Cold Nights, Bad Smells, and Electrical Fires… OH MY!
They say hindsight is always 2020 and man did we luck out here. We were initially really bummed when our Greystone Fireplace went out. It was one more thing that we hadn’t budgeted for and now we had to repair (we were hopeful that was all at this point) it because we NEEDED it for a secondary heat source.
Count your blessings
Our fireplace going out ended up being a good thing. No, a great thing. We started it up one evening and almost immediately we smelled something burning. After a little detective work, we discovered the electrical board on the fireplace got hot and melted had started to melt. We have a toddler who occasionally likes to turn the fireplace on if you aren’t watching closely and with the issues we’d been having we decided to unplug the entire unit for further inspection. The plug was placed behind a false wall in the bottom of the cabinet where the kids store their toys. It’s also right near where our older two boys sleep. Just a few feet in fact. When Jordan unplugged the unit, the end of the plug was melted and so was the outlet face plate! Our rig is a 2014 Grand Design Solitude 369RL. Since we live in our RV full-time the fireplace gets it’s fair share of usage in the cold Colorado winters. We don’t leave it on for hours on end though so this was a little concerning when we found this faulty outlet. For starters, this outlet is one that is meant to be mounted inside a wall. It had the tabs that tighten against the inside of the wall to hold it in place but for some reason it was mounted on the outside of the wall. Second, this outlet was crooked and looked like it was installed by someone who knew nothing about electrical and had mismatched screws securing it to the wall. I would hope this isn’t something from the factory but who knows! While we’re very happy with our Grand Design Solitude, RVs are not made to the standards that a house is constructed nor overbuilt the way that Jordan likes to do things.
Repairs and Maintenance are a MUST for RV living!
We picked up this Legrand Wiremold 700 series raceway outlet box. Fun fact, we thought we’d stop spending time at Home Depot when we went full-time. Not true. It is an all metal outlet box which made us feel a little better about installing it. If there is a fire issue inside the box, hopefully the metal box will keep it contained inside itself without causing our rig to go up in flames or at least give us enough time to get out when we notice a problem. It was a super simple install with just a few basic tools.
AC Voltage Detector
Flathead Screwdriver
Ridgid Drill
Wire Strippers
We are trying to keep our videos shorter so that means we didn’t put the outlet repair and fireplace install in the same video. You can click here to check out our fireplace install.
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