A Costly Mistake

I'm sure there are many errors that full-timers make when starting out. Although we'd hoped to embark on our journey for several years and I'd spent much time reading and researching, we still felt unprepared when the big moment actually came and this led us to make a common error. Or so we've been told. So if you are reading my post and you are a full-timer, you may be able to relate to what I'm about to write, if you're reading this because you hope to one day own a camper of your own, please heed this warning before it's too late.

Our camper is an older camper so it lacks some of the features that are now pretty standard on newer models. One of those features are automatic levelers or leveling jacks. The camper did come with a few pieces of boards that appeared that they should be used for something, but to be honest, we really didn't give them much thought. After all, when everyone talked about un-level sites, in my ignorance I thought an un-even site would have hills, bumps or potholes and the spots we camped didn't seem to have any of these characteristics so they must have been even, right? Wrong! And for those of you that have campers, I'm sure you already know why you want to make sure your camper is level to ensure that your refrigerator is not damaged or ruined.

Well, when our refrigerator quit working, we began to give this a bit more thought. Especially when replacing the frig is a costly $1500-$2000! Well our camper is older so to invest that much money in the refrigeration unit was probably not the best option, but to pull the unit and replace it with a small house model also had it's drawbacks. After much thought we decided that if the unit could be repaired rather inexpensively, we'd go ahead and put the money into it. So off to the repair shop the camper went. Turned out that the refrigerator wasn't the only thing that needed to be repaired, but the entire converter box was faulty which was not allowing the frig to run properly. A new converter, a new circuit board and $600 later, we were back at our campsite loving the fact that my frig was working again. That lasted for a couple weeks and finally one day when I returned home from the grocery store with just enough food to cram into our frig I realized that it was no longer working and began doing the exact same thing it had done before.

Frustrated, I called my husband, who called the repair shop, who told us that they would need us to take the camper back to them or we could pay them $130 to come to us. Yeah right. My husband thinks we may have gotten a faulty part, but does not want to put the camper back in the shop because that means we have to stay in a hotel which at this point in the journey, I've shared that is almost an unbearable thought for us. He also does not want to pay to have the man come to us because for $130 we could buy the part that we need. So, my husband has decided to do the repairs on his own.

Today he planned to remove the frig to work on it a bit outside of the camper but that was easier said than done. So as an alternative, my husband decided to climb into the outside cubby that holds the frig. Some of you will understand what I mean when I say that I was claustrophobic just watching him but if you don't realize just how small that space is take a peek at the picture that I posted. And to think that this all started because we failed to make sure our camper was level!