First camp out with tt-2553

snappy · 10-21-2012, 06:05 PM

Had a great time this weekend. Our first since picking up the 11th. I do have a couple of questions. First is the refrig it froze everything. Turned temp control down low but everything still froze. The owners manual only covered if it not cooling. The unit is a dometica (??) Second how much wind for the awning. I was gun shy after hearing horror stories some campers left awning unrolled others put away. Is there a rule of thumb on wind speed. Any help will help

**JohnB** · 10-21-2012, 08:04 PM

Do you have a model number on the fridge? Look inside the door for a model and serial number.

Where you on gas or electric?

Many of the fridges have a limp mode that if the control board cannot read the temperature sensor to tell what temp the fridge is at, then it goes into full cooling and never stops.

You said you turned the fridge down, how exactly did you do this? What did you turn?

Need your model number to help better and what year camper do you have?

When you said everything froze, Is this literally? all liquids froze?

The awning and wind, if the awning is flapping a lot, it is time to put it up. I have never seen a wind rating. I do use deflappers on mine plus tie downs. They buy me time to get there to put it up if bad weather is coming.

Hope this helps

John

snappy · 10-22-2012, 06:20 PM

I believe I got the info your looking for. 2007 Solaris Mod rm2652, ser #61008337 and product # 92114 41-21 it is a dometic, I was using electric, unit was set in auto mode. Milk. cottage cheese, eggs, left overs were froze solid. On the top right there is a plastic piece that has a arrow pointing down ward for warmer temp. I also found a probe and I put it on the top shelve where it gets colder so as lower the temp. Trying to fool probe into reading it was cold enough. I don't know what you mean by flap guards (??).

Gene · 10-22-2012, 08:54 PM

That probe should be inside a little ridge in the plastic piece that slides up and down on the fin as you can see in this picture. That probe should touch the metal fin. You can just barely see the white cable below the shelf that is the probe wire.

**Tweety** · 10-23-2012, 06:33 AM

The horror stories about awnings are true. It's not just the speed, it's also if the wind gets under the awning. We saw 3 awnings distroyed on 3 trailers behind us this summer. All 3 flipped over the roofs at once, while we were rolling ours in. We were camped at a 90 degree angle to those units, and ours had just started to flutter. They must have just been at the wrong angle to the wind. Our rule for ourselves is if it's starting to blow the awning comes in.

**JohnB** · 10-23-2012, 11:02 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by snappy

I believe I got the info your looking for. 2007 Solaris Mod rm2652, ser #61008337 and product # 92114 41-21 it is a dometic, I was using electric, unit was set in auto mode. Milk. cottage cheese, eggs, left overs were froze solid. On the top right there is a plastic piece that has a arrow pointing down ward for warmer temp. I also found a probe and I put it on the top shelve where it gets colder so as lower the temp. Trying to fool probe into reading it was cold enough. I don't know what you mean by flap guards (??).

OK you have a newer fridge. The picture Gene is showing is the sensor. As he said, make sure the sensor tip is touching the aluminum fin.

If the sensor is touching the fin and you slide it to the hottest position and it is still freezing, then it points to 1 of 4 things. The sensor is bad or not making good contact to the control board, the control board has issues, the terminals are loose on the control board, you may have a bad ground on the fridge. There are a lot of ground wires on the fridge and corrosion can prevent them from making good contact. Since the unit is over cooliong the ground part should be OK but good to check.

Are you electrically friendly and have a volt/ohm meter? There are some tests you can do to check the sensor. Let us know if you are as we can help point you where to go looking.

The awning, this is what I do. I have seen variations of this.

First I always leave the awning side frame connected to the bottom of the camper to create a triangle. The risk for me is too high to undo that bottom support and put it out in the open being vertical. If I could lag screw it to a deck, maybe, but not under normal camping.

The deflappers, I have 4 of them, 2 on each end of the awning. See these http://www.amazon.com/Camco-Awning-Deflappers-2-Pack/dp/B002JF4Q8Q They help the awning from flapping in the breeze.

Next is tie downs. I start with a dog (pet) screw in the ground. Connected to the handle of the anchor is a spring. Then from the spring to the awning is a ratchet strap. I cinch down both ends of the awning.

This give me a small level of wind resistance and “time” to hurry up and get the awning up in the event of a big storm blowing in.

At night I fully dip the awning. Meaning one end is totally down and tied down. The other end is dropped part way to allow the door to still open. This allows a heavy rain to run off and again time if needed to get out there and put it up.

If we leave the camp site for a walk, go to the store, if I have things stored under the awning I drop both ends fully down and tie them down.

If there is nothing stored under the awning, after use it goes up at night or when wind comes.

Here are few pics

Hope this helps

John

MACK C-85 · 10-23-2012, 12:21 PM

Quote:

At night I fully dip the awning. Meaning one end is totally down and tied down. The other end is dropped part way to allow the door to still open. This allows a heavy rain to run off and again time if needed to get out there and put it up.

John:

I'm assuming as long as your awning is, you have the middle support bar that has a pin on the end that goes into the roller?!?!?!

IF so, beware that leaving one end of the awning down during a heavy rain can cause the water to catch behind that rafter, causing pools to form on either side of it. We had to figure out how to bring home a roller that was almost snapped in two pieces after we had ours that way and a bad storm came up!!

Fortunately, with a lot of help from fellow campers, we were able to hold the pieces together and roll the awning up. The rolled awning held the roller rigid enough that it locked into place for the ride home, but the whole awning was toast!!

Mack

snappy · 10-23-2012, 07:02 PM

Thank you for the info and pictures. Tomorrow I will turn the refrig on ensure that the probe is making contact. While it is cooling down it will get my volt meter for further testing. Talking with wife we are going to get some awning deflappers before next camping trip. Again thanks for the tech info much appreciated

**JohnB** · 10-26-2012, 06:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MACK C-85

John:

I'm assuming as long as your awning is, you have the middle support bar that has a pin on the end that goes into the roller?!?!?!

IF so, beware that leaving one end of the awning down during a heavy rain can cause the water to catch behind that rafter, causing pools to form on either side of it. We had to figure out how to bring home a roller that was almost snapped in two pieces after we had ours that way and a bad storm came up!!

Fortunately, with a lot of help from fellow campers, we were able to hold the pieces together and roll the awning up. The rolled awning held the roller rigid enough that it locked into place for the ride home, but the whole awning was toast!!

Mack

Hi Mack,

Thank you for the heads up, and you bring up a good point that I should clarify as it may be unique to my floor plan.

I knew of Mack's unfortunate awning failure so I am on the lookout for the problem that can occur on a 21 foot problem with the center rafter. A side benefit of SOC! The learning never ends.

The issue is the angle of the awning that if it is not steep enough on the upper portion of the awning, the fabric can become too flat so to speak. The center rafter breaks up the awning material pitch and can creates a pond on the upper portion. That pond'ing is the problem. Excess water pools and then the weight creates great havoc.

In my floor plan, rear living area, the main entry door is at the end of the camper and even more so directly at the very end of the awning. When the rain and wind blows I can get drenched going in and out the door as the awning is not shielding the water spray. This fact however does have an up side....

If I drop my front awning bar full down, the rear awning bar "must" drop about 4 to 5 inches from normal height to get out of the pooling problem of the upper part of the awning. In my floor plan, I can drop that far on the uphill side and still open the door.

If I had a floor plan that has the door more in the middle of the camper, the flying water spray from wind and rain is not so much a problem but now the awning pooling can be. Because you cannot drop the high end far enough possibly to stop the pooling effect and open up the door.

I can see the problem Mack is talking about as if I could not drop the high end that 5" to just barely get in the door, the top would be too flat and water would pool. You can see it in the fabric even once you know where to look. It is hard to explain in words. I have pics of this somewhere, I will try and dig them up.

Thanks for bringing this up Mack so no one would be miss lead by my comments. On my T2499 with a shorter awning this was not so much an issue and there was no center rafter.

John