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…

Going Back to Work in Texas…

With our time ending in the hill country we sadly started heading east (instead of west as we would have preferred) to head back over to College Station Texas. We are back in Aggieland and have returned to our old home town because we need to do some work on our rent house.The last tenants have been in it for over 8 years and since they were two guys with three dogs you can imagine how much work needs done on the rental.

After soliciting many bids for the work we finally decided it best to go back to College Station to do much of the work ourselves to save a bundle of money. The bids had come in at around $13,500 to have everything done and we figure to save at least $6500 doing much of it ourselves. The only thing we for sure won’t do is the replacing of the concrete driveway at a cost of $4500.  

We pulled into Holiday RV Park with a plan to stay until at least July 7th and perhaps longer if we need to extend to get the work done. Thankfully our being full time RV’ers allows us the luxury to change plans as needed at a moments notice. We can simply point our home (RV) in a different direction to take on whatever it is that challenges us.

One of the first tasks I chose to tackle was replacing our very old and dilapidated privacy fence. Two sides of the fence needed replacing and one neighbor agreed that if I did the work they would pay for materials, meaning the fence would cost us no money. Fifty feet of privacy fence on open bid would have been over $1100 to have built.

Well, it has been 8 years since I have done any kind of hard work and this is some very serious manual labor. The first day I spent tearing down the old fence, digging new holes with a metal post hole digger and finally putting in new posts in concrete. The following two days were spent framing the fence runners and screwing in the pickets.

It took a little less than 3.5 days to build which saved us at least a grand but man that was hard work. After the first day I felt like I had been in a car wreak. Fortunately Sharon offered to give me a deep massage that evening and friends of ours offered  the use of their hot tub which I graciously accepted. I didn’t feel great the next day but I also can’t imagine how I would have felt if I hadn’t had the massage and hot tub therapy.

So here we are a week into our work and we still can’t get in the inside until our tenant leaves later this month. A hell of way to spend your birthday but at least Sharon made me a fantastic carrot cake!

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