Hey! I had a great time with my guests, Uncle Gary and Aunt Carol (aka Mr and Mrs Kahuna). When they first got here I talked them into trying some of my home-made Peach Champagne. I made this by brewing up a 4 gallon batch of peach wine. As I decanted it, I grabbed some empty Grolsch Beer bottles and put a 1/4 cup of peach juice then filled it with the (unsulphited) peach wine. Wow! It turned out really good. So good in fact, that we spent the rest of the evening decanting off the rest of the batch into champagne brews. We made up 4 – 16oz bottles and one 2 litre recycled soda bottle. I’ll have to buy another 4 pack of Grolsch so I can enjoy the beer and use them for more champagne brews later on.
While my guests were here, I was using the RV refrigerator. It was working fine and I bought two boxes of ice cream for our deserts. On Sunday we were starting on cooking up some breakfast, and when I opened the refrig I got a whiff of some strange smell. Uncle Gary smelled it too and he went into shell-shock PTSD. He thought the Ruskies were attacking and shelling us with mustard gas. ‘Turned out the RV refrigerator popped a cork in the freezer compartment and was gassing off the ammonia and hydrogen gas. I yanked the power cord in order to minimize the damage. Then I heard a clicking noise. Yikes! I forgot the car battery was still attached to the refrigerator control board and it was trying to light off the propane backup system. The clicking noise was the igniter throwing off sparks. Luckily I got the control panel turned it off before the hydrogen gas ignited. We could have all been blown sky-high.
Now: Any sane person might be tempted to say that this RV refrigerator experiment was a dismal failure. But look on the bright side: It was a good learning experiment, exciting fun, and we lived to tell about it. It’s like the say in aviation: If you can walk away from the wreckage, it was good landing. Not that alone, but think of the coming adventure I’ll have learning how to repair and recharge RV refrigerators. Wow! ‘More fun than you can shake a stick at.
donaldkamp 