If you have been an RVer for any length of time, then you’ve experienced some type of epic RV/camping situation. For me, it happened this week. And like most of you it wasn’t all my fault. Some of it was, by getting to comfy and not using basic common sense.
Always have a back up plan! Or in my case, a back-up key
So what was my epic fail? I got locked out of my RV!
As you probably know by now, we keep our RV in Florida during the NFL football season. I live in it on weekends while I do my broadcast work for the Miami Dolphins. Last week was the Dolphins bye week, so I didn’t travel to Florida for that weekend. I knew I was going to be away from Florida for 13 days, so I made sure I cleaned up the RV, threw out the trash and locked her up fully. Not my typical lock up when I would only gone for 3-5 days.
Since South Florida still hits the 90’s in daily temps, I set the AC to a respectfully cool 76 degrees. I’m plugged into shore power (50 amps ), so everything would be fine. Or so I thought….
Well, three days before I returned, the RV park must have had a power outage. My high tech RV realized this and switched to battery power. No big deal right? For some reason the transfer switch decided it wanted to fail. And when shore power returned, the RV never as able to switch back to shore power. We have an all electric RV with a residential refrigerator. Can you imagine the type of power load was on those batteries?
Well the batteries drained so low that the automatic locked went into a frenzy, locking and unlocking until all the power in the batteries were gone.
Check out this video my neighbors shot.
So when I returned I went to punch in my code to enter the RV and I realized very quickly, there was no power. I quickly check the plug and verified that shore power was working.
Then the doom hit me that I had no way in the RV, since I had left the keys inside and the spare set in out Atlanta house. So used my Geico app to contact roadside assistance. I knew I needed a locksmith to help me get in. I explained the situations when they called me and made sure they knew I had a Class A, not a car.
The first guys showed up confident that we would get in the RV. Within 2 minutes he realized that there was no way for him to get in without picking the lock.
He shock his head and said I needed to call a “real locksmith”. So I did. He arrived in about 20 minutes. When you need a job done right, call a professional. He was a pro. He had the lock picked in less than a minute. 
Once I was able to get inside and start my generator to get my batteries recharged. After an hour, and a few calls to tech support they we able to diagnose the issue. The video verified what they thought had happened. I have to give special thanks to Newmar. They have been fantastic scheduling a local service tech to come out and replace the transfer switch. Due to the power outage and the locks craziness they also need to replace those. Once again, Newmar is handling everything with ease
So the moral for me is always have a back up plan to get inside your RV. I had never considered the need for a hide a key . I’ll be making a extra key to hide and keeping an extra key in our Toad.
Special thanks to all the Rvers who reached out to me based on my Instagram pics and comments. After reading them, I realized this might have been avoided. My AGS (automatic generator switch) was not set to come on. This would have automatically turn on my generator when the batteries went low and recharged them. If the AGS had been engaged, i’m sure I would have had some battery power when I returned to the RV.
Lastly, thank you Alex from North Trail RV. Alex lives a few spots away from me in my current RV park. He was great at helping me diagnosis the problem and schedule the repairs needed.
Live, learn, and Go Rving!
