Replace Your Old Battery Charger With A Smart Charger

The next time you pull your Casita out of storage to pack it for a camping trip you may find a dead battery, if it has been sitting for weeks or months without a maintenance charge - or someone played a dirty trick by flipping on the exterior light switch. (Another good reason to install a battery cutoff switch.)

A 12V battery will naturally discharge itself even when fully disconnected (isolated) sitting in storage. The natural discharge rate is about 1% per day at room temperature, 0.25% per day at 10 °C (50 °F) and 1.5% per day at 30 °C (86 °F). This self discharge percentage is the percentage of the remaining capacity, so a flooded lead acid battery will discharge itself to 50% of its capacity after about 6 months.

Repairing Rivets In Your Camper

For those who haven’t yet repaired a broken rivet, here is the general procedure for exterior rivets that hold cabinets to the shell interior. Repairing an exterior rivet is really a two person job. Rivet guns can be purchased on Amazon, or at most Lowe’s or Home Depot stores and rivet parts are available at the Casita factory store:

Casita uses a blind rivet. A blind rivet is a rivet that can be completely installed from one side, unlike machine screws and nuts, which requires access to both sides of the material. Blind rivets are also known as "pop" rivets because POP® is one brand of blind rivets. 

A blind rivet consists of two pieces that are pre-assembled: the rivet body (usually just referred to as the rivet) and inside it is the setting mandrel (commonly just called the mandrel).

Replacing The City Water Inlet Connection

Replacing the “city water” inlet connection. When I winterized our Casita last December I blew the check valve o-ring on the city water connection inlet. I thought air pressure in the water system - pipes and water heater - was relieved after I finished blowing out the water system, but nope. There was still a little pressure in the system — probably in the water heater that pressurized the pipes when I opened the water heater bypass valve, after closing all the faucet valves. When I depressed the city water check valve stem one last time to make sure the last bit of water was drained, the pressure release unseated the check valve o-ring.