Finishing Up the Outside Work on the Rental…

We are a little over midway through our return stay in College Station to whip our rent house back into prime shape after having been rented to the same two fellows with three dogs for 8 plus years. The good news is that we are about halfway finished with our major repairs as well.

I spent the better part of a week completing our fencing project. The first 3 days were spent removing and rebuilding the side fence after negotiating with the neighbor to purchase materials as long as I performed the labor. I mostly worked from around 7:30 am to about 1:00 pm as it was simply too hot and muggy to work any longer than that.

It took longer to build the back fence because it took more time negotiating with that neighbor to pay for the materials. She finally agreed so I was able to tear down the old fence situated on her property line. Without her approval my alternate plan would have been to build our fence in front of her old fence without tearing it down since it was in her property.

Since there was slightly more fence in the backyard than the side it took another day to finish. Also temperatures had risen into the upper 90’s along with the usual summertime high humidity so there were heat advisories suggesting the “feel like” heat was in the mid 110’s. As a result I rarely made it 1:00 pm on those days. Thankfully the fencing project is all done now so we can check that off the to-do list.

While I was finishing up the fencing I had a concrete contractor come in to tear out our old, cracked driveway and replace it with all new concrete. As they were finishing up I also repaired our backyard deck and the side gate. While I was doing the fencing Sharon was busy with the power washer power cleaning all of the deck and the outside of the house . With all that done there is only a little touch up painting and tree work left on the outside.

The majority of the remainder of our work will be inside where at least it will be air conditioned. Our tenant will be closing on his duplex sometime near the end of June but because of the pre-existing leases in his new duplex, he cannot move in until late July. He has communicated with us that as he packs and empties rooms we can come inside to begin the last of the work.

We will replace all the flooring, repaint the entire inside, do some minor repairs and lots of deep cleaning.  During our down time while waiting to start the inside work we have reconnected with friends in the area, scheduled Sharon a series of physical therapy visits for an overuse injury and explored some of the new happy hours in town.  Such is our life right now in College Station, Texas…

NOTE: We are back in our old home town until  August 7th…Done

Severe Weather and an LIoP Norcold Error Code…

One thing RV’ers dread is severe weather. We have had our fair share of weather dilemmas. Our very first year we had to run from a hurricane in Maine only to end up in New Hampshire right in the middle of it. With branches falling from the trees above it sounded like our RV was being pounded upon.

Even last year we were chased out of the Outer Banks of North Carolina when we had to run from yet another hurricane only to end up in Raleigh NC where we were in the edge paths of two hurricanes including the one we ran from. We saw the effects of hurricanes and flooding the last couple of years in Florida. Especially hard hit was a favorite stop of ours in Mexico Beach FL which was literally decimated.

We have experienced high winds and even had to run away from a  storm projecting gusts as high as 80 mph in coastal Oregon when we drove through the darkness over the mountains to escape the storm. Never again we will drive at night through the mountains…

I can’t even recall the number of severe thunderstorm warnings, tornado warnings and severe weather alerts we have experienced in just about every state. So we are pretty accustomed to hunkering down and riding out storms. Just a few months ago a tornado touched down very close to where we were while we were hiding out in a parking garage during the tornado warning

However, recently we experienced the highest winds we have yet encountered when a severe thunderstorm came through College Station with wind gusts of 65 miles per hour that lasted more than 10-15 minutes. It felt as if we were in the ocean on a boat in rough seas as our RV was swaying to and fro.

The rains came down so hard, and sideways, looking like we were in a hurricane. Then it happened… We heard our Norcold refrigerator beeping an audible alarm. Upon inspection of the LED panel it said we had experienced an error code – LIoP.

Looking up this error on the internet I discovered that the Norcold Error Code LIoP was a triggered relay in our High Temp Limit Switch according to the Norcold  manual (See header photo). There is a light on the High Temp Limit Switch  and if it is OFF it s normal, if ON it has failed. Ours was on… sigh…

I turned off the refrigerator and waited till the next morning when it wasn’t raining. I opened the panel on the outside of the RV to gain access behind the refrigerator (photo 2). I located the High Temp Limit Switch on the coils behind the refrigerator and sure enough, light on and it was wet from the sideways rain (In photo 3 look top left corner to see green and red wire leading to High Temp Limit Switch ).

All I needed to do now was to use a hair dryer to dry out the electrical wiring and circuits in the back of the fridge. About twenty minutes later I felt that all was dry so on to the next step. They tell you that the High Temp Limit Switch is unserviceable but you actually can reset it it yourself.

It really was very easy. All I needed to do was place a fairly strong magnet to the top right of the light on the High Temp Limit Switch (see photo above where my finger is pointing for magnet location) and it reset a relay which in turn reset another relay and then the light went off.  However, if the light does come back on there may be a bigger, more dangerous problem (think possible fire) and it should be professionally serviced. I like the Telescoping Magnetic Pick-Up Tool I bought on Amazon as it works great for this task and many other tasks as well.

Luckily, in our case the light went off and the code on the front of the fridge also went off. Thankfully the fridge then continued to work normally and another RV crisis was averted. 

NOTE: We are back in our old home town until July 7th…