I was visiting friends and taking care of business in Alberta. Travel life involves sitting still sometimes to visit or to get things done. So this will be more of a random picture post of stuff I saw while in Alberta, along with a lot of the boring details of what you need to do sometimes to keep an RV going. If you want more travel stories, skip to the next post.
I was back in Lethbridge visiting friends. I had a few days of hanging around not doing much of anything. Well, other than a bunch of loads of laundry. I had been saving that for my stay here as I was doing a bit of mooch docking. Then it was onto Calgary. I had not planned anything past Calgary, as I was not sure how much I would have to take care of besides my furnace. My main goal was to make sure my step-mom’s place was taken care of. I had to fix my motorcycle seat too if possible. Most everything else would happen later in the season when I rolled through on the way south again. If I could get out sooner, I had plans to head to the northern BC coast, and up the Cassiar Highway if time allowed.
Once I evaluated the situation over at my step-moms place, I could see I might be in for a shorter visit. I did some research on motorcycle seat repair. The sun had cracked the vinyl, starting a couple of years ago already. Now it was to the point it needed replacement. I was less concerned about price and more concerned about quality and speed of fix. DeGreeve Auto Upholstery turned out to be able to handle the job inside of a week, once I pushed them a bit to up their month or so timeline. It seems a small job like a motorcycle seat can be squeezed in on short notice. It was $300 to get the seat redone, not exactly cheap. But the staff were great about showing me different materials. I ended up with something that I think will last much longer than the 3.5 years I got out of the factory supplied seat. The vinyl is thicker, with a bit of padding, making the seat a bit more comfortable too.
In the meanwhile, it was warm enough in Calgary to take out the furnace for an extended period to try and fix it once and for all. I had electric heat in the meanwhile, so I had all the time I needed to rip the thing apart and see what might be going on. My temporary fix had been to remove the front cover. Now it was time to find out if the googles genny had been correct about their being a blockage or some cross flow leakage between the hot and cold air passages. I rip into the thing, knowing that I’m going to regret having used heat resistant RTV caulk to seal things off. The original furnace had sealed off compartments with some sort of double sticky narrow foam tape, but I couldn’t find that stuff for the life of me. Getting that RTV off to reseal the unit was a major pain. This time, I’m resealing things with plumbers putty tape, as per a recommendation by Fraserway RV. At least if I ever do have to rip apart the furnace again, I won’t be spending ages trying to get RTV off all the seams. I should note that none of these seals are really high temperature anyways.
Furnace fan removed. I never thought to take a picture of the dirty fan, but it was obviously very dirty
I see no evidence of any blockage. I’m pretty sure the heat exchanger is blockage free, but I can’t rip that apart to visually inspect it. What I do see peering through the slots is a dirty fan wheel. Taking a picture first, I remove most of the wires on the circuit board and then break the seals for the fan casing. I can see now that the fan is really dirty. Thinking back to all my symptoms, it could just be the fan was not spinning fast enough for proper combustion the whole time. Taking the furnace apart knocked a bit of dirt off every time to get things just to a working state again. So much for googles genny. Now I was disassembling the whole housing removing the fan + motor assembly. It’s an all in one fan for the combustion chamber and blower fan for the heated air – it is all on the same spindle so a problem on the blower side would cause problems on the combustion side right away too. The blower side is the one that is really dirty. It probably sucked in some grease particles while I was cooking, then those got coated in the general dust of the RV. I get the unit out and start the long process of cleaning every blade. A big sonic bath would have been very useful, but I had to stick with brushes and cleaners. I saw no other issues with the disassembled furnace – the very dirty blower fan made sense as to what was causing the problem. So every part having been replaced since the sail switch (circuit board, two temperature sensors and the exhaust pipe) was probably for nothing. I’m writing this as of a nice hot mid-July day – my furnace has worked perfectly on every cool morning and some cool days I had up to the present. The problem is fixed, I hope for many years to come. Why I never thought to clean the blower fan was in part due to me not seeing how dirty it was previously. I only had a limited view of the fan and assumed a bit of dirt was fine. I assumed a bit of dirt was fine because taking apart the fan was a much more daunting task, along with the cleaning taking forever. If I ever have problems again, a fan inspection will be first on my list of things to check!
Former Safeway becoming a FreshCo, a budget grocery for a budget neighborhood
I took some walks through the old hood I grew up in while in the city. There is a saying (and book) ‘you can never go home again‘ which I didn’t understand when I was younger. But I certainly get it now: the home you grew up in isn’t what it once was – going back to visit it is going to a different place than what you grew up in an earlier time. Those people who remain their still from my youth are now all old, with many having passed on or left for different pastures. Many new people are in the area – the ethnic mix is different and the area has a different vibe. While I wouldn’t call it run down, there are some run down properties, but no infills, yet. What hasn’t changed is that it is still a place you might buy your first house – the area is filled with cheaper modest bungalows from the 1960s-70s, with all the amenities you need nearby.
On a rainy day to get my motorcycle seat and meet a friend for lunch. Yes, I got wet.
With the furnace taken care of and a new motorcycle seat done I moseyed on out of Calgary. I had used my short time there to visit friends as well, so I had not been bored waiting for things to happen. I was onto Didsbury to visit one more friend, then decide where I was going to do for the summer in Canada.
