Help me burn my Rialta

[Dave Rickey]

I recently purchased a Winnebago Rialta, and I am putting together a list of things I want to do to modify it. One of my wife's issues is that she doesn't want it to "look like an RV", and another issue is that my HOA is stinky as hell about RV's parked on the street or driveway.

One of the attractions of the Rialta is that it's potentially parkable in my garage, which has an 8'3" door height. The Rialta is 7'7" without the roof AC, 8'8" with it. A low-profile roof AC unit could reduce that to 8'5", and letting all the air out of the rear suspension (and maybe a bit from the tires) would make it *barely* possible to get it through the door (the length is 21'8" for the Rialta and 24' for the garage, so that's okay as long as I don't have a cargo box mounted).

But that means airing the tires/suspension back up every time I want to go anywhere in it, and I have that white AC shroud sticking up above the roofline, making it "Look like an RV". In fact, one of my neighbors has been sparring with the HOA for months because his extended van has a roof AC, and the HOA says that makes it an RV (even though it doesn't have a stove or bathroom).

I myself don't like propane appliances on a vehicle, I actually was sleeping inside my uncle's RV one night when I was 15 when the propane refrigerator caught on fire, and I shake my head every time I see a burning/burned out RV, knowing it was almost certainly the propane that did it.

The way that all these come together is that the Rialta has a small counter just inside the entry door that contains a 3-mode refrigerator, a 2-burner stove, and a small sink.


(photo isn't of mine, but the same layout)

I don't want the stove, and I'd like to replace the refrigerator with a Norcold 2-mode that has a real freezer compartment (I found a how-to by someone who did exactly that, it's a straightforward job).

My thought for killing several birds with one stone was to replace the fridge, remove the stove, and put a portable AC similar to this model in the hole in the counter formerly occupied by the burners (so around 6-8 inches of it would be recessed into the counter, with it resting on a shelf I'd mount right above the fridge). The external venting hose for the AC would run out to the (no longer needed) vent for the old fridge's propane system. That lets me pull the roof-top AC completely, possibly replacing it with a skylight (giving me one place in the entire RV I can stand without stooping). The roof AC is only 6500 BTU, so I'm not losing anything there and the newer model is quite a bit more efficient.

After that, the only propane appliance left in the RV would be the second heater (it also has a shore/generator electric heater). I'd pull the internal propane tank completely, put in more battery storage, and perhaps fit a 2000W inverter so I could actually run the AC off of internal power (the AC's of that type/power are rated for a 800-900W load, 2000 should be enough for startup surge). I'd leave the ability to run the propane heater off portable cylinders as an emergency backup, but only carry them when I thought there was a good chance of needing them.

My question is: What have I not thought of here? Is the inverter a bridge too far that creates a fire risk? Or is even 5-6 batteries not enough to run it for long enough to be worth the trouble (my back of the envelope math says I should get 6 hours of constant running, times whatever duty cycle conditions create)?

--Dave

[wkdwitch]

An ambitious project but a driven man! Caution: the skylight may be too high for the garage if you can stand tall

Go for it, the only weakness is those leaky propane bottles - perhaps more dangerous than the fixed tank. Best of luck and show us the final project, pictures are welcomed.

[Dave Rickey]

It's not so much that I want a sky-light as that I don't want a 14 inch square hole in the roof and a skylight is as good a way to fill it as any, and better than most. Has anyone else tried putting in a portable AC like this? Or running a small AC unit from batteries?

Really, leaving the propane heater in at all is only because my wife is paranoid about getting trapped in a blizzard. I'm tempted to pull both heaters out completely, and get one of the portable AC's that also have heaters or a modern ceramic-core model I could just put on the counter (would make room to put in a better bathroom, the Rialta bathroom is a sad joke that you literally pull the walls out on to make it large enough to sit down). But that's an even bigger project, and there's plenty of other things to do first. The AC replacement is comparatively simple and can be done in steps.

--Dave