In Defense of Montana

Piss Poor Performance in Predicting Power Problems

September 11th, also known as Suzy, Tatum and Terri’s birthdays, dawned cold and bright on Desert Island. Emphasis on the cold as Bangor, just north of here set a low temperature record of 39 degrees, matching our temp on the island. We had plans for a trip to Camden and Rockport on the Maine coast south of here. Being Suzy’s birthday I had vowed to shop without dissent or do anything else her heart desired. A good husband will do that.

As I got out of bed I noticed that besides being cold in the RV it was also a bit darker then normal. I tried numerous lights and found that the 9 volt lights all worked but none of the 120 volt lights working. Further exploration revealed that the converter that takes 120 volt current and converts it to 9 volt power and also recharges the batteries was not working so we were running on battery power. Not a good wake up call. Outside I found that all the neighbors had power and back inside I found the microwave was the only 120 volt power working. How strange. I reset my gfi and got it working so I had that 120 volt power too, but nothing else. Basically half my panel wasn’t working and an important half it was as it powered the converter that runs the refrigerator and furnace which were now operating off the battery and propane. They would keep working until the battery wound down or the propane ran out.

Suzy had the great idea to go out for breakfast, after all it was still her birthday. So we took off for Maine wild blueberry pancakes. Over breakfast I trouble shot the electrical system and confessed to my bride I was flummoxed. She suggested we go to Camden another day and instead pull the RV to Bangor to a service shop to have them fix it. I agreed and we headed back. Stopped at the office on the way in and asked if anyone had reported power surges last night. None reported but they said they would send Randy down to take a look. Randy, native North Carolinan, arrived immediately started trouble shooting. He had a nice voltmeter and we checked and confirmed half the panel was out. Then we notice that the 50 amp lines were only half working, explaining why half the panel was not working. One was dead, so we thought it was the circuit breaker and I thanked Randy and got ready to pull the breaker and get a new one. As I was taking it out it struck me the power in to the breaker was the problem, not the breaker, so I hurried out to catch Randy, whom I found at our hookup box already testing the power source. We had both come to the same conclusion at the same time, the power from the park was bad. Sure enough, half the power on the source box was dead. Eureka, the RV was fine, it was the park’s power that was the problem.

Randy ran up to the office and found the breaker feeding our sight was bad and replaced it, immediately fixing our problems. Good lesson, always assume nothing. Check everything back to the source and check the source. The ole Montana was pissed that we had thought bad things about its electrical system so we both apologized and headed for Camden and Rockport.