At home you turn on your TV and sit down and watch. You can do this in your Roadtrek also, BUT there are a few things that you have to do first - in each new location you travel to.
Roadtreks have always included televisions. In some models the TV has been an option, while in many the TV is standard equipment. Without getting into details of the entire entertainment system (I will get into that in another article), you now get a digital HD television, a rooftop television antenna, and an antenna booster. Your television can be connected to the antenna on the roof or a cable connection to the campground. The cable connection is outside just to the side of your city water connection in a little box with a flip up lid. Open the lid and you will find a standard cable screw on coax connector - exactly like the cable connector you have on the back of your TV or cable box at home.
You must be connected to 110 volt power either by electric line, generator, or inverter to have power to the TV system in the Roadtrek.
The antenna set up can be confusing, because, frankly, the new digital transmissions are confusing to those of us - most of us - who are just used to connecting an antenna wire and turning on the TV. I will talk about the antenna first - step by step. (I am talking here about the system that is in my 2011 190 Popular which will be similar to most of the newer Roadtreks.)
1 - In the front of your Roadtrek on the ceiling there is a crank. Around the crank is a disk with a triangle on one end. That triangle lines up with a mark on just in front of it. When the antenna is raised, this disk rotates and turns the antenna. That triangle must always be pointed to the mark on the front when you raise or lower the antenna.Unfold the crank and start turning. When it stops your antenna on the roof has fully raised straight up and the large wing that is attached to the top of the antenna unfolds. You have just raised your antenna. But this is JUST the first step.
2 - You can now turn the triangle around with the disk. The direction it points is the direction that the antenna will point. Digital signals are directional and if you want to receive them you need to be pointed in the direction of the signal tower. Just reach up and turn the disk.
3 - What direction you will need to turn the antenna changes with your current location. There are websites that will tell you what direction the channel signals are. There are also apps that do this. Without anything else, figure out what direction the nearest large city is in and most likely you will connect with channels.
4 - Go into the cabinet above your TV. There will be an A/B switch inside. A or B is determined by which side the installer connected the wires from the antenna and the cable system. My cables were marked by Roadtrek. Push the button for the antenna wire.
5 - Look above on the ceiling of that cabinet and you will see a wall plate with a little green led button in the middle. This is your antenna booster switch. It should be lit green which means it is on. I just leave mine on all of the time.
6- Turn on the TV. Go to the settings menu. Choose Signal Source and pick Antenna.
7 - Turn your antenna to the direction you need. I have a compass so that I know which direction I am turning the antenna. Get it to approximately where you think it should be.
8 - Go back to your TV settings menu and find "SCAN CHANNELS". Click that and this will take several minutes to scan and lock in digital channels. If you have only a few channels lock in after this finishes, it means one of two things. Your antenna is pointed in the wrong direction OR there are only those few digital signals in this area. I have been to areas with more than 40 channels and other areas with four or five. If you get no signals, your antenna is pointed in the wrong direction or you failed to do one of the steps above. This is often an trail and error - and timely process. Don't blame the equipment or Roadtrek - blame Congress for deciding that television had to be all digital. This is the nature of digital antenna television - even at home.
9 - If you have a lot of channels you are done setting the antenna. And you only have to do this again if you travel to a new location. As long as you stay where you are the channels will remain locked in.
Turn off the settings menu on your TV. You will now see a picture on your TV. If there is no channel on a number you should get a blue screen. If the signal is weak you will get a picture broken up into small boxes.
Now, you may not have any sound. Roadtrek has wired the TV sound into your Home Entertainment Center unit. Turn that on - there are TWO switches to turn it on - POWER and STANDBY. Set the mode to AUX (this may vary depending on how the connections were made - the home entertainment unit display screen is hard to see anyway so just push the mode button until the TV sound comes through) and you should get TV sound coming out of most of the speakers in your Roadtrek - but not all the speakers. I will get into this in another article as this is a bit complex. The two or three speakers that have sound now are more than adequate. Also be aware that in that same cabinet where the antenna booster and the A/B switch is, there is a turn knob with three positions on the ceiling of the cabinet. One position is to put the sound from the dash radio into the RT speakers. The opposite position is to connect the home entertainment unit to the speakers. I have no idea what the middle position does. Make sure this is switched to the home entertainment position.
I decided that I did not want to use the Home Entertainment unit for the TV sound. Why have to turn this on when the TV has perfectly good and likely surround sound speakers built in? All I had to do was go to the side of the TV and find the headphone jack. In that jack was a plug that came from the wires coming to the TV from above. I just pulled the plug and let it hang down and - PRESTO - sound from the TV speakers. No need to turn on the home entertainment unit. If I want to have sound from the Roadtrek speakers all I have to do is plug it back in. Simple. Easy.
Next - cable TV.
1 - Buy a standard cable TV coax cable long enough to reach from your Roadtrek to the campground cable connection. Go outside and connect your Roadtrek cable connection to the campground connection which is on the pedestal near the electric box. Just screw an end of the connector on to each connection. Twenty five feet should be a long enough cable. (A tip- you can get a cable with or buy adapters to add on - to make the screw on connections to push on connections and these are much easier to deal with.)
2 - Inside, go to your A/B box and select CABLE.
3 - Turn on the TV and go to the Source menu. Select "CABLE".
4 - Go to the Channel Scan menu and scan for channels - yes, you must do this also for cable.
5 - The TV will scan for all available cable channels and lock them in. In most campgrounds you are locking in ANALOG channels. We were in only one campground so far where there was a mix of both analog and digital channels coming through the cable.
6 - When finished turn off the menu and you should now be able to see the cable channels provided by the campground.
You do not have to do this again until you connect to cable at another campground. If you also scanned with your antenna and then connected to watch cable - AT THE SAME LOCATION - your antenna channels will still be available if you switch back - so you can switch back and forth as long as you switch the A/B box and the TV source menu.
Campgrounds use various providers for their cable TV. Some use a cable company and some use a satellite provider. So that you don't need a cable receiver box for a specific cable company in your RV, the campground gets the signal where it comes into the campground and converts it electronically to analog which will then play through your TV without a special and specific tuner box from the cable or satellite company. The cable channel selection, of course, varies by the campground and they usually give you a list of the cable channels available and their corresponding numbers on the back of the campground map - or in the literature they give you when you check in.
And you thought it was easy to just sit down and watch TV! After the first night at the campground, it is, but this process needs to be done at each campground or for antenna at each place that you stop for the night.
Some say "campers should not need TV". I like TV and so does Meryl. We look for campgrounds with cable connections.
Roadtrek
Wednesday, August 29, 2012
Wednesday, August 22, 2012
THE ROADTREK ELECTRIC SYSTEM - THE BATTERIES
I am going to start right off saying that I am not an "expert" in vehicle or RV batteries. I do know what I have learned from others before and after we got the Roadtrek about the batteries that the Roadtrek uses. I also know how they work in our 2011 190 Popular.
First, the simple - there are either two or three batteries in your Roadtrek. One is the engine battery just like in your car. This is a wet cell (maintenance required or maintenance free) vehicle starter battery. It is different from the battery(ies) that you have in your coach - those that run everything 12 volts inside your Roadtrek. Current model Roadtreks have either one or two "coach" batteries. These one or two batteries have nothing to do with starting your engine and in most, if not all, Roadtreks there is what is called an Isolator in the engine that separates the vehicle battery from the coach batteries so that if one drains it will not pull power from the other. You would not want to not leave in the morning because you ran down the coach batteries the night before.
My 2011 Roadtrek 190 Popular has TWO coach batteries. When we were buying the Roadtrek every salesman we encountered told us that this is a feature of the 190. It turns out that the current Roadtrek models of 190 and 210 and the Sprinter models have two coach batteries. I have been told by owners that not all of the older models do and many have just one.
Coach batteries must be what are called "deep-cycle" batteries. This means that they are not designed for short burst starting like a vehicle battery does but that they are used much like the batteries in a flashlight that provides steady power over time. This is a very simple explanation - so the electric engineers who would like to comment with detailed and scientific explanations please do, but for the everyday Joe Roadtrek owner this is enough to understand. There are many types of "deep-cycle" batteries and when you look at battery displays to purchase these they are often labeled as Marine/RV batteries. In the 2011 models, Roadtrek started to use AGM deep cycle batteries. They use two six volt, AGM, deep-cycle batteries. The AGM batteries do not have "wet" cells". There is no water inside the battery cells. These batteries will not boil over because there is no water inside. If overcharged, a wet cell battery can boil - if there is not a special circuit to prevent this. The two AGM batteries that Roadtrek is using now have 220 amp hours. I will explain this more later.
Besides not boiling out, there are advantages to AGM batteries. They hold a charge longer. They deliver more amp hours. They do not need maintenance. And they do not need to be vented which means that they can be installed in an enclosed area without causing any problem. The wet-cell batteries do need to be vented which means that the compartment that they are stored in must have access to fresh air - and this should be outside the coach. Roadtrek still installs these batteries outside the coach. I will get to where the batteries are installed soon.
I said that I have two six volt AGM batteries - why not one 12 volt AGM battery or two 12 volt AGM batteries. I will share what I have been told. Two sixes give more amp-hours than one twelve or two twelves together. Don't ask me why. Again, this is for the engineers out there.
I have also learned that one cannot/should not - likely cannot - mix AGM batteries and wet-cell batteries in the same system. Now this does not include the engine and the coach but if one coach battery is AGM then any other coach battery or batteries added must be AGM.
I also know that you should not let your batteries go below half power without recharging them to full power. This is something to consider when looking at how long you can go just using your batteries.
Again - basics. No science. I leave that to the many engineers that know RVs and batteries.
In 2011, Roadtrek changed the storage of the coach batteries. The first time that I saw this was the day I took delivery of my Roadtrek. Every Roadtrek 190 that I saw before this - and I had never seen a 2011 model - had two battery compartments. One was above the back passenger wheel and accessed by a locked compartment door from the outside. The other was a large compartment with a locked door on the side of the van in front of the rear passenger wheel. That compartment has a sliding shelf inside that would pull out so that you could easily access the battery there and its connections. This made it easy to check the water in the battery and test the voltage with a meter if you wanted to. In 2011 - on the 190 - that rear over the wheel compartment was gone. The compartment in front of the wheel remained, BUT both batteries are now there and there is no longer any sliding shelf. The only way to access the batteries is to lean in to a very small and not really lean-into-able space. For the most part, I would need to reach in and unhook the connections on the batteries and pull them out. These batteries are EXTREMELY heavy. I know this because I saw an AGM battery display in a store and I tried to lift one and it did not move. (No, it was not held down in any way.) I can open the compartment door with the key and look inside and that is as far as I have ever gotten - and to me there is nothing to see that I can do anything about.
As I have said, older models and model to model things change. You may have one battery or you may have two. If you have a 170 you have one battery - that I am sure of. I know a 2005 190 owner who has one battery. With Roadtrek things change from year to year and model to model - and sometimes even mid-way through the same year. Roadtrek does have two model years per year - for example, there is a 2011 on a 2010 Chevy chassis and there is a 2011 on a 2011 Chevy chassis. I have a 2011 on a 2011 chassis.
Now, you have battery basics. What do these batteries run? Inside your Roadtrek you have overhead lighting fixtures -large and small lighting fixtures spread all over the coach. These are 12 volts and run on the batteries. The water pump runs on 12 volts. The 3-way stock refrigerator has a mode to run on 12 volts. The hot water heater runs on 12 volts. The fan for the furnace runs on 12 volts. The ceiling exhaust fan runs on 12 volts. The macerator in the newer Roadtreks runs on 12 volts. Older Roadtreks have 12 volt outlets in the coach that you can plug 12 volt things into - just like the cigarette lighter outlet on your dashboard. My Roadtrek has NO 12 volt outlets. To install one, it would be necessary to tap into 12 volt wiring going to a light fixture. Older Roadtreks may have a 12 volt TV set - they do exist.
Now, I am going to explain amp hours. As I said, my coach batteries provide a total of 220 amp hours. Every appliance or light or whatever electric uses X number of amps per hour. Many appliances will have this labeled on them somewhere. You can also test how many amps something draws with an amp meter. The Kill-A-Watt meter found at home stores has this function along with many other functions. I will talk about this more with other parts of the electric system. With the batteries - if something draws one amp that means it needs one amp to run for an hour. You have 220 hours of power. Run two things that each need one amp and you have 110 hours. Somethings use a fraction of an amp - somethings use a lot of amps. Some things like motors - fans, etc. draw a lot of amps quickly and these will run your batteries down fast. I understand that the furnace fan drains the batteries quickly. So if you want to know how long you can go without having to charge the batteries, you need to add up the amps in each thing you have on and compare that to what the capacity of the batteries is - and remember not to let them discharge to less than half. Again, this is a simple and basic explanation of detail electrical principles. When we get to the section on 110 volt power, I will talk more about this and share with you the Green Acres TV show (from the 1960's) method of understanding how much is too much.
Alright - this is your battery system. Your batteries will recharge when you drive your Roadtrek. Your batteries will recharge when you are plugged into 110/120 volt shore power. Your batteries will recharge when you run your generator. Your batteries will DISCHARGE when you run your inverter. Roadtrek says that it takes 12 hours for the batteries to fully charge. I have been told that driving the van will charge the batteries faster.
I am now going to share with you the most important thing to understand about the battery system and this applies to the entire Roadtrek electric system and I will repeat this in each article.
The battery disconnect switch is located on the bottom right of the monitor panel. Here is a photo of mine.
See the rocker switch on the right. It says "BATTERY" next to it. See the little LED light to the left of it that says "ON" under it. That is the light that tells you the Battery Disconnect Switch is on. Yes, it is called a Battery "Disconnect" Switch and this is the same for all RVs and trailers. It is the most mis-named thing. It CONNECTS your batteries - turns them ON. Shut it off and it disconnects your batteries. If you want to use your batteries- IN FACT - if you want to use ANY electricity in your Roadtrek (except vehicle electricity coming from the engine battery) this switch MUST be ON. There is a sticker in my Roadtrek on the wall adjacent to this panel that says this. The sticker may not be on all Roadtreks. Make yourself a label if you need reminding. This switch is key to all your power. If you go to the simulator that I linked in the first article about the Electric System in general, turn off this switch with all other combinations and watch what happens.
One last thing about the photo - see the panel above the switch. The last column of LEDs on the right will tell you approximately how much battery power your batteries have. The C on the top stands for charging. If that light is on when you push the TEST switch, the batteries are charging from one of the sources I listed earlier that charge the batteries. After a long charge, that light may stay on even when not charging (when you push the test button). It will not come on in a day or so - or less. The G is "good" - basically there is full battery power. The F is "Fair" and the "L" is Low. Charge the batteries before you get to the "L". This panel is not absolutely accurate but it is good enough as long as you stay on top of keeping your batteries charged.
When we leave on a trip we turn on the Battery Disconnect Switch and it is not turned off until we get home.
When your Roadtrek is at home and you are not using it, shut off the Battery Disconnect Switch. While it is on, it will drain your coach batteries as there are a few 12 volt devices that remain powered on when it is on such as the propane alarm and the carbon monoxide alarm. If you are not in the Roadtrek between trips there is no need to have these running. Another good thing to know is that while you are driving, with the Battery Disconnect Switch OFF - your Roadtrek batteries will still charge from the engine running.
The next article coming in the electric system series will be 110/120 volt shore power.
First, the simple - there are either two or three batteries in your Roadtrek. One is the engine battery just like in your car. This is a wet cell (maintenance required or maintenance free) vehicle starter battery. It is different from the battery(ies) that you have in your coach - those that run everything 12 volts inside your Roadtrek. Current model Roadtreks have either one or two "coach" batteries. These one or two batteries have nothing to do with starting your engine and in most, if not all, Roadtreks there is what is called an Isolator in the engine that separates the vehicle battery from the coach batteries so that if one drains it will not pull power from the other. You would not want to not leave in the morning because you ran down the coach batteries the night before.
My 2011 Roadtrek 190 Popular has TWO coach batteries. When we were buying the Roadtrek every salesman we encountered told us that this is a feature of the 190. It turns out that the current Roadtrek models of 190 and 210 and the Sprinter models have two coach batteries. I have been told by owners that not all of the older models do and many have just one.
Coach batteries must be what are called "deep-cycle" batteries. This means that they are not designed for short burst starting like a vehicle battery does but that they are used much like the batteries in a flashlight that provides steady power over time. This is a very simple explanation - so the electric engineers who would like to comment with detailed and scientific explanations please do, but for the everyday Joe Roadtrek owner this is enough to understand. There are many types of "deep-cycle" batteries and when you look at battery displays to purchase these they are often labeled as Marine/RV batteries. In the 2011 models, Roadtrek started to use AGM deep cycle batteries. They use two six volt, AGM, deep-cycle batteries. The AGM batteries do not have "wet" cells". There is no water inside the battery cells. These batteries will not boil over because there is no water inside. If overcharged, a wet cell battery can boil - if there is not a special circuit to prevent this. The two AGM batteries that Roadtrek is using now have 220 amp hours. I will explain this more later.
Besides not boiling out, there are advantages to AGM batteries. They hold a charge longer. They deliver more amp hours. They do not need maintenance. And they do not need to be vented which means that they can be installed in an enclosed area without causing any problem. The wet-cell batteries do need to be vented which means that the compartment that they are stored in must have access to fresh air - and this should be outside the coach. Roadtrek still installs these batteries outside the coach. I will get to where the batteries are installed soon.
I said that I have two six volt AGM batteries - why not one 12 volt AGM battery or two 12 volt AGM batteries. I will share what I have been told. Two sixes give more amp-hours than one twelve or two twelves together. Don't ask me why. Again, this is for the engineers out there.
I have also learned that one cannot/should not - likely cannot - mix AGM batteries and wet-cell batteries in the same system. Now this does not include the engine and the coach but if one coach battery is AGM then any other coach battery or batteries added must be AGM.
I also know that you should not let your batteries go below half power without recharging them to full power. This is something to consider when looking at how long you can go just using your batteries.
Again - basics. No science. I leave that to the many engineers that know RVs and batteries.
In 2011, Roadtrek changed the storage of the coach batteries. The first time that I saw this was the day I took delivery of my Roadtrek. Every Roadtrek 190 that I saw before this - and I had never seen a 2011 model - had two battery compartments. One was above the back passenger wheel and accessed by a locked compartment door from the outside. The other was a large compartment with a locked door on the side of the van in front of the rear passenger wheel. That compartment has a sliding shelf inside that would pull out so that you could easily access the battery there and its connections. This made it easy to check the water in the battery and test the voltage with a meter if you wanted to. In 2011 - on the 190 - that rear over the wheel compartment was gone. The compartment in front of the wheel remained, BUT both batteries are now there and there is no longer any sliding shelf. The only way to access the batteries is to lean in to a very small and not really lean-into-able space. For the most part, I would need to reach in and unhook the connections on the batteries and pull them out. These batteries are EXTREMELY heavy. I know this because I saw an AGM battery display in a store and I tried to lift one and it did not move. (No, it was not held down in any way.) I can open the compartment door with the key and look inside and that is as far as I have ever gotten - and to me there is nothing to see that I can do anything about.
As I have said, older models and model to model things change. You may have one battery or you may have two. If you have a 170 you have one battery - that I am sure of. I know a 2005 190 owner who has one battery. With Roadtrek things change from year to year and model to model - and sometimes even mid-way through the same year. Roadtrek does have two model years per year - for example, there is a 2011 on a 2010 Chevy chassis and there is a 2011 on a 2011 Chevy chassis. I have a 2011 on a 2011 chassis.
Now, you have battery basics. What do these batteries run? Inside your Roadtrek you have overhead lighting fixtures -large and small lighting fixtures spread all over the coach. These are 12 volts and run on the batteries. The water pump runs on 12 volts. The 3-way stock refrigerator has a mode to run on 12 volts. The hot water heater runs on 12 volts. The fan for the furnace runs on 12 volts. The ceiling exhaust fan runs on 12 volts. The macerator in the newer Roadtreks runs on 12 volts. Older Roadtreks have 12 volt outlets in the coach that you can plug 12 volt things into - just like the cigarette lighter outlet on your dashboard. My Roadtrek has NO 12 volt outlets. To install one, it would be necessary to tap into 12 volt wiring going to a light fixture. Older Roadtreks may have a 12 volt TV set - they do exist.
Now, I am going to explain amp hours. As I said, my coach batteries provide a total of 220 amp hours. Every appliance or light or whatever electric uses X number of amps per hour. Many appliances will have this labeled on them somewhere. You can also test how many amps something draws with an amp meter. The Kill-A-Watt meter found at home stores has this function along with many other functions. I will talk about this more with other parts of the electric system. With the batteries - if something draws one amp that means it needs one amp to run for an hour. You have 220 hours of power. Run two things that each need one amp and you have 110 hours. Somethings use a fraction of an amp - somethings use a lot of amps. Some things like motors - fans, etc. draw a lot of amps quickly and these will run your batteries down fast. I understand that the furnace fan drains the batteries quickly. So if you want to know how long you can go without having to charge the batteries, you need to add up the amps in each thing you have on and compare that to what the capacity of the batteries is - and remember not to let them discharge to less than half. Again, this is a simple and basic explanation of detail electrical principles. When we get to the section on 110 volt power, I will talk more about this and share with you the Green Acres TV show (from the 1960's) method of understanding how much is too much.
Alright - this is your battery system. Your batteries will recharge when you drive your Roadtrek. Your batteries will recharge when you are plugged into 110/120 volt shore power. Your batteries will recharge when you run your generator. Your batteries will DISCHARGE when you run your inverter. Roadtrek says that it takes 12 hours for the batteries to fully charge. I have been told that driving the van will charge the batteries faster.
I am now going to share with you the most important thing to understand about the battery system and this applies to the entire Roadtrek electric system and I will repeat this in each article.
FOR YOUR BATTERIES TO WORK YOUR BATTERY DISCONNECT SWITCH MUST BE ON!
The battery disconnect switch is located on the bottom right of the monitor panel. Here is a photo of mine.
One last thing about the photo - see the panel above the switch. The last column of LEDs on the right will tell you approximately how much battery power your batteries have. The C on the top stands for charging. If that light is on when you push the TEST switch, the batteries are charging from one of the sources I listed earlier that charge the batteries. After a long charge, that light may stay on even when not charging (when you push the test button). It will not come on in a day or so - or less. The G is "good" - basically there is full battery power. The F is "Fair" and the "L" is Low. Charge the batteries before you get to the "L". This panel is not absolutely accurate but it is good enough as long as you stay on top of keeping your batteries charged.
When we leave on a trip we turn on the Battery Disconnect Switch and it is not turned off until we get home.
When your Roadtrek is at home and you are not using it, shut off the Battery Disconnect Switch. While it is on, it will drain your coach batteries as there are a few 12 volt devices that remain powered on when it is on such as the propane alarm and the carbon monoxide alarm. If you are not in the Roadtrek between trips there is no need to have these running. Another good thing to know is that while you are driving, with the Battery Disconnect Switch OFF - your Roadtrek batteries will still charge from the engine running.
The next article coming in the electric system series will be 110/120 volt shore power.
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