JSKepler
New member
I recently put a Lance 825 on my F-350. It's a 2017 and is in great shape. (The truck is an '04.) Everything works as it should which is both good and bad. As a 4-season camper, I'd say it is ready to be turned into a 4-season camper. One of my gripes is with the thermostat. Setting it to the lowest temperature, which is nothing more than a very rough read off of a scale, seems to keep the interior at 60 degrees and the tanks liquid in temperatures below freezing. Of course, the colder it gets outside, the harder the furnace will have to work, peripherals could freeze, etc. I get that. What annoys me is that below freezing I have to keep the interior at 60 degrees. At 31 degrees I'm sure an interior temperature of, say, 40 degrees would work. At 28 degrees I might need 45 degrees inside. Also, it means that above freezing, say at 33 degrees, it's still going to be 60 degrees or even warmer. It's a terrible design that was obviously borrowed from a house.
What I'd like is a smarter RV thermostat. For one, I'd like to be able to set it a lot lower than 60 degrees. Especially if it isn't freezing. Why burn that fuel when I'm perfectly comfortable sleeping in the 50s or even 40s? I'm guessing there's nothing special about this RV thermostat. I could probably pull the one out of my house and use that. I haven't looked at the schematics yet but I would guess that it closes a circuit that provides power to the furnace which controls the blower and the burner. Much like a simple home thermostat.
For starters, I'd like to have separate control over the fan and the burner and operation across a wider temperature range. It would be great if this thermostat also had an external temperature sensor. Many times when the temperature is above freezing I don't need the furnace coming on at all. At 33 degrees outside I'm not worried about the tanks freezing. Is such a thermostat available?
Longer term, I'd like a thermostat that not only measured the interior temperature but had a temperature probe in each of the tanks and outside. My 825 has ducting that carries warm air to all the tanks. How efficient it is at the tanks, I don't know? Probably not very. But, simple gates in those ducts, controlled by a smarter thermostat getting multiple measurements, could keep the tanks above freezing with a lot less fuel than by keeping the entire rig above 60 deg. Maybe something like this exists as well as gates to open and close ducting. It's a perfect project for an Arduino though integrating it from existing parts might be easier.
I did a few simple searches on "RV thermostat" but, for me, Google is rather pointless these days. Search terms just drive self-targeted advertising. I didn't find anything useful but found a lot of stuff that wasn't. And it only took .0001 seconds. Thanks for reading my rant and for any recommendations that might help.
What I'd like is a smarter RV thermostat. For one, I'd like to be able to set it a lot lower than 60 degrees. Especially if it isn't freezing. Why burn that fuel when I'm perfectly comfortable sleeping in the 50s or even 40s? I'm guessing there's nothing special about this RV thermostat. I could probably pull the one out of my house and use that. I haven't looked at the schematics yet but I would guess that it closes a circuit that provides power to the furnace which controls the blower and the burner. Much like a simple home thermostat.
For starters, I'd like to have separate control over the fan and the burner and operation across a wider temperature range. It would be great if this thermostat also had an external temperature sensor. Many times when the temperature is above freezing I don't need the furnace coming on at all. At 33 degrees outside I'm not worried about the tanks freezing. Is such a thermostat available?
Longer term, I'd like a thermostat that not only measured the interior temperature but had a temperature probe in each of the tanks and outside. My 825 has ducting that carries warm air to all the tanks. How efficient it is at the tanks, I don't know? Probably not very. But, simple gates in those ducts, controlled by a smarter thermostat getting multiple measurements, could keep the tanks above freezing with a lot less fuel than by keeping the entire rig above 60 deg. Maybe something like this exists as well as gates to open and close ducting. It's a perfect project for an Arduino though integrating it from existing parts might be easier.
I did a few simple searches on "RV thermostat" but, for me, Google is rather pointless these days. Search terms just drive self-targeted advertising. I didn't find anything useful but found a lot of stuff that wasn't. And it only took .0001 seconds. Thanks for reading my rant and for any recommendations that might help.
