Experience: 2014 Alde flushed/refilled with RhoGard Concentrate

Mellow_Yellow

As some of you know, I am the 2nd owner of a 'cream puff' 2014 T@B Max (aka 320 S) acquired in Nov 2020. It had hardly been used or maintained and came with a near-dead battery and an Alde that had not been serviced EVER in 7 years. So I did what I could to partially drain/refill the Century TF-1 fluid twice, until I could get a proper servicing done. 
This summer, the only NuCamp dealer on Vancouver Island acquired an Alde servicing pump and now offers that service. And so I decided to switch over to the newly recommended RhoGard.  I was their first customer When I went to pick up the trailer after servicing, they told me they had refilled with 1 gallon of RhoGard and knowing it was a 3-gallon system, I panicked, thinking they had not fully drained/flushed and refilled the system. Then I realized they were using RhoGard Concentrate, which requires dilution with distilled water.
Just to be sure, the service centre drained, flushed and refilled my Alde a 2nd time. Although it was their "first" Alde servicing, the journeyman had serviced other hydronic heating systems and he felt confident that they had followed the Alde procedure, which is similar to other systems he had worked on. And he's from England, where they know about boilers
Here's what I learned:
1. Official Alde Servicing locations are fully trained and follow Alde's standard procedures. Have faith that they know what they're doing and do whatever you need to understand the process and reassure yourself that your precious Alde is getting what it needs to keep going.
2. When RhoGard Concentrate is used, after the system is fully flushed and still full of distilled water, they drain off 1 gallon of distilled water via the under-carriage drain, re-insert the drain plug, and fill the reservoir to the max line with undiluted RhoGard Concentrate. Then they circulate the Alde to fully mix the concentrate and distilled water.
3. Make sure they send you home with a gallon of properly diluted RhoGard for top ups. I brought my old Century container and they refilled it for me. 
4. RhoGard is blue, so make sure you properly label the container so that it does not get confused for windshield washer fluid because obviously, it's specialized, way more expensive and harder to obtain.
Hopefully this will be useful information to others. I wish I had gotten a photo of the brand new shiny Alde pump, but as you can imagine, there was a lot going on that day!

YanniLazarus

Very helpful.   And hopeful. Thanks! 

Lawyerboy

I had it done on our 2018 cs s in Lakeland Florida. The color looked dark green for us and he gave us a water bottle of extra fluid diluted already to top it off.  Hmmm

DanManz

@Mellow_Yellow Thanks for starting this thread.  I wanted to write and share a very different experience we had with this same service on our 2019 T@b 400 BDL.  After reading all the posts on how to do this yourself with various pumps and drains, I decided I would have a qualified dealer do the work so I could be certain it was done properly.  Our nearest NuCamp dealer is also an Airstream dealer and I knew Airstream was changing the fluid over on certain of the Airstream models as a recall.  I spoke to the dealer who assured me they had the pump and were familiar with doing this fluid change on T@bs.  The first problem was it took over two months to book an appointment for this service.  I asked how long it would take for them to do the fluid change and they told me it could be anywhere from a couple days to two weeks.  OK, in I go resigned to missing a couple of weeks in prime camping season.  After about 10 days in the shop, my service guy calls to tell me they ran out of RhoGard and it will take them another 10 days to receive a new shipment.  I went in, picked up our camper and hit the road for a quick trip.  I called before I brought it back to make sure the RhoGard had arrived.  In I go for the second time.  After another week, the service guy calls back to tell me their shop loaned the pump to their other out of state dealership and it was being shipped back.  Another week goes by and they call to tell me the work is done and I can come pick it up.  In I go again.  The bill was over $700 which seemed on the steep side and they charged me another $95 for a gallon of RhoGard so I can do top offs.  I read the service tech notes on the invoice sheet and it said- disassembled the Alde system to attach the pump making a large mess.  Cleaned up the mess and flushed the system......etc.  I looked carefully at the reservoir tank and the actual Alde seeing no indication of any mess.  There was no indication on the tech notes that they had inspected the hose joints where others have found corrosion.  When I got home, the trailer had a foul odor so I continued the hunt.  Inside the bathroom (shame on me for not checking there) the toilet was full of what appeared to be greenish/yellow Century fluid which had slopped all over the toilet seat, walls and floor of the bathroom (at least I am hoping it was Century fluid).  That required a significant and thorough clean up.  The only glimmer of good news on this story is that the Alde appears to work just as it did when I took it in.  I sent a note to NuCamp customer service about this experience (with photos) and immediately heard back from them.  They called the dealer who also had their service manager call me back apologizing and offering to "help me out" on future service.  This is not the dealer I bought our T@b from and I made it clear I would never be bringing my camper back to them for future service.  In retrospect, I should have just dug in and done this job myself.  It reinforces what several people have written on other posts that many on this forum are more familiar with T@bs than the dealerships are.  We love our T@b 400 which has never been to a dealer for anything up to this point, only because the build quality was so good, it hasn't needed anything!  

Mellow_Yellow

@DanManz - A shocking story and reinforces my point about being as involved as you need to be to ensure/get some sense of whether the service centre knows what they are doing (or not).