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Mike D · 01-22-2015, 05:02 AM

Anyone have any experience with this?
My fuse panel has a 5 amp fuse labeled "Awning Kill". It's hot with the ignition.
Given it's label and the fact that it's live when the ignition is on, you might think it keeps the power awning from opening when the ignition is on, but it doesn't. Both the door awning and the big Girard awning are unaffected by this fuse. Both awnings operate if the fuse is plugged in or not. Both operate if the ignition is on or off.

I was checking this out because my big Girard awning was occasionally opening and closing by itself. It closed on me at a campground. At the time I suspected a faulty wind speed sensor. But then it opened while driving down an Interstate!
Luckily I was able to pull over and retract the awning . I shut off the "Bath and Outside" breaker on one of the inverter breaker panels, which feed 110 AC power to the awning.
Amazingly enough, the awning was undamaged by this.
Later inspection found a bad soldered joint on the awning's "Wind and Remote" controller circuit board. I re-soldered the board and reinstalled it. So far so good
I'm going to wire in a relay that kills the 110 power to the awning when the ignition is on, so this can never happen while driving.
Does any TS owner have either awning NOT operate with the ignition on?
I have a Spartan wiring file for this year TS, but the word "awning" doesn't appear anywhere in their schematics. The "Awning Kill" fuse is on the TS installed fuse panels.

Twomed · 01-23-2015, 06:55 PM

After working with the Girard Rep at a show years ago I wired a 110 switch so that there is a positive off. Stories abound about seemingly random deployments. Causes include key fobs in pockets, stray rf signals, wiring issues, water intrusion, etc.

If it deploys even with the key off in a bad situation you would still have damage...think Pilot/FJ fuel lane, tight campground, ferry, garage or service center, lots of places that even a key off deployment could be damaging.

Murphy lives everywhere... :( :(

Mike D · 01-24-2015, 04:18 AM

Thanks for the reply. I feel the same way. I'm a belt and suspenders sort of person. Most of my life I worked in fleet maintenance of one kind or another. I was surprised to see that it was even possible for an awning to open when the coach was moving!

Since I couldn't find any relay or other lock-out that the "Awning Kill" fuse controlled, I added my own.

As it turned out, in addition to repairing the circuit board on the Girard awning, I had to run a new power feed for the Carefree awning that's over the entry door. I ran it directly to one of the house battery powered fuse panels. I took advantage of the rewiring to make both awnings fail safe on the road.

I feed the power to the over the door awning from the new fused circuit via a Bosch style automotive relay. The relay's common contact comes from the fuse. The Carefree awning is feed using the relay's normally closed contact. The output from the Bosch relay's normally closed contact is also feeding a 12 volt triggered 110 volt AC solid state relay that controls the 110 AC feed that powers the Girard awning.

I tapped into the "Awning Kill" fuse's output wire and used that to power the relay's coil. Now when the ignition is off, there is power feeding through the normally open contacts on the Bosch relay. When the ignition is on the relays coil is energized, the normally closed contacts open and both circuits are switched off. Neither awning can operate with the ignition on.

Twomed · 01-25-2015, 09:53 AM

Yeah Mike sometimes all this automatic everything gets crazy. I can still stand up and turn on or off a switch when I want it to operate.

Imagine just a few years back we had to go outside and actually pull an awning out with a hook...primitive.

Wired for fail safe just makes sense to me too.

Mike D · 01-27-2015, 05:37 AM

I agree with you that having a manual switch has several advantages. It's an absolute block to the awning opening at any time, ignition on or off, it's less work to install and has fewer parts to fail.

The reason I decided to use a relay to block operation with ignition on was that I have a bad habit of sometime forgetting to flip all the switches, and I needed something that was "me" proof.