to play pickleball every day. Dorcas and Matilda play with neighboring puppies. Matilda's new best friend is Tipper, a border collie/poodle mix, from Iredell County, NC, of all places. Unfortunately Tipper will be leaving on Sunday, and Matilda must find another friend. It is amazing how valuable a good puppy playmate can be. It is good for everyone, dogs and owners alike, when compatible dogs can run free on the trails, until they drop from exhaustion.Now for the bad news: A motor home is a collection of complicated systems, all exposed to vibration, dust, wind, hot, cold and plain wear and tear. When everything is working correctly (and this is a rare occasion), it is best to kick back, relax and savor the moment, because something is bound to break soon. I keep thermometers in the refrigerator and the freezer. Shortly after we arrived at TTO, about a week ago, I noticed that the temperature in the freezer was gradually rising. It normally reads less than 10F. Now it was approaching 25F and the ice cream was melting! Egads! Something must be done. Today it quit cooling completely, and I shut her down. We packed it with ice, and now it is functioning as a very expensive ice box.
Our fridge has operated erratically for as long as we have owned the unit, most days working fine, but some days failing to achieve the temperatures it should. Hence, the reason I use thermometers to monitor fridge function
. Most RV refrigerators use a cooling technology very different than residential refrigerators. Instead of an electric compressor and freon, an RV fridge uses an ammonia absorption process, where ammonia and hydrogen are boiled and subsequently condensed and evaporated, removing heat from the refrigerator box. This system is well suited to an RV because there are no moving parts, and it uses very little electricity when operating on LP.The "cooling unit" is the enclosed system comprising the heaters (LP and/or electric), boiler, condenser, evaporator and is bonded to the rear of the refrigerator box. If the cooling unit is doing its thing, the fridge will be cold. No problem. One sign that the cooling unit is not working properly is when the large horizontal pipes on the lower part of the unit are not hot. On mine they were cold. Dang. Another obvious sign is either the smell of ammonia or a bright yellow/green powder on or under the unit, which indicate a loss of coolant. There was a small pile of the telltale yellow powder on the floor underneath the boiler. Dang again. Once coolant has leaked, the unit
it cannot be repaired. My cooling unit was shot. After fretting and fuming for a good while, I evaluated my options. I called Dometic, the manufacturer of the unit, to see if they could provide some relief. Faithful readers may remember that I had tried to accomplish recall service on this unit in January back at Lazydays. There is a recall campaign on certain Dometic refrigerators where the cooling unit will develop a leak near the boiler, discharging ammonia and hydrogen gas into the area of the LP burner, creating a blowtorch in the refrigerator cabinet. Not good. Dometic used a thin-wall tubing in the boiler area and after repeated cycling of the heaters, the tubing will fatigue and rupture. Apparently hundreds of thousands of units are affected; it's not a matter of if they will fail, but when they will fail. A number of RVs and adjacent structures have burned to the ground because of this defect. Dometic's recall is essentially a band aid approach to the problem. They are not replacing or repairing the dangerous cooling units, but are simply installing a metal shield to prevent the escaping flammable gas from contacting the LP burner and installing a sensor that will shut down the burner when a leak occurs. I was fairly certain that my unit was subject to the recall, and Lazydays confirmed that fact when I made my service appointment back in November. They re-confirmed that I was subject to the recall when they looked at the unit in mid-January. However, when I arrived for service in late January, they said they had learned from Dometic that I was not subject to the recall. What's up with all that? Based on what I had read on the RV forums, I wasn't convinced, but I also did not argue. I would check it out later.When I called Dometic this week they confirmed that my unit was subject to the recall. However, since the coolant had leaked out, they told me that I must first repair (replace) the cooling unit before they would authorize the recall service. Of course, replacing the cooling unit would negate the need for the recall. Catch 22. Since the refrigerator was outside its original three-year warranty period they would not repair/replace the cooling unit at their expense, even though the recall was designed to mitigate the consequences of the inevitable failure of the cooling unit. A responsible company would repair the root problem of such a safety defect, even after the warranty period ended. Apparently Dometic is not a responsible company. OK, so I'm on my own.
I called Camping Connection, a local RV repair facility a mile or two down the road. I learned that a rebuilt cooling unit was about $1650 including parts, labor, shipping and tax. A new cooling unit (vs. rebuilt) was about $100 more. To have a comparable new refrigerator installed was about $2300. The labor to replace a cooling unit was 5 hours at $95/hr. To replace the whole fridge the labor was only 1.5 hours. The new fridge came with a full three-year warranty, while the cooling unit had a limited 90 day/one year warranty. Decisions decisions. Additional research revealed that I could buy a rebuilt cooling unit from a mail order outfit for about $400 or a new unit, built using a better design, for $650. Both units used thicker tubing than the OEM unit and had a full 3-year/5-year replacement warranty. Camping Connection wanted over $1000 for their cooling units, and they had shorter warranty periods. Ultimately I decided to order the new aftermarket cooling unit for $650 and install it myself. I found some pretty good written instructions describing the installation procedure. It's pretty complex, but it's not rocket science. Removing the fridge from the cabinet and removing the old cooling unit from the box is basically grunt work. The most critical step is attaching and bonding the new cooling unit to the cooling fins in the box. If that's not done right it flat won't make cold. After reading the instructions a half dozen times, I decided I could do it. If I get hung up, I can call a repair service to help me finish the job. Even if I end up needing professional assistance, I will still have saved almost $500 for the part and several hundred dollars for labor. Besides, it builds confidence and is more satisfying when I can accomplish such a task myself. The new cooling unit is scheduled to arrive here at TTO on Wednesday. I will post an update describing how it all worked out. Wish me luck. I might need it.
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