In my last post, I described problems we were having with the heating, ventilation, air conditioning of our park model home. I had the air conditioner/forced air heater repaired and also needed to have a 50-amp breaker installed in the power pedestal.

Park model homes in Arizona are considered “mobile” units although you cannot just hook up to a truck and drive them away. This designation changes some aspects compared to a regular sticks-and-bricks home. For one thing, we obtained the title for our unit from the motor vehicle department. Another aspect is the electrical supply to the home.

Our park model is fed electricity from SRP – the local power utility – through Viewpoint and is distributed to each site through a power pedestal just like an RV site. When we had the breaker replaced in the pedestal, I saw one of the 50-amp receptacles feeding power to our unit had a broken housing. There are two 50-amp receptacles in our pedestal – remember, each 50-amp receptacle has two legs of 50-amp current available for a total of 100 amps. With two receptacles, we have a total of 200 amps of electrical service.

The housing of the receptacle is formed from bakelite – a synthetic resin – the first form of plastic invented in 1909 and still used for its insulating properties. Bakelite is easy to form and cheap, that’s why it’s still used. However, it can be brittle. Anyway, the bakelite housing had a section broken off right where the round ground lug is located.

We had another issue with the pedestal. It’s about 34 years old and was placed in a hole in the ground – no concrete surround, just dirt. This results in corrosion and ours is badly corroded around the base. I’m a little concerned about it breaking off at the base and falling over. We placed a work order with VIewpoint – the management of Viewpoint is responsible for upkeep of the pedestal and main power supply to our park model.

They had a maintenance guy come out to look it over. He seemed to think we had nothing to be concerned about. I pointed out the broken receptacle and he said, “That’s common – it’s no big deal, that’s just the ground.” I thought “no big deal…just a ground?”

I pointed out to him that it was potentially a very big deal. With no support of the sleeve for the ground lug, the sleeve could very well have loosened and end up corroded with poor contact to the ground lug. That would mean part of our household circuit was ungrounded. The purpose of the ground is to have an low-resistance path for unwanted electricity to the negatively charged earth.

If the ground lug didn’t have good contact, we may not have that path to earth. Let’s consider a defective appliance like a toaster. If the toaster developed a short to the chassis and/or metal cover, the electricity should be delivered through the ground. This shorted circuit would draw a very large current and trip the breaker, thus telling us we had a problem.

Now, let’s suppose that the ground lug had poor conductivity. There’s no path to ground, so the chassis is charged with electricity with place no to go. Excess current isn’t developed, so the breaker doesn’t trip. The toaster sits there on the counter charged with electricity and if you happen to be unlucky enough to touch it, you become the path to ground. The current would flow through your hand and body and exit from your feet. Bad news.

He said he would get an electrician out to fix the receptacle. I wonder how many people here bought into his thought of the ground being no big deal – he said the broken bakelite was common, right? A guy from Flatiron Electric came out on Tuesday while I was giving pickleball lessons. He talked to Donna and went back to the pedestal. He came out a short time later and told Donna he would have to return the next day. He admitted being a new guy and I think he got a scare – the pedestal is daisy-chained with several others and the input lines remain hot when you work on it. You can only break the connection between the pedestal and the house – to break the feed line would mean disrupting power to a whole row or more of houses.

I confirmed Donna’s suspicion – she said the guy looked a little shook up when he left. I found half of the outlets in our Arizona room weren’t working. I found a tripped ground fault circuit interupter (GFCI). He must have shorted a hot lead and tripped the GFCI. I bet it made a big spark before the GFCI tripped!

He came back yesterday morning and got the job done. He must have had a lesson or two the afternoon before, because he replaced the receptacle fairly quickly, without incident.

I neglected to take a photo of the old, broken receptacle before it was replaced.

On Tuesday, we also had Brandon from Gleeson Mechanical come out to give us a quote on a new air conditioner/heating unit. He spent more time looking everything over than the previous two contractors we got quotes from. In the time between the quote from Liberty last Friday and Gleeson on Tuesday, I did more research.

I was initially inclined to go with an electric heat strip for winter heat. I was a little skeptical about a heat pump. This was because the heat pumps we have on our motorhome don’t work very well when the temperature is below the mid-30s. This only happens occasionally here in Mesa, but we do have the odd frosty morning here and there.

What I found was my assumption based on the motorhome wasn’t a good one. The units on our coach are 20 years old and are much smaller than a residential unit. The technology has improved over time and current heat pumps remain efficient until the temperature drops below 25 degrees for an extended time. This doesn’t happen here. A heat pump costs a few hundred more initially, but it’s more energy-efficient and will save on utility bills.

Gleeson Mechanical gave us a quote for a 2.5 ton Day and Night brand heat pump with new ducting. The price was $4,800 – this is $900 more than the quote from Liberty, but it’s an apples-and-oranges comparison. Day and Night is a brand from Carrier Corporation – a well-respected brand of heat pumps with a track record for quality and reliability. Liberty quoted a Broan 2.5 ton air conditioner with an 8kW heat strip. Broan is a brand name under Nutek. I can’t find much in the way of favorable reviews for their products.

The first quote we received was for a Day and Night 3.0 ton air conditioner with an 8kW heat strip and it was $5,500. My research indicated this unit was too large for the air space in our park model home and inefficient. Also, the labor charge was high, so we wrote that guy off.

At the end of the day, I figured paying the extra $900 up front for the Day and Night 2.5 ton heat pump over the Broan will pay off in lower utility costs and peace of mind for a quality product. Gleeson will come out tomorrow and do the installation.

The weather has been very pleasant this week with daily highs in the low to mid 70s and overnight lows around 50 degrees. It looks like more of the same in the coming week with overnight lows dipping to the mid 40s. The new heat pump should cope well with that.

*Just so you know, if you use this link to shop on Amazon and decide to purchase anything, you pay the same price as usual and I’ll earn a few pennies for the referral. It’ll go into the beer fund. Thanks!