I just finished posting a review of a park that calls itself a "resort" and it can be considered as one overall but for one thing. The concrete site pads ARE NOT LEVEL. Perhaps a few of you fellow RVer's that are more knowledgeable than I in the "pouring of concrete" can give me a reason as to why a park would go the expense of pouring concrete pads and yet not have them level? Just doesn't make any sense whatsoever to me. I have helped pour a few concrete patio areas myself over the years and had no problem with them being level. It bugs me no end to drive into a really nice park, pull into a well maintained and manicured site, and end up on a concrete pad that has your auto leveler system going bonkers, and finally ending up with a wheel or two being lifted off the ground before level is achieved. It can't be due to drainage as even tho this particular park is located on a slight hillside it does have the rest of the area/s around the sites well designed and landscaped with red rock pea gravel for proper drainage, etc. Am I expecting too much in this area or are there others out there that feel the same about this? We would have given this park a 10 rating had it not been for this one annoying area................ BankShot (aka Terry)
They may have wanted a slight pitch for rain runoff, but I'd think that should be minimal and well within the range of comfortable moving around in the RV and within specs for the fridge at worst. An electric or hydraulic leveling system should also easily handle a minor off level pad, but beyond that, I'd wonder why they did it too!
If you haven't already noticed it, the algorithm used by your leveling system decides if it is level by overshooting the "level" condition and then coming back to level. The problem with this is that if the surface you are parked on is not level then it may be impossible to overshoot it in one or more directions. As a result it may repeatedly try to achieve level without success or it may insist on creating a situation in which a wheel is raised off the ground. Without getting too technical, the system can't approach the level state from "one side" of the hill without being able to go past it and then come back. Yet, a reasonably satisfactory nearly-level situation may well be achievable IN THE MANUAL MODE OF OPERATION. The next time you find yourself in this situation, I suggest you put your MH in manual mode and use a bubble level on the floor to get it level. Because we don't have an automatic system in our older MH this is the way I always level ours and yet I rarely find a case in which I can't achieve an acceptable level state. If I sense that a site is a bit off-level I make the problem easier to solve by lowering my airbags to give my levelers more room in which to operate.
Thanks Joel, I understand what you are saying about the auto leveler system doing what it does to achieve what it considers to be level, etc. I have let the auto leveling system go thru its paces in just about every situation to date and rarely have had a problem with the wheels being lifted off the ground and on the occasion when it does I have used blocks under the tire being lifted to avoid additional stress on the jack being affected. I ended using manual mode in a park on the way home and found that I was able to achieve level easier by using it and not lifting a wheel off the ground. I have a few bubble levels placed at strategic points inside the coach that I use in conjunction with the leveling system so I can tell when we are level. It takes more time this way but well worth avoiding the feeling of watching as the front ends starts to rise up and feel like its "floating". We have stayed in a few parks that were really tough to get leveled in but they weren't on concrete pads as this one was. In this particular park we saw a brand new 40 foot HR Endeavor with both it's front wheels lifted about 4" off the ground. Fortunately the owner had placed blocks under each wheel but to me that just shouldn't be happening in a "resort" type of park with concrete site pads........... Thanks again for your input on this Joel. I find I continue to learn with each passing trip we make. We've only been at this for just over 4 years now and the fun just keeps coming............ Regards, BankShot (aka Terry)
Terry: One of the advantages of having a residential refrigerator is that we don't worry about being precisely level. If it's level enough for us to be comfortable, that all we ask. Joel
We have a standard Norcold fridge that has served us fine so far. When we first started out I was of course informed about all the problems one could encounter with an RV fridge if it wasn't kept perfectly level when running. Found out later on that as long as you are within a half bubble of level the fridge would be fine. Just a tad disconcerting when the bubbles aren't within that spec. Our next fridge will be a residential unit so this 'fridge level" thing will become a concern of the past for us. Question for you............does yours also run on propane as well as 110? I have seen a few of the latest DP models from a couple of mfgrs. that have no propane on board and run entirely off 110. I would think that this might present a problem in some campgrounds with no hookups that don't allow generators to be used. I don't believe I'd want to have a coach that didn't have both options.................
I have never heard of a residential fridge that can run off propane. If you think about it, it can't be the case. RV fridges that use "heat" (either propane or electric) use what is called an absorption cooling cycle in which heat drives the working liquid through the refrigeration cycle. Residential fridges use a compressor to move a very different working liquid through the cycle. There's no way to mix the two. Our coach still has propane because we saw no need to remove it even though all it serves these days is our cooktop. We were fortunate in that Beaver installed a rather expensive residential cooktop with electric start that we like even though much of our cooking is on our portable induction burner. We saw no benefit to going through the effort and expense of totally removing the propane tank and lines. We don't frequent many CG's without hookups so your issue of generator use doesn't bother us. We can go a bit more than a day without running the generator but that does draw the batteries down significantly.
