johnny September 2nd, 2007
Yesterday, we put down a deposit on the camper. We added and removed a handful of things that should really optimize the overall comfort for two people.
- No oven. Really, how often are we going to be baking cookies? A stove is plenty and Jenn wants to play with a solar oven anyway. Maybe we’ll pick up a small grill to go with the thermal cooker. We get a large cabinet where the oven would be.
- No dinette seating. We opted for the couch instead. This should be more comfortable for general lounging. There is still a table we can set up in front of the couch, although I think we will probably build our own articulating desktops.
- Wet bath. A lot of people don’t like wet baths. They do, however, provide a lot more room to move around by combining your toilet and shower space. Additionally, we get a very large wardrobe next to the bathroom by saving space. The only real downside in our mind is that the ‘bathroom storage’ is limited to what will fit in a medicine cabinet. But with all the extra storage we gain outside of the bathroom and the increased space to shower properly, it’s a net win.
- Full wall wardrobe in the cabover. This was a bit more difficult decision. It cost us a nice window, but the extra storage space is considerable. For long-term living, storage is one of our most important concerns. Besides, the window on the driver side is a wide escape hatch instead of a narrow, divided window.
- No skylight in the kitchen. The benefit of the skylight really seemed questionable to us as we stood in the unit on the lot. It added some light, but only in a limited area. It is one more potential leak and one more place to introduce heat and cold. We save a few bucks by getting rid of it as well.
- No generator. The standard generator burns LP gas inefficiently, is rather noisy and costs about $3k. We can pickup a quiet, efficient gasoline unit for around $800. It won’t make quite as much juice and we can’t push a button to start it, but overall I prefer this route.
- 7K BTU air conditioner. Hopefully, this will put an end to my search for the perfect AC unit. It’s a bit higher wattage than I’d like, but I’m more comfortable with it’s ability to cool the camper. Sadly, we actually had to pay more for a 7k unit than if we had gone up to a 13.5K unit. However, with this unit, we should have no problem running it on our downsized generator.
- Thermal pane windows. They really charge a premium for these, but if we’re going to be in the cold weather, it’s thermal pane or storm windows. And just where are we going to store those storm windows when we’re not using them?
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Tags:
air conditioner,
storage,
truck camper
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johnny August 1st, 2007
One of our goals is to be able to boondock most of the time and avoid as much in the way of campground fees as we can. One of the nice things about campgrounds is that they offer electrical hookups.
Now, common wisdom on solar panels is that they take 10-15 years to pay for themselves. I did some back of the envelope calculations based on our home bill and assumed no price increases. Fifteen years looks reasonable for our usage; probably a fair bit less once you factor inflation in.
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Tags:
air conditioner,
budget,
campground,
downsizing,
fuel,
solar
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johnny July 23rd, 2007
For those of you looking into portable air conditioners, I ran across this site:
Portableacguide.com
It looks like I may have found an even better unit for us. At 543 watts, that little Danby unit may actually be able to run at 100% during the day without too much battery buffering if we put 4 or so 160W solar panels on the roof.
5,000 BTU should cool 1250 cubic feet of space. I’m guesstimating 25×7x7 for 1225 cubic feet - and there will be a lot of dead space inside that for storage, bathroom etc that won’t need to be cooled.
Too bad the rest of the day wasn’t as productive. We looked at 8 or 9 RV’s and put 200 miles or so on the pickup. No luck. Time to start planning for next weekend.
Tags:
air conditioner,
rvs,
solar
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johnny July 18th, 2007
I may have found just the thing to keep us cool without killing the budget. It will probably draw more power than we can generate if it’s running at 100%, but I think it has enough btu’s to to be running considerably less than 100% and the overall wattage is low enough that buying an inverter for it won’t kill me.
Amcor Nanomax A12000E
Also, we may have found our next home. We’ve got an appointment to go check it out tomorrow morning. I hope it looks as good in person as it does from the pictures. Also, it would be good if it runs.
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air conditioner
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johnny July 17th, 2007
So, I’m taking a break from hardcore RV shopping and letting Jenn try to find the dream machine for a day or two. In the meantime, I’m figuring out how to put enough gadgets in the box on wheels to double the start up cost.
We’re trying to avoid longterm costs like running a generator and camp ground fees as much as we can. We figure that a solar installation should pay for itself pretty quickly with campground fees of $30/night in many places. Also, we’d really rather not run a generator constantly both because of the noise and the gasoline costs.
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Tags:
air conditioner,
rvs,
solar
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