The Rolling Home

Our first boondocking experiences occurred at ham radio shows, (hamfests) where no hookups were provided.  We generally have something to buy or sell at these electronic flea markets, so we tend to not worry about paying $10 for a space.

We boondock frequently at Escapee (SKP) parks.  Most are free for the first night and charge $2.50 each night after that.  Some have time limits as short as 3 days, others don't care if the park is not full.  This year we boondocked for 10 days at the Zolpho Springs SKP co-op, 5 days at Rainbow's End in Livingston, TX, 1 day at Dream Catcher SKP park in Deming, AZ, 1 day at Saguaro Co-op in Benson, AZ and a week at North Ranch, SKP park in Congress, AZ.  The total cost for these 23 days of camping, about $35.  We also boondocked for 12 days in the parking lot of the University of Idaho in Moscow during the Life On Wheels conference in July.  We have hit a few WalMart parking lots in 2001 also.  No cost for them, either.

I don't consider us as hard core boondockers, but I do have a goal of going at least a month without paying campground fees.  We don't save dish water to flush the toilet yet, but we might some day.  We like to see how cheap we can live when traveling.  We certainly would rather boondock for free at some BLM land in Arizona than spend the $42 it cost us to stay one night at a luxury RV park near Breckinridge!

Ok, so you say you want to boondock.  What do you need to be a successful boondocker?

We think anyone can boondock, with almost any kind of rig.  A good set of house batteries, some means to recharge them and some good conservation techniques will get you out on the road for a small expense.

Batteries

First, the battery bank.  We have six 6 volt T105 batteries, but you can do just fine with as few as two.  Perhaps you have a 12 volt deep cycle battery.  That will work too.  We prefer the six volt battery because it has a different structure from a 12 volt battery.  Six volt batteries are made with the plates further apart.  When a battery discharges, its plates get covered with lead sulfate.  When you recharge the batteries most of this sulfate gets removed, but not all.  The plates in a 12 volt battery, being much closer together, tend to get this build up much faster and therefore if left on the plates, they reduce the plate area and also the battery capacity.  In a six volt battery, the plates are further apart and the build up doesn't occur quite a quickly.  This leads to the ability to do multiple recharges far exceeding the capacity of a 12 volt battery.  That is why almost all golf carts use six volt batteries.  They handle multiple charging cycles better than 12 volt ones.  This, by the way, is why you want to equalize your batteries from time to time.  More on this later.

The T105 battery has a storage capacity of 220 amp hours.  When you put  two six volt batteries in series, two things happen.  The voltage adds, thus giving you a 12 volt battery and the amp hours do not.  Thus, the amp hour rating of a bank of two T105s is still 220 amp hours.  However, when you then place these banks of batteries in parallel with another bank of six volt T105s, the amp hours add together and the voltage stays the same.  In other words, four six volt batteries, two each in series and the the two series banks in parallel, yield 12 volts with 440 amp hours of storage.  In our case, we have 12 volts in three banks of six volt batteries in series, yielding 660 amp hours of storage.  T105 type batteries can be cycled to 80% of their capacity without damage, however, we don't like to discharge them that far.  Flooded lead acid batteries are good for somewhere between 1200 and 1800 cycle charges.  This doesn't mean each time you charge them it counts as a cycle.  The less discharged the bank is when you recharge it, the more times you can "cycle" it.

Battery Maintenance.

I check my batteries at least once a month, more often in hot weather.  I check each cell (there are 3 per battery, 18 total) for the electrolytic level and specific gravity.  If you don't have a way to check the specific gravity, go to Walmart or any auto parts store and buy a hydrometer.  They are only a few bucks.  Check each cell, every month.  One bad cell in a battery will degrade that battery to the level of the bad cell.  One bad battery in a bank will reduce the capacity of that bank to that of the bad battery. Keep the electrolytic level up to the bottom of the well that lives under the battery cap.  Do not overfill them as this lets the electrolytic boil out.  I also check the connections, for tightness and corrosion.  You can remove corrosion with a baking soda/water mixture, but I like to buy the commercial cleaners.  For me they are just easier to carry around.  I also use a spray protectant on each cable connection that inhibits corrosion.  When I do my monthly battery maintenance, I also wash the top of each battery.  Do not take the caps off the battery when you are removing corrosion or washing the batteries.  This will allow water or other junk inside the cells and this is not a good thing.  Always make sure that the caps are on tight when doing this job.
Just as a side note, the next time I buy batteries for my rig, I will be spending extra bucks and getting Absorbed Glass Mat Batteries.  For more information on AGM go to www.lifelinebatteries.com.

If you have problems getting to your individual cells, this is how I do it.  On our Discovery the back batteries are not readily accessible.  I use a dental mirror (plastic case) to check them or sometimes a popsicle stick.  I put a line on the wooden popsicle stick to indicate where the electrolytic level should be.  Then by dipping the stick in each cell, I can lift it out and see where the electrolytic lives in each battery.  Be careful when doing this.  Battery acid is very corrosive.  I do not own a pair of jeans without holes in them from drops of acid. Wear eye protection and take off your jewelry.

A battery is said to be fully charged when the resting voltage reaches 12.7 volts.  It is fully discharged at 11.9 volts.  12.2 volts could be considered 50% charged.  We try hard not to let our battery bank go below 50%, actually trying to keep it at or above 12.4 volts which is 75% charged.

Solar Panels.

Yes, we love our solar panels.  We have a total of 250 watts of solar power on our roof. (UPDATE-- we added another 75 watt panel at the Fall 2002 Escapade.  Our total watts of solar power is now 325 with room for one more 75 watt panel someday. )  If I did this installation again, I would buy three 120 watt panels and not the smaller ones I currently have.  The panels put out approximately 18 amps of current in full direct sunlight.  This means if I get 4 hours of good sunlight in a day, I get 60 amp hours replaced in my battery system.  Of course, the solar panels start working as soon as there is sunlight and continue to charge until the sun goes down. This means that the total day of charging usually exceeds our nightly drain and our batteries are almost always in good shape.  On those cloudy days when we still get solar radiation, but not enough to recharge the battery bank, we sometimes crank up the generator to help get the battery bank back to full charge.  Our current longevity record for solar only power is 12 days.  The only reason we cranked the generator then was to dry a load of clothes in our washer/dryer and to give the generator its monthly work out.

A solar power system is pretty simple.  It consists of panels, wiring, a controller and hopefully a catastrophe fuse.  The panels are wired to the controller which in our case lives next to the refrigerator.  I pulled the wiring down the refer flue and then fished it back up a wall to where I wanted the it to be installed.  Then the wire goes from the controller to the catastrophe fuse, which is mounted right next to my battery bank.  I have a 30 amp fuse in the line at the panels and another at the batteries.  This allows me to disconnect the panels at the roof if I need to do work up there.  I also have a 30 amp switch mounted in the wall next to the solar controller.  This allows me to turn off the panels when we are plugged into shore power.  It makes no sense to have two charging sources for the batteries.  The inverter and the solar controller both have charging control limiters in them and they are not necessarily set for the same values.  When we are plugged in, I turn off the panels. When we are not plugged in, I turn the panels on.  I also have a set of wires running from the controller to the catastrophe fuse, which also acts as a shunt.  This second pair of wires give me the ability to read the current load across the battery bank.  I will be running a third set of wires next month to a temperature compensating device that attaches to the battery bank, since my controller can deal with ambient temperature changes and how much charge it puts into the battery bank based on the battery temperature.
Our controller is an RS30 built by Heliotrope PV in Eugene, Oregon.  This is our second controller, the first one being rather cheap and not lasting too long.  You do, indeed, get what you pay for.

One really nice feature of our solar controller is that is automatically equalizes our batteries each day when the sun comes up.  Once the solar power reaches a preset level, it boosts the voltage on our batteries to about 15 volts for 30 minutes.  This allows the sulfate to "boil" off, cleaning the plates and giving the batteries a much better capacity than those that are not periodically equalized.  You can also equalize with certain inverters.  Read the directions for your inverter to see if  you can do this.  Most of the inverter equalization process puts more than 16 volts into your system, so you want to be careful what is turned on when you do this. You also only equalize with this system at certain intervals.  Again, read your manual.
 

Panel tilting.  When boondocked in  the summer, there is no reason to tilt your panels.  In northern latitudes, tilting can actually decrease the charge rate and efficiency of your panels.  However, in the winter, it will probably be necessary to tilt your panels to get maximum charging during that part of the year when the sun is lower in the sky.  Once way to keep from tilting your panels is to buy more of them!  If you put another 75 watt panel on the roof, it will increase your maximum charge another 4.5 amps.  If you get more current by doing this and it equals the charge rate you get by tilting without the extra panel, you just have to decide if the cost of the panel will overcome the chore of climbing on the roof to tilt them.

Where do you  put panels?  Wherever you want.  But you need to remember that if your air conditioner casts a shadow on your panels at any time during the day, you can lose a great deal of efficiency.  Try to find a spot where you don't get shadows cast across the panels at any time.  Plan to add more panels in the future.  Most of us seem to try to start cheap and almost always end up adding more panels later.  Keep that in mind as you screw your panels to the roof.

We really like solar power.  It is absolutely clean, noise free and after your initial purchase, they cost nothing to operate.  They are not cheap however.  We have about $1700 wrapped up in our five panels, a couple of hundred bucks in the controller and a few dollars in the accessories we have.  I did my own installation, it isn't rocket science, but if you are not comfortable doing electrical work, you will also have to include labor for installation in your cost.  If you are going to do serious boondocking and don't want your neighbors to get upset with your noisy generator, then you too will want to be a solar citizen.

Generator

We also have a 7.5kw quiet diesel generator on board our motorhome.  We rarely us it, but since it is an expensive option, we want to know that it works when we do need it.  To make sure that it is working, we try to run it under a good size load at least two hours each month.  We usually crank up both air conditioners and sometimes even dry a load of clothes in the dryer.  We use our genset often when traveling in hot weather, by cranking it up and running the roof air.  It gives the generator a workout and also keeps us cool!  The quiet diesel is just that, very quiet.  It does smell like a diesel engine however.  Imagine that.  Good neighbor boondockers sometimes use a riser on their exhaust system to get both diesel and gas fumes up away from the coach.   At rallies, we are now going to choose to go to non generator sections to keep away from the fumes and noise that generators make.  Of course, there are times when the sun isn't too co-operative.  Then we use the genset, only for as long as we need to.  We do crank it up if we are using the microwave.  Even though our nuke will run off the inverter, I prefer to put that load on the generator and leave the batteries out of the equation.   I have rewired our coach so that everything in it except the air conditioners runs off of the inverter.  In order to handle this load, I replaced our standard 1k inverter with a 2 kilowatt one.  The newer versions of our coach come with a 2k inverter as a standard feature.  My recommendation is that you not have less than a 2k inverter on any big coach.

One of the items that we include on our checklist is to make sure that if we are going to be boondocked, we want the diesel fuel tank to be full.  It wouldn't be any fun to be at Quartzite and run out of fuel for the generator if it got too cold to sleep without our furnaces.
 

Speaking of furnaces, we have two.  While LP consumption is not a major issue with us, the fans that run our furnaces really do a number on the battery banks.  Both furnaces run on 12 volt fans that draw a hefty current load.  One has to be very careful to not deplete the battery bank by running both furnaces after the sun goes down!

Power consumption

How do we keep enough amp hours in our battery bank to run everything we need to have turned on.  First, we turn off all non essential electrical equipment.  If we need a light, we turn on one, not all of them.  We unplug the VCR and DVD player. They draw current even when turned off.  If we are not watching TV, we turn off the power to the TV set and satellite receiver.  When we go to bed at night, we turn off the inverter.  That eliminates lots of phantom loads that we are not even aware of.  There isn't anything that needs to be on at night that requires the inverter, so we simply shut it off.  Since we learned to do that, our power consumption has dropped dramatically.  If we are out for the day, the inverter is off.  Now, if the battery reads 12.4 volts when we go to bed, it still reads 12.4 volts when we get up.  No drain while you are asleep is a great way to conserve power.  We cook with LP or on the grill rather than use the microwave unless it is absolutely necessary.  If we want to watch TV at night, which we normally do, we run no lights.  We only use the TV and the satellite receiver.  If we want to read, we do not leave the TV on, and we only use enough light to read by.  After you spend a few days boondocking and track your energy consumption, you find many ways to keep from using electricity.

LP

We also conserve our LP gas.  This is a finite resource, unlike solar power which can renew everyday (we hope).  We do not leave our lp water heater on at all.  To heat water for a shower, we turn the heater on for 10 minutes in the morning.  Libby does not like water as hot as I do, so I shower first.  We have a six gallon water heater and it makes enough hot water by being on for ten minutes for both of us to shower.  We do not use cold water at all when boondocking for showers.  You all know how much fiddling with water valves you can do to get the temperature just right.  That not only wastes hot water, but it also wastes water period.  With a ten minute run on our water heater, the temperature is just right for me to shower and after I finish, it is just right for Libby.  This tip was picked up from Paul Bernhagen at the Life On Wheels conference in the summer of 2001.  Other than cooking, we do run the refrigerator on lp gas when boondocked.  If we continue to boondock more and more, we are likely to invest in a ceramic lp powered brick heater.  This heater uses no electrical power and generates a great deal of heat.  It also produces water as a byproduct of LP combustion, which is nice when you are in low humidity areas like the desert.

update-----2/23/2002

Since the original boondocking article, we have added an LP blue flame heater to our appliance list.  This unit has a four foot hose with a quick disconnect on the end.  We can plug in the hose, turn on the shut off valve and have instant heat in the rig.  No power is consumed because there is no fan in the heater.  It has an oxygen depletion sensor, but we always open a window and or a vent a little bit, just to make sure that we don't use up the oxygen in our rig.  That would  be a minor inconvenience to us, but might make our heirs a little richer!  The stove also has a thermostatic control on it, so we can determine how warm we want to let the rig become.  This heater allowed us to spend 10 days in Quartzite in 2002 with very little consumption of LP.
 
 

Water/Sewer

We are very judicious in our water use.  We go in with a full tank of water.  We wash dishes only once a day. We take "military" showers.  Get in, rinse, turn off the water.  Lather up, rinse and turn off the water.  I can shower and do a good job on my 6'1", 280 lb svelte body using less than two gallons of water.  We carry 80 gallons of fresh water.  When flushing the toilet, we are careful to use only as much water as necessary.  Hard core boondockers use overflow shower water to flush the toilet.  We have yet to do this, but perhaps at Quartzite this winter, we will do so.

Update----2/23/2002  We spent 10 days boondocked in Q during January of 2002.  We arrived with 80 gallons of fresh water, a full tank of LP and empty holding tanks.  When we left, we had 60 gallons of fresh water, 20 gallons of junk in our gray and black tanks and still had a half tank of LP.  We did no dishes, eating on paper plates with plastic ware and using disposable cups.  We think we could have gone at least three weeks boondocking like this without adding any water or dumping the tanks.

Just for information, we also have a reverse osmosis water purification system in our rig.  We will make our RO water and store it in jugs before we go out boondocking because the generation of one gallon of RO water takes about 5 gallons of regular water.  This would not be practical to use when boondocking.

Gray water is the most limiting of our "freedom" package.  The gray water tank is about 55 gallons, the black water tank is about 50 gallons.  We have gone 12 days without dumping the gray water and could go much longer on the black water tank. We do this by using the minimum amount of water to flush, to wash dishes and to shower.  We start with dish water in the largest bowl we have used and then down size it as we go through the rest of the dishes.  To avoid much dishwashing, we try to use disposable plates and utensils.  (we also eat out a lot!)

We never dump any gray or black water on the ground.  This is not only uncool, but unhealthy.  Some folks think it is ok to dump gray water, but think about what your gray tank is like.  Food, shower water, sink water all go into a dark, wet tank and are held there for days.  Do you think this is a germ friendly environment?  Absolutely.  Don't dump any water on the ground. If you have to pay to have someone come and pump out your holding tanks, then it is still cheaper to do so than to pay one day's rent at many campgrounds.  You still come out ahead.