come back and, oh, well, the fan doesn't come on. Oh, okay. That's not what you said. And you know, we don’t argue about it, but just. That's, I just make sure you understand that's what it is.

The fan is not coming on. You turn the thermostat on. It doesn't matter what ma noise it makes, if the fan doesn't come on, we're talking about the wall thermostat, more than likely being bad. So, when it's the wall thermostat, it's a very easy system to diagnose. It's very straightforward. And as a smart rv, this is right there in your wheelhouse.

This is something you can do. Remember, your furnace isn't working, it's freezing outside, and you need to get it warm. You need to get that RV back up to temperature, so everything doesn't freeze inside. You know you don't want your water line to freeze if you don’t freeze. No, it's important whether it's for a weekend or you're staying in your RV.

So, RV thermostats are 12 volts. Some people exchange them for residential ones. Residential ones are typically 24 volts. So, it depends on the residential thermostat. But sometimes it might work, but not everything's going to work. And people do this less expensive in some cases. Not every case.

I recommend sticking with the RV thermostats. Don't just go buy a residential one and try to make it work. . , it's not always going to work the same. And you can try it, and I know there are YouTube videos and stuff, but you know, YouTube videos. The quality isn't there anymore. Yeah, they're changing.

And residential thermostats are not designed to bounce down the road like an RV thermostat is. They're not designed the same way. You know, you need to be careful if you go do, go buy one. If you buy one online, even if it's an RV thermostat, make sure it's a good quality one and not a knockoff. There are a lot of knockoffs of stuff.

It looks just like a Duotherm thermostat, and it's not. Yeah, it was cheap. They work twice, you know, and it's the truth. They just don't work. If it's the thermostat, don't worry about it. It's easy. So let's talk about heat-only thermostats. So, your RV has, maybe it has an air conditioner on it and it has a furnace.

They all have furnaces. Not all RVs have air conditioners. So, let's say it has both or just has a furnace. It doesn't matter if you have a heat-only thermostat. So, heat only means that it's working. Just the furnace. It's not a thermostat that works, the air conditioner and the furnace, it's just a thermostat for the furnace.

So those are probably the easiest ones to diagnose. They're very simple, so all you have to do is take the cover off the front of it. Yeah, you might need a screwdriver, a very small flat blade, screwdriver, something, uh, thin. Sometimes they just pop right off by lifting them. I recommend taking a picture of the wires just to get in the habit of doing it.

This thing is so easy, it almost doesn't matter, but it's good practice to do, sometimes the wiring can be so obvious, but man, you turn around and you forget how obvious it was and you wire it wrong. like, there's no way I can get this wrong. And you do. So just take a picture, good habit to get into.

So, all you have to do is disconnect the two wires by loosening the screws that hold them to the thermostat. and tie them together, twist them to the furnace, the furnace blower should start, you know, within a second or two. And if it comes on and it lights, the heat starts coming out, then the furnace is fine.

Your wall thermostat is the issue. Mm. So that's an easy thing to do. So, you've just bypassed the thermostat. You've diagnosed that the furnace works, and the wall mount thermostat is defective and needs to be placed. So, you can let the furnace run like this too. So, you tie those wires together if you have a wire or not, you can put it on there just so they can't touch anything else or come apart.

But you can just walk away from that and let the furnace run. So, like if you're trying to heat your RV, it has been off for hours or whatever the situation is, you can just leave that tied together. The furnace will run. Just don't let it run all night, all day. You have to become the thermostat. Okay?

So, when it gets up to temperature, you know, maybe a little warmer than normal, turn it off and then let it see it. Then you feel when you, like, if you're watching a thermometer, you can go back and turn it back on manually like that. . . So, it's simple. It's. Just remember, you must become the thermostat.

And you don't want that furnace to just run and run and run and run, you know, depending on how warm it gets, it could fail, could become another problem. You just become the thermostat. So it's not something you have to panic about, if that's the case, that's pretty simple and you're not going to get electrocuted or shocked if you twist those wires together.

good to know. No big deal. So now you just need to go get a new thermostat, and we're going to pin that for a moment. We're going to come back to buying a new thermostat in a second. I've already touched on it a little bit, but we're going to come back to it. So now what if you have a dual thermostat that's for heat and ac, basically you're going to do the same thing.

It just takes a little more time because we're going to be more wires going to the heat and AC thermostat. So if you're working with the furnace, you need to remove the cover and, sometimes you have to take the thermostat off the wall. It kind of depends on the brand you have, with heat and AC thermostat, you locate the furnace wires, there's going to be two of them and they're going to go, or one, there's going to be one wire going to the furnace.

The other one's a power support or power supply, which would be 12 volts if you can. Sometimes it's best to locate a wiring diagram, you can get them online if you have a colon thermostat or a Duotherm thermostat. There are plenty of wiring diagrams, but typically the two wires when it comes to the furnace are going to be the red wire and white wire.

Typically, not every time. It kind of depends on how the RV is wired and we're talking about the designation on the thermostat. The color of the wire going to, it could be. But if the thermostat says W for white and red, or R for red, then those two wires would go together, and they might be different colors.

Okay. So, keep that in mind. They're not always a hundred percent on that. Hmm. But having those wiring diagrams before you need them can make it a little easier too. Especially if it's a situation where panic is setting in. You get those fixed, you know, it's getting late, it's getting colder, you know?

Yeah. Having it ready to go makes it. So, whether it's on your phone, tablet, paper, copy, or whatever, just make sure you have it and it's available. And like I said, some wires and RVs are not color matched to the thermostat, so that can make it a little more confusing, but it's still not that difficult to do.

So, after you identify the wire for the furnace and the power wire, as I said, it's usually white and red. You connect them and the furnaces start. And if it starts up, then the thermostat is bad. And you might be going, wow, this thermostat just worked yesterday. Just worked last night. Yeah.

Well, that's what happens. Things die. It's Kind of like your car, you know, pull up in your driveway, you go out the next morning to start it and it doesn't start. Yep. things break. . . So, you're going to have to buy a thermostat and. That kind of sucks, but that's the way it is. You know, thermostats certainly make it more convenient.

Do the same thing with the air conditioning. Now, in the air conditioning, it's the same principle, but there are three wires that you can use on the air conditioner in an RV. You have a compressor wire and a fan wire. You have the power wire, and you have high and low fan speeds. But that might not come into play on this.

This might just be built into the thermostat. So, you can do the same thing with your air conditioner by jumping those wires. And before you do that, I would disconnect or turn the breaker off for the ac. Just make sure there's no power going through the thermostat. Then after you get the wires tied together, you can turn the power back on at the ac.

Turn that breaker back on. , but it's really simple to diagnose the thermostat either way, whether it's the air conditioning or the furnace. And so that helps you or keeps you from buying a thermostat if you don't need one. Because if the AC or the furnace comes on, then the problems are in the thermostat, if they don't come on, then the problem's not in the thermostat.

It's in the appliance. So, it saves you a trip to the store, saves you from buying something that you're just going to have to return later on because

you misdiagnosed it, which it happens. . , it's an easy thing to misdiagnose. , we see it quite often, but we walk people through these steps so they don't have to do that.

So that's simple. So that's something you can do. And even with the air conditioner, you can leave it on. So now back to the wall Mount thermostats. If you have a heat-only thermostat, you can go to any RV store and get a low-cost replacement.

It's easy. It doesn't even have to be the same brand. It could just be a heat-only thermostat. That's all you care about. If yours says Atwood on it and they have one that says Suburban, it doesn't matter. Okay. They work the same. No one's going to know the difference, so that makes it easy. It just must be heated only if that's what you're replacing.

Now, if you have a heat cool thermostat or a dual thermostat, it's either going to be a Duotherm by Dometic or a Coleman or an Eric Cell brand. Then there's also Atwood and, a Furrion has one, and there's another one made by Dematic. I can't recall the name right now. It'll come to me. It's not a big seller, but there are some out there generally.

Easier to go back to the same brand of thermostat. In some cases, you must, they can be very proprietary. Like Coleman, you can go put just any Coleman thermostat will replace just about any Coleman thermostat as long as it has the same functions, in an emergency though, you might not worry about a function.

Hmm. If you can get things working. So, it's just easier to go back with the same brand. Now if it's wintertime and your furnace stops working and all you do is get it working. You don’t spend a hundred and something dollars for that wall thermostat or 80 bucks, and you can get one for, you know, 25 at your local RV store.

You can do that by extending the wires and just hooking up a Heaton thermostat. It'll work, it'll get you by. It's not the coolest thing to do, but it's functional, and yeah, got a thermostat so you don't have to worry about it. The point here is, though, going back to the. And you know, now you're replacing your thermostat.

Let's say you have an analog one, so you got the little lever of slide back and forth and you want to go to digital. So, it'd be a good time to do that. So, if you want the digital, just remember, it doesn't change the air temperature. Hot air is hot air cold air is cold air. It's not going to make it feel better.

It's not going to add something to it. It's just a digital thermostat. And so digital thermostats are programmable, whereas analogs aren't. So, they can be a little more efficient as well, but you can program it. And there is a thermostat made of micro air. They make one for RV to replace the thermostats.

Now they're. Specific to the brand, but these things have Wi-Fi built into them and Bluetooth. Hmm. So, you don't have to get out of bed to change the temperature. That's cool. You can check it remotely, and turn it on remotely through the Wi-Fi, so it has some great functionality. Nice. So, that's something to look at.

We're going to be doing more about that in an upcoming episode. and it's something we'll have a, uh, a video on as well. We’re probably going to dedicate quite a bit of a podcast to one. Oh. It was such a cool item and everything Myra turns out to be good products we can get behind what they make. So as I said earlier, you can get cheap thermostats online, but be cautious of the knockoffs.

Do not buy a Duotherm thermostat that, you know, they say it's Duotherm and it's 18 bucks, 25 bucks. It's not going to be a good thermostat. It's going to be a cheap knockoff. It's not going to work the same. We've seen them, we've bought them in experimenting with them, and they're no good. You know, the Internet's becoming just a junkyard of cheap junk and you have to be very careful, not just in thermostats, but a lot of stuff that's out there.

You know, it's a third of the price, half the price. You need to start to wonder, you know, is it a main, main brand? You see it in stores. If you don't see it in RV stores, there's a good reason why there's probably not a quality product, and not every RV store carries top-of-the-line stuff as we do, but they still sell decent products regardless.

So, I don't beat that point into the ground. Just be aware of it. So we're going to do more on the micro rare thermostat, and if you go to TheSmartRVer.com, there's going to be a page there under, uh, probably do-it-yourself stuff about RV thermostats, it's going to just have some wiring and some basic stuff.

How to understand everything we just talked about will be in writing, so you can, you know, go through it step by step. If you're trying to diagnose something and you forget some of this, that’s understood. I forget it as soon as we walk out of the room. That doesn't sound good, does it?

NEXT STOP

All right, so that's going to take us to the next stop today we're going to be visiting White Sands National Park and Alexis is going to be our tour guide and she's going to tell us about White Sands.

Alexis- Now, this is somewhere I want to go. I think I say that about a lot of them, but this place is cool in New Mexico, if you Google a picture of it just looks like vast, just white, sugary hills. That's cool, and some of the things you can do there, they have neat driving tours. It doesn't even look like a road. They will just take you in this really neat Jeep and take you all around and you can look at things, it's a beautiful place that takes about an hour usually. Or you can go by yourself, you can do it yourself. There's also sledding, and they sell, uh, little wax plastic saucers that you get in.

Eric- That's the best thing to take down those hills and they'll kind of show you how to do it safely because it's not like snow, you know it's a little different.

Alexis- But that would be fun to do too, so you can go sledding there, and it's warm. Uh, you can also go hiking. In most national parks. There's always a place to go hiking.

Eric- Right. So, the Jeep tours are probably in the dunes themselves. Yeah. Okay. There's no trail. Yep. So it's designed to drive in the sand and all that. So that's cool because you’re kind of going back to where it's harder to walk in that stuff.

Alexis- Yeah, exactly. You know, the trek back there, you know, kind of a workout.

Eric- You must wear snowshoes. Yeah. So that's cool. The sledding reminds me of when I was a kid, we, uh, went to Pismo Beach on the coast of California. Yeah. And they had some dunes there and we did some of that. That's fun. And later, as a kid, someplace else where they were doomed, you know, didn't always work out as we planned. Sometimes you just roll down the hill. But yeah, you might, this is fun. You might do that. Yeah, little sandier, so that sounds cool. White Sands, I've been there or near there. It's an interesting place. It's very big. It is warm there in the summertime. So Nice. Nice. In the wintertime. Hot in the summertime. Yeah, it’s still a cool place to go. And it's a high desert there too, so it's right. Somehow, it's there, but yeah, it's a cool place. It is. All right. So now we're out in the middle of this desert New Mexico. Is there any, Food there? Do you better believe it?

Alexis- Uh, well for one, if you're a breakfast lover like I am, there's a waffle and pancake shop, so their specialty. It is breakfast, so that's good. And then there's, this is a pretty, uh, neat one, DH Combs Winery, and Bistro. It's, it's a family-owned place and it's just beautiful. It's kind of out in the middle, like by the desert. The scenery is beautiful and apparently, the food and the wine are amazing. So that might be a place to investigate if you're there.

Eric- One to go to. All right. So, to see you budget your travels and then you can afford the fancy place and drink lots of wine. That's right. So yeah, you need to have the food again. It goes that whole exercising thing. That's right. So now you're out in the middle of the desert and. You know, when you think of the desert, sometimes you think of Arizona, like people out there dry camping out the middle of the desert is just kind of miserable. Do they have any amenities there?

Alexis- Yeah, they do, there's Alamogordo, I think I'm saying that right, Alamogordo. There we go. And KOAs are nice. They're generally pretty big, they usually have pretty good amenities. So, if you're looking for, you know, more than just dry camping, that would be a good place. There's the Boot-Hill Resort and then there's Mountain Meadows RV Park, so you're pretty covered out there. If you go stay.

Eric- All right, so that sounds like a good place to go. New Mexico is a cool state. I've been there a few times. Yes, yes. Trail destruction along the way. Awesome. But there's a lot to see there. It's just nice. You need to check that out. Put that on your list. Yeah. And of course, this will be on TheSmartRVer.com website. Under Next Stop, with all the other places that Alexis takes us to. Go check that out! Now, we're going to talk about RV Envy.

RV ENVY

So, there are a lot of changes in the RV world and a lot of them are good and some of them are bad and some of them forced us to do things maybe we're not ready to do. Like, y'all remember the Atwood water heaters do. bought, Atwood did it with Atwood water heaters, and they came out their own. We're going to talk about that in a future episode.

But it's along the same lines. Atwood also bought hydro flame. I mean, Dematic also bought hydro inflaming when they bought Atwood water heaters. They have Atwood Furnaces. Yeah. So that stuff is going away. So hydro flame parts are becoming harder and harder to get, and more scarce and some are more available than others, but I notice that the medic who owns hydro flame is no longer making some parts.

So eventually they're just going to run out. Dometic has made a furnace and it is an awesome furnace. It's 19% more efficient than most other furnaces and is 20% quieter. So those are huge things. Yeah. If you have a hydro flame or an Atwood furnace and you are having a hard time getting parts, or it's just time to replace it when that day does come.

Then Dometic makes this their furnace, which is almost a direct replacement depending on the cabinet that was built for that holds your furnace. Some of the cabinets are too narrow for the Dometic to fit in easily. It's not just plug-and-play. It's a little bit of work than plug-and-play, but it's a much better furnace.

So even if you're thinking about upgrading your furnace, the Dematic furnaces are great. You know, to try to go from a hydro flame or an Atwood to a suburban furnace would be hard to do. You know, out of how they're mounted, the cabinet size, the holes in the wall, so there are some obstacles there.

It's a doable thing, but Dometic made it easier, and they only have, I think it's three physical sizes of their furnaces. They have different BTU ratings, but it's just three sizes close to that. So, it makes it easy to do. and you're not going to go from a 20,000 BTU furnace to 40,000. That's just, you know, over the top.

You wouldn't do that unless you had a reason to, and you had the space and, you could swing that. So, you know, sometimes we must do these upgrades whether we like it or not. If you can't get the parts for your furnace and you have to upgrade, that's just what you have to do, but remember, if you're upgrading to the Dometic furnace, it is an awesome furnace compared to the other ones.

It's a good furnace, much more efficient, so it's worth the money. You know, you can pay the same money for less quality, that's for sure. So sometimes we just must do it. And so, the Dometic furnaces will be on TheSmartRVer.com, or SmartRVPartscenter.com so you can learn more about them there.

OUTRO

So, check that out SmartRvPartscenter.com. The Dometic furnaces will be there and as always information is on TheSmartRVer.com as well. So that's going to bring us to the end of the show today. I want to thank everybody for coming by and listening. You can Listen on iTunes and Spotify, and all the podcast channels are available everywhere.

Or you can go to our website and of course we. Videos on YouTube that you can look at as well. So, we ask you to check those out and subscribe if you like them. So, this is Eric Stark with TheSmartRVer Podcast. It's been great hanging out with you today. If I don't see them on the road, let's connect at TheSmartRVer.com.