Riding the weather wave

[aadler]

For a couple of days we’d been seeing a forecast for substantial snow coming our way, and today it started falling. That brought up an unexpected necessity.

Details about motorhome heating.

Bit of background first: our motorhome has two ways of providing heat, those being electric and gas. The electric comes from using the heat pump in the A/C system; the gas furnace is fueled by propane. Electric heat works fine for medium-cold weather; when the temp gets much below 40°, though, the heat pump starts having problems and it’s time to switch to propane.

More background: motorhomes (unlike towable RVs) have a fixed propane tank, meaning we can’t remove/replace it, but have to take the entire vehicle to a refill station.

More background: the park where we’re currently staying doesn’t have a propane refill station.

With those facts in mind, I’d been trying to contact the place recommended by our park for the people who have to get service, but didn’t get a reply till this afternoon (which reply was negative). Further, the snow had already started to fall by that point. Finally — though the gauges aren’t truly accurate — our propane level today dipped from ‘kinda-sorta half-full’ to ‘maybe only a quarter full, more or less, who really knows?’. Not wanting to find ourselves without heat in the middle of a winter night, I packed up our unit for a quick trip and drove to a place we stayed briefly before our trip to Texas, got our tank topped off, then drove back to our original resting site. Most of this on Interstate. In heavy snow. Surrounded by unsafe drivers (i.e., anybody who isn’t me).

So, we’re good for now. I can spend the next few weeks seeing if it’s worth making that trip when needed, or if it’s worth the expense, labor, and inconvenience of connecting an external propane tank to my existing system, just so I can trade out portable bottles to keep things going.

(Just as an aside: Susan and I discovered that the leak detector inside our Navion could be set off by her hair spray. Aren’t you glad you asked?)