Yesterday was a lazy day, and I didn’t get much accomplished.

I have had back problems for years, and Friday morning it decided to go out. This happens a couple of times a year, and it’s no fun at all.

Fortunately, my favorite bone cruncher in the world, Jim Lewis, lives here in the White Mountains. Friday afternoon Jim gave me an adjustment, but the pain came back later than evening and got progressively worse over the next 24 hours.

I was taking 500mg Naproxyn, but all that did was take the edge off. Saturday evening Jim called to see how I was feeling, and when Terry told him I was feeling pretty miserable, he said to come up to his house and he’d adjust me again. That one took, and it was great to be out of pain.

Yesterday there was still some tenderness, but I felt much better. But I was just feeling washed out, probably a combination of leftover painkillers in my system and the high altitude here, which always affects me for the first week or two when we come up to our old hometown. So I spent most of the day trying to concentrate on some e-mail, without much luck, and napping in my recliner. 

After reading my blog about the options that we have in our bus and that I would want in our next RV, two subscribers wrote to ask me if I would go with a pure sine wave inverter again, if so what brand, and is it worth the extra cost to purchase a pure sine wave model over a modified sine wave.

We have had both modified and pure sine wave inverters. We started out with a Heart 2,000 watt modified sine wave model, and while the unit itself gave us a lot of problems, the modified sine wave electricity it put out seemed to work out okay for us.

Our next inverter was a Magnum Energy 2,000 watt modified sine wave, and it was/is a far superior unit to the Heart, or to any of the Xantrex inverters I have seen. It is a rock solid piece of equipment, and I never would consider any other brand after having a Magnum.

After using the modified sine wave model for a few years, Magnum Energy offered us an upgrade to a pure sine wave model. Like its predecessor, this is an excellent inverter, and it further reinforced my respect for Magnum Energy products.

Now, as to whether I’d pay the extra money for a pure sine wave model, I really cannot see that much of a difference. There are a lot of technical folks who know much more about such things than I do who say the pure sine wave is superior, but all I can say is that our television, Dish network receiver, computers, laser printers, Maytag refrigerator, and other electronics all seem to work the same way with either modified or pure sine wave.

I’ve heard that cheap electronics don’t respond well to modified sine wave. We did experience that with a mattress pad heater and a halogen reading lamp. But even given that, if I had a limited budget (wait, I do have a limited budget!), I would be perfectly happy with another modified sine wave Magnum inverter. If our next coach does not have an inverter, I will put a Magnum in it, and if it has a Xantrex or any other brand, I’ll make upgrading to a Magnum my first priority.

Thought For The Day – The way to get things done is not to mind who gets the credit for doing them.

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It’s cold here in Show Low, Arizona. Last night the thermometer dipped down to 25 degrees! We were sure glad that we put so much effort into insulating our bus conversion when we built it. With just a small cube style electric heater, we kept it about 65 degrees inside the bus overnight.

We don’t have a furnace in our bus. We installed one early in our conversion project, but quickly realized that the typical RV furnace blows more heat outside than it does inside, so we pulled it out. We have an Olympian Wave 8 catalytic heater that keeps us toasty warm on cold nights, and when we have an RV site with a 30 or 50 amp electric hookups, we use the cube heater to save on propane.

Several people have written to suggest that instead of replacing our bus, we just put in a rebuilt engine. We debated that, but the 8V71 Detroit Diesel engines like we have were prone to overheating on steep climbs even when they were new, and they were never very powerful. We want to get away from the overheating problems and the long, slow climbs here in the West.

We could upgrade to a more powerful engine, like an 8V92 turbo, but that would also require a transmission upgrade, and a pair of larger radiators. I talked to a bus garage we trust and for the price he quoted us to do the job right, we could spend just a little bit more and have a newer coach with a slide out or two.

We’ve reached the point where we’d like to have some more living space. Yesterday my daughter and her family stopped by, and with the two grandkids in here, it was just too crowded.

There is no perfect RV, even when you build it yourself. Our bus meets a lot of our needs in a home on wheels, but if we were going to do it all over again, there are some things we would do differently. We’d install an instant-on hot water system, we would not put in a residential size bathtub, and we would try a different floor plan, probably a side aisle design.

Some things we would definitely do again would be the residential style refrigerator, the stainless steel apartment size range with oven, and the separate apartment size washer and dryer. We’d also still spend the money we did on large holding tanks, our solar system, Magnum Energy inverter, and large bank of AGM batteries.

Some things I’d like to see in our next RV are a bigger engine, at least a living room slide, and preferably a bedroom slide too, a rooftop automatic satellite TV dish or dome, and leveling jacks.

What options do you wish your current RV had, or that you will demand in your next rig?

We know the right coach for us is out there, and we’ll keep looking until we find it.

Thought For The Day – You can do something in an instant that will give you heartaches for a lifetime.

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