The new 709-PH installed in place of the old system.

Christmas came, and it went.  What can we say about it?  Not much really.  Just the two of us and the 5 kids.  And by that I mean the 4 cats Tory, Whisper, BK, and Angel and Tasha our Shepherd.   But what did happen is we bought each other new tank gauges!  Oh my!  Yes, we sure do splurge on each other now don’t we.

What you see here is the new SeeLevel II 709-PH RV tank gauge panel.  It replaced the old LED 4 level (empty, 1/3rd, 2/3rd, Full) gauge that came with the coach and kept giving false readings.  This new gauge reads in percent full (or empty depending on your view on life), and is very accurate.

SeeLevel II 709-PH Showing the Fresh Water take at 67% full.

As you may recall if you are following along in our travels, is that we stopped in Granbury, TX.  Well the reason we did that was to have this system installed.  I ended up with more than an install, but a learning experience for not only myself, but Cory the distributor and installer of the SeeLevel Gauges by Garnet Technologies.  You see, sometimes in a coach, you need to figure out how things were wired.  Sometimes when you think something like a blue wire should be data, it ends up being live 12v!  Ouch.  And when you expect a brown wire to be the Black Tank sensor wire, it ends up being the wire that runs to the 12v start of the water heater.   Not kidding, the good people over at Gulf Stream for some reason just really used weird colors for what they did, sometimes changing the color from where it started and where it ended up.

The Gauge Closet with the old panel pulled out.

So what you see here is the old gauge panel pulled out with all the lovely wires that ran to it.  What you do not see is me going nuts as the colors did not match up like they should have.  So, it was 2 hours of trial and error.  What else tossed us for a loop was that the ground wires that came from the old gauges did not actually go to ground, they went NOWHERE but to the old board itself.  I ended up needing to tie the grounds to actual ground to make this work.

Here you see the old panel where I had to cut the top part off for the generator control.  It may be good to note that this control is actually not needed for the coach has one up front and also the Xantrex inverter controller can start it.  But I cut it off so I could add it back into the gauge closet.

Old gauge panel with cut off Generator area.

Old system pulled apart

And here is the old system all pulled apart.  You can see the old LED bar lights that would make the scale for the full levels.  It was not that part of the system did not work, but the tank sensors themselves would become, well, mucked up.  Thus it could give you a 2/3 full reading even if it was only 1/3 or even less.   This does not help at all when you are looking to RV for a given period of time without a dump station.  You NEED to know how you are doing tank wise.

Here is what the new tank sensors look like.  They are the long 12″ ribbon boards you see.  They actually have a transmitter and receiver in them.  More or less how this works is this…The transmitter sends out a signal. Their are 8 receivers that have 4 receptors each.  (or is it 6 receptors? No mater.)  It then reads the fluid level based on the reflection of the liquid in the tank.  So the signal goes out, it hits liquid, and bounces back.  Based on what receiver sees the reflection, that is the level of the liquid in the tank.

New tank sensors installed on Gray and Black storage tanks.

Completed Gauge Closet

So here is the completed gauge closet.   The generator hour meter and start/stop switch is on top, followed by the new SeeLevel 709-PH showing 71% full on the fresh water, then the reading from the Progressive Industries power protection system showing currently the amps on leg 2, Slide out control, Xantrex Inverter controller, and then power distribution.

All in all, it came out very well and we now have readings from the 709-PH that show the volts of the 12V system in the coach, Fresh Water Tank %, Gray Tank %, Black Tank %, and Propane %.  It was a Very Merry Christmas after all.  We love this product!

Oh, I almost forgot!  I also took the time to install a display inside the tank bay.  No more needing to get a report from my better half, my wife Brenda, as I full or empty a tank. This was one of Brenda’s favorite selling points. :)  (Note, I have not yet put the white cover back inside the tank bay that hides all that.)

Tank Bay Tank Reading Display