Woke up yesterday morning, and thought it was a tad cooler than normal. We have the thermostat set at about 65 degrees at night. When the propane furnace kicks on, it wakes me up. I hope it is a noise that I will learn to sleep through, and even more I hope we will not be staying places that we will need the furnace anyway.
But yesterday, I got up a bit early, and was doing fine, sitting in my chair, wrapped in a blanket, attempting to doze. I eventually gave up and went to heat some water for tea. I noticed the thermostat read 61 degrees. I thought maybe Kim had dropped the temperature down to 60 degrees so I could sleep through the night. I kept trying to set the temperature to 67. I just couldn't get it to go past 61 though.
So I drug out the owners manual - big old 3 ring binder - and started to read up about the furnace and the thermostat. I couldn't find anything to help me get it to work.
It finally occured to me that maybe we were out of propane. I knew how to turn on the water heater, so I pushed that button. I could hear it try to light, but it never clicked on. On the 3rd try, the red light came on. Oh, okay, no propane. So I woke Kim up to go check on it, and to switch to the second tank. (You may recall, I don't do anything with the propane).
The thing we learned - the primary tank automatically switches to the secondary tank when the primary tank is empty. Here we thought we were doing so well, only using a little propane here and there. I was so thrilled it was lasting so long. I wasn't really surprised to find out that we had gone through both tanks. Must be intuition, because it sure as heck wasn't from experience.
It was 8am, and Kim was off in search of propane. The local Shell station had removed their propane tank. The 76 Station had one, but the guy that billed tanks didn't come in until 10:30. On to the next stations, nope no propane. Another one where the propane guy wasn't in yet. Kim stopped at the local Permagas dealer. No luck, they only did commercial accounts. Finally it dawned on him that the local farm co-op probably had propane. They did, and the two tanks were filled. That little excusion only took 2 hours.
But now we know. And next time, hopefully we will be in an RV park that offers propane delivery! In the meantime, we have hot water. It was 90 degrees today, so the furnace was not necessary. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not - LOL. 90 degrees is a little too hot for me!
LOL - what a fun blog!!! I am green with envy but looking forward to following your adventure!! Where are you???? Hugs, Sarah
ReplyDeleteThanks Sarah - We are having fun on this zanny adventure. My idea of camping is staying in a regular room at a Holiday Inn, so how I got talked into this, I have no idea.
ReplyDeleteWe are from Snohomish, WA and we actually start our journeys in November. Until there, we are doing a few 'practice' trips. We hope to do Idaho and Montana sometime next year, probably in the early summer. We have 2 (or maybe 3) grandchildren due in the spring, so we will be back in the Seattle area for those events.