Friday, April 1, 2016

Rice Cooker Destroyed Our World

You read that right.  Rice cooker.  It screwed stuff up.

Let me backtrack and tell you about when we used to boondock with our old travel trailer.  I distinctly remember my mother using our coffee maker with our 1,000 watt inverter, four 12 volt battery bank, and 260 watt solar array.  THE COFFEE MAKER WORKED.  It wasn't a dream.  I know it worked.

But no longer.  We have an even beefier system now and we can't run coffee makers, slow cookers, toasters...or rice cookers.

We got rid of the coffee maker when it set off an alarm on my 600 watt inverter.  I was okay with this because this was a smaller capacity inverter than what I had before.  We switched to boiling water for instant coffee.  I think instant coffee is fine, but my mom, the coffee snob (it's her Puerto Rican blood) insists we keep our coffee maker to use when we're on shore power.  The toaster also wouldn't push down without the inverter beeping.  So I got it.  Those two appliances got stowed away.

Then we hooked the TV, satellite receiver, satellite, two computers, two phones a'charging, our cordless headphone charger, and two fans on the 600 watt inverter.

I'll be danged if it didn't stop working!  IMAGINE THAT?!

Turning it off and on again didn't help.  That was the extent of my problem-solving skills.  We shut everything down and just ran our laptops off our 300 watt inverter.  I ordered the inverter below from Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/PowerTech-ON-Technology-Protection-Sockets-PS1002/dp/B0131L8NLM

Okay, so we went from modified sine to pure sine, and 600 watts to 1000 watts.  Good to go, right?

Well, yes.  For a while all was fine.  I figured we now had the ability to run small appliances again since we had with our last 1000 watt inverter.  Out comes the rice cooker.

EVERYTHING DIES.

The moment I hook it in not only does the inverter stop working, all the lights in the coach go out.

CRAP.

The lights come back on on their own, but the inverter won't come back on when I turn it on and off.  I'm not willing to lose another inverter, so I opened it up and tried to change fuses.  The 40 amp fuses inside looked fine and wouldn't come out anyway.  -_-  I stopped trying and opened up my old 600 watt inverter.  There were four 20 amp fuses in here and they came out easily.  They were all fried.  I replaced them.  Then I hooked the 600 watt inverter to the battery leads.

It didn't work.

So now the only inverter I have (meaning the only way I can run my plug in stuff) is my small 300 watt one.  I put it in the cigarette lighter and it's working fine.  I use it there for a while doing my computer stuff.  Then I moved it over to the battery leads and attached it.

It didn't work.

So now I knew it might not be my inverters.  Something got fried with the batteries.

The fuse!

This time when my batteries were installed the guys also installed a 30 amp fuse.  I went under the RV and dug it out of it's housing.  It's one of those big maxi fuses, and yes, it was fried.

HOORAY!!  Maybe my new inverter isn't broken after all!

The next day my mom walks to the solar place (we're boondocking nearby it) and gets me a new 30 amp fuse.  I replace it and neither inverter will work.  x_x

So I carried my inverters over to the solar place.  The 1000 watt one isn't broken but the 600 watt is.  I don't know what's wrong with that 600 watt.  :/  But that's neither here nor there.  My 1000 amp is working but won't work on my battery leads.

We drive the RV back to the solar place.  It's decided that in addition to fixing whatever the heck is wrong with my battery wires I need to upgrade my system.  We add another 160 watt panel and two more 6 volt batteries.  This brings me to 480 watts of solar panels and 6 fricking batteries!

The guys put in an 80 amp fuse.  It's huge.  The only way I'm going to fry it is if we're struck by lightning.  They know me well...

I left them the 600 watt inverter because damned if I know how to fix it and I was just going to throw it away.  I still have the 300 watt one, but it seems to have stopped working.  :/  We're relying strictly on that 1,000 watt pictured up there.  I think we'll be fine with it.

By the way...Today marks our 1 year anniversary as full time Rvers!  WOW!




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