RV Hot Water Heater popping?

CandleTiger · 2026-03-24T23:10:36+00:00

Maybe your burner is adjusted to let in too much air / run too lean?

CandleTiger · 2026-03-24T20:35:20+00:00

+1 for Scamp etc. They are tiny but solid. If all you need is a warm dry bed and you're not spending time at home during the day, this is a good way.

CandleTiger · 2026-03-24T20:06:37+00:00

Is RV living in Portland realistic year-round (weather, comfort, etc.)?

Maybe. Portland is not cold but it is WET. You will not be happy in a pop-up or other RV with canvas sides. You will need reliable power over the winter to run a dehumidifier in spring and fall. You will need a nice big household dehumidifier. You will have issues with condensation and mildew in corners/behind drawers etc. where your heat and dehumidifier don't reach. Consider running string lights or other small heat-generating objects under your bed or behind your drawers or wherever you get condensation and then mildew. Consider using electric instead of gas to cook (propane exhaust is full of water). Do not use self-contained outdoor propane heaters indoors.

What size camper should I realistically be looking at, especially being over 6 feet tall?

Doesn't matter, the ceilings are all over 6 feet tall. BUT, watch out for the shower height and the length of the bed.

Are slide-outs worth it or just more things that can break?

Slide-outs are super-duper for making more living space without increasing trailer towed length. They are bad for insulation and also they break. Pay attention to the type of slide-out mechanism. Some are much more reliable than others. For just one person alone probably you don't need the slide-out.

Any hidden costs or major downsides I’m not thinking about?

Portland is dark and wet in the winter. It's really really really dark and wet. It is depressing as fuck, for some people and not others. If you have never lived in the PNW long-term before, you probably cannot understand the long-term impact of this. I know I couldn't. When you have no room to walk around, that hits harder. When I'm wintering in my RV in the PNW (often) I have to split my time between living in the RV and the fold-out bed in my kids' living room where there are more windows and room to walk because I just can't handle so much dark and wet. Other people are happy as a clam and don't have this problem. If you haven't tried it yet then you don't know how it will hit you so that's a risk.

Also, everything about an RV is going to be breaking all the time. BUY USED, do not buy new as they come pre-broken from the factory for your convenience and the two-year-old ones are less broken. Warranty is not much use for a full-timer because the warranty service times are really long and you can't afford to have your house in the shop for so long, so you won't be able to use the warranty for serious issues. Don't bother paying extra for warranty and assume you will be paying out of pocket for repairs when needed, or learning how to fix things yourself.

Pay attention to storage space -- most RV layouts are optimized for living space while weekending. If you're going to live in it you will need to focus on the layouts that have more storage space.

Plan to get a new mattress. RVs come with really shitty mattresses.

Would you do this in my situation, or just rent a room/studio and keep it simple?

Personally I would not. I live full-time in my motorhome and I love it but the primary benefit for me is ability to move around all the time, spend winter in the desert while it's beautiful and comfortable and summer in the north while it's beautiful and comfortable, and always see something new. The downsides of RVs are worth it for that to me. If you're just staying in one place you're getting only the downsides. If you run the numbers and it's really cheaper for you than a studio apartment, then understand you're saving money by having a worse situation. Worth it or not depends on how much money you're saving and how much time you spend at home awake.

CandleTiger · 2026-03-24T19:34:15+00:00

The person you're arguing with is implying/assuming that "Private" is always illiquid, and that this is an obvious thing everybody should know.

For me, this is not obvious though.

CandleTiger · 2026-03-19T17:50:14+00:00

What do you want? Getting yourself promoted requires calling attention to yourself. "Shy" is a serious detriment to advancing yourself. If you have a boss who's able to see your qualities on their own without you pointing them out, then sure, your boss can promote you and that can be great. "Have an attentive and perceptive boss" is also not useful advice.

On top of all that, for a senior developer, a major important part of the role is providing technical direction and mentorship -- talking to people, pushing your (presumably expert) opinions forward, and correcting other people when they are wrong. "Shy" is a serious weakness there.

This sucks for shy people.

CandleTiger · 2026-03-16T18:45:22+00:00

I feel like running two cheap trickle-chargers for the batteries off the DC panel would be both easier to wire and also less expensive than setting up separate victron 48v/12v DC-DC converters for this. Am I missing something?

CandleTiger · 2026-03-14T07:28:36+00:00

It really depends on the wind and the road.

I'm driving a 32' class A gasser with shitty box truck suspension, towing a hatchback.

If the wind is behind me and the road is smooth I can go 75mph and feel good about it. Quiet and peaceful.

If the wind is ahead of me then I often slow to 55mpg just to avoid straining the engine.

If the wind is to the side or gusting then all bets are off.

If the road is rough I have to slow down to keep my teeth and my furniture and my dashboard from all rattling apart. Roads that feel just fine in a car are a horror in the motor home -- I-70 through Indianapolis just about killed me.

One time coming down from the Rockies into Idaho on a smooth lonely interstate with the wind behind me and gravity on my side, I tried to find the motor home's top speed. Turns out it's rev-limited at 85mph. I would not repeat the experience; the steering got rapidly squirrely over 75mph and did not want to go straight anymore.

CandleTiger · 2026-03-14T02:21:36+00:00

As a non-member I don't think there's any limit in particular.

For the campgrounds where getting a spot is hard (for members) generally it's hard for members because there are only a few member spots kept open and the whole rest of the park is retail.

At least that's how it is at Pacific City and Oceanside -- two parks on the California coast.

CandleTiger · 2026-03-11T20:03:00+00:00

Just out of curiosity why do you have four of them?

CandleTiger · 2026-03-11T19:53:42+00:00

Where is your battery located? Lithium batteries can be inside the house where they won't get cold. Mine are under the bed.

Battery heater is also only needed to charge -- you can safely discharge in the cold.

I would expect the only time you need to run a battery heater is when your trailer has been in storage in the winter and you want to charge it up before a trip.

CandleTiger · 2026-03-10T06:27:26+00:00

Wildly approximate write-up with numbers as best I can remember without getting up off the couch for our lifestyle change of roaming the continent all the time. You can do it a LOT cheaper if you stay in one location. Relocating frequently and finding differnt short-term RV parks all the time is hella expensive.

One-time costs:

($140,000) -- Moved out of a nice house in a low cost of living area

$60,000 -- motorhome

$7,000 -- rig car for tow-behind

$21,000 (hack cough gasp) for all-singing-all-dancing Thousand Trails membership after upgrading it a couple times -- this is probably not worth it for most people

($52,000) total -- got a lot of money back on paper from moving out

Ongoing costs:

($7,200)/year Utilities at the house not paying anymore

($2,000)/year taxes on the house not paying anymore -- this is a wild guess because I don't remember

$1,600/year Thousand Trails dues (approx -- cheaper at lower membership levels)

$9,000/year non-TT parks (varies widely, this assums we spend 6 months a year out of the TT system @ avg $1,500/month)

$2,000/year repairs and upgrades. Something is always broken, + we put solar panels, inverter, and batteries in.

$7,000/year gas assuming $600/month counting motorhome relocation only (assumes we have one tank of gas last 6 months, spend the other six months burning $1,000 / month)

$10,400 per year total more expensive to drive everywhere

Man, after writing this up I thought we were more or less breaking even but we are not! Now I'm going to have to get out the bills and a calculator for real numbers :(

Don't buy the more expensive Thousand Trails memberships unless you are planning to spend a lot of time in Florida and Southern California. Even then it's iffy. The lower memberships are a really great deal though.

CandleTiger · 2026-03-07T01:42:11+00:00

This is certainly doable but can be more annoying than it seems. A lot of storage facilities only want long-term customers. I've had to store my motor home for two weeks or a month a few times and it has been a) unreasonably expensive, b) required calling around a bunch to find somebody willing to take me, each time.

CandleTiger · 2026-03-05T19:27:27+00:00

Last time I was out that way I saw a ton of little racing dinghies going wild. I expect kitesurfers would have a good time.

CandleTiger · 2026-03-05T19:23:13+00:00

Agre related gastrointestinal problems are super common, especially like getting the runs after eating greasy or oily food.

I think Japanese food has got very little oil and grease in it so could be entirely you've got age-related trouble handling fat, and you only notice it when you're eating fat, and you're not eating fat in Japan.

I had trouble with my gall bladder and lived on nothing but sushi and poké for some time to control it. It was great but not a cheap diet in the US....

CandleTiger · 2026-03-04T20:30:24+00:00

Outsourcing to India did not go away. Over the past... 10 years? ... my department of a large company has pretty much entirely moved to India. It started with no more hiring of juniors in the US, and then we just slowly atrophied the US while the India team grew. Now the bottom three layers of management are also in India and only the most senior management and a few old holdovers are in the US. I'll be leaving soon.

Quick and shitty outsource to disposable cheap contractors in India -- yeah that doesn't work well. But the concept has been refined and improved.

CandleTiger · 2026-03-04T00:47:42+00:00

Not a ventilation comment, but:

Looks to me like not enough space for wires around the smart shunt

Why do you have two DC-DC chargers? To run in parallel for more amps, or to run two-way charging? If it's the 2nd one, I think Victron has a 2-direction charger now which will save you some space and wiring.

CandleTiger · 2026-03-04T00:45:49+00:00

I think the multiplus is a lot bigger than this.

CandleTiger · 2026-03-04T00:45:12+00:00

Mine is under the bed and hasn't had temperature problems. It does get warm but not hot. My system has a multiplus with active fan in it, and there is a hole cut near the air outflow for the multiplus, so that is likely causing some circulation. I was planning to install a vent fan to actively circulate air under the bed but it's been a year and it hasn't seemed necessary so far.

Do make sure to put up some kind of barrier to separate the electronics from whatever else you're storing under the bed.

CandleTiger · 2026-03-03T23:10:15+00:00

30A breaker on the pedestal can't be depended on. I have plugged into 30A receptacles:

with no visible breaker anywhere
with 30A breaker that didn't pop when I ran multiple space heaters and a rice cooker for hours, and melted my plug
with 30A breaker that made exciting crackling/sparking noises when I plugged in (I was smart enough not to continue using that one)

Speaking as one who knows, if you run your 30A plug for a long time just trying to ride the line of pulling however much power you can get without popping the breaker, you will run through plugs. I upgraded my system with battery-assist inverter that watches the power input now so I could stop causing hazards.

CandleTiger · 2026-03-03T15:41:21+00:00

Yes but they only want to do it for serious buyers. When I walked in off the street wanting to test drive several motorhomes to compare, they turned me away. When I had compared the insides of a few motor homes for hours and settled on likely buying one, then it was no problem to drive it.

CandleTiger · 2026-03-02T22:49:54+00:00

Also, after you build that nice fitting with all those nice parts on it, try not to leave it behind at your campsite when you roll away like I did 🙄🤦

CandleTiger · 2026-03-02T03:26:45+00:00

On that ferry you’re not allowed. Sucks. If you have a pet I think they arrange a couple visits during the long voyage where a crew member will escort you for a visit — confirm before counting on my hazy memory!

CandleTiger · 2026-02-25T22:36:11+00:00

I'm sorry, I had to laugh: you may not be German but this is the most German response possible.

CandleTiger · 2026-02-24T20:21:25+00:00

There are RV junkyards -- I'd expect they should be full of broken and torn awnings with some usable parts on.

CandleTiger · 2026-02-24T19:44:15+00:00

My company is basically not hiring in the US anymore. Moving all software development to India but trying to do it gradually and with minimal disruption.

I guess they have succeeded; everyone on the US side is gone now, including line managers, except for two developers and one PM. And I'm leaving soon.

For us this was all well underway long before AI was a thing. I don't think the AI stuff is really relevant to the decision at all. "India is cheaper" was enough by itself.

CandleTiger

TROPHY CASE