Really enjoyed seeing how you guys boondock. We boondock about 95% of the time and always enjoy seeing others setups. Mad props for doing it with one battery. - Kyle and Michelle
Funny that you mention the one battery. It is a continual debate to upgrade over here. I think we will go to lithium in the fall. We plan to go back to Baja this winter and we just don't need the battery as much as we do in the cold weather! I'll give your channel a look!
Great job guys! Necessity is truly the mother of invention. We're FTers who boondock most of the time and find that fresh water is our limiting factor too. We can usually stretch our 110-gallon fresh water supply for the full 14-day BLM and Forest Service camping limit. If we find we're running short, we carry 3, 5-gallon collapsable totes in our toad that we can take to town and fill without breaking camp and moving our motorhome. We used to use the big blue 7-gallon totes like you do, but they got too heavy for me, so we switched to the lighter 5-gallon containers. We use a small submersible pump to transfer it into our MH's tank which requires a pressure feed, not a gravity feed as your tank does, so I don't have to lift the full containers out of the trunk of my toad. We also added an Extend-a-stay kit to our permanently mounted 25-gallon propane tank so we can use the portable 20 lb cylinders and take them to get filled or simply swapped out at a nearby convenience store. Our gray tank fills first too, so when it starts to get full, we transfer some gray water to our black tank. Not only does this allow us to stay longer between dump station visits, but all the soapy water entering and sloshing around in the black tank helps it flush more thoroughly when we dump. We quickly learned the advantages of solar and decided to build our solar/battery system in 2 phases, a 12v system for our basic 12v DC needs and a 48v system for our 110v A/C needs. We started our build 4 years ago with a pair of lead acid golf cart batteries and custom built a 620-watt liftable solar array mounted on the side of our motorhome. We lift the array to the optimal angle to improve their output by 20-30% vs flat mounted panels - even more in the winter, when the sun is lower in the sky. It serves as a nice bedroom window awning too, practically lifting itself to the desired angle with a couple gas struts, and it's easy to clean with a windshield squeegee, standing safely on the ground. This set-up, while far from optimal, allowed us to boondock till we could afford to do better. We finished the 12v part of our build last January, with the addition of a 560ah LiFePo-4 battery that we built with 8, 280ah "A" grade prismatic cells. We use a Heltec 350amp BMS, and a 5a active balancer to keep the cells synched up. We typically use less than 20% of their capacity daily giving us enough reserve capacity for about a week of bad weather before we have to run our generator for charging. It cost us less than $1,500 to build this 560ah 12v (7.1Kwh) battery, including the high amp BMS and balancer. We chose these cells rather than a pre-built battery because they fit perfectly under the steps of our MH where our old pair of GC-2 golf cart batteries used to reside, saving 35lbs too. We insulated the battery compartment, cut a 1" hole in our step risers and installed a tiny computer CPU fan to keep this space at close to room temperature, so we don't have to worry about the BMS shutting down charging if they get too cold - or their life reduced from getting too hot. We use an 80A Progressive Dynamics LFP converter/charger, a 1,000w Renogy PSW inverter (to run our TV, PC, ice maker, etc.), an Epever 50a MPPT charge controller and a Lnex battery monitor/shunt. This entire 12v system cost us under $3,500 to build and takes care of all of our basic off-grid needs except for air conditioning and microwave use. We have been running our 5,500-watt on board generator for this till we get our second 48v phase completed. By mounting our solar array on the side of our MH, we left the roof free to rack 8, 550W Sungold Power solar panels (4,400 watts) down the length of our 35ft Class A about 15" off our roof, above our AC, fan shrouds, etc. They will cover the entire roof, providing some nice shade with plenty of cooling air underneath, further increasing solar output and reducing the heat load on the air conditioners too. We bought them for $2,226. That's only 51 cents/watt shipped to our door! We're assembling the components of this build now. We bought our aluminum racking material in Yuma, where we're wintering over this year, for under $400, which is the best price we've found. Our solar panels, wiring breakers, etc. arrived last week, but we're taking our time to get everything in and installed over the winter. At 67 yrs old, we're moving much slower these days. Our Sungold Power all-in-one 48V, 5,000W, 120V PSW Inverter/100A charge controller/battery charger just arrived. Our 48v battery bank will use 16, 320ah grade A prismatic cells which only cost us $1,726 from EEL batteries. So together with our 560ah (7.1 Kwh)12v bank, we will have a total of 23.5 Kwh of batteries onboard - kept charged over 5,000 watts of solar. We will be replacing our 24 yr old rear 13.5k btu rooftop Dometic AC with an EG4 28.5 seer-2 plug and play 12k btu mini-split heat pump. This second phase will provide 24/7 off-grid air conditioning, supplemental heat from the heat pump and allow occasional usage of our rooftop mounted high-efficiency Furrion AC in the front of our MH to cool things down quickly during peak afternoon hours, as well as give us whole house 120v ac power. We'll soon have total off-grid electrical independence on a budget we can afford, reserving our generator for emergency back-up use only. Take care, we hope to see you down the road!
WOW! thanks for all your comments, that is quite the impressive set up you have! There is a lot of information in there that we are going to keep in mind for future upgrades! We enjoy hearing how other people make this lifestyle happen because we all do it so differently. I like the side adjustable solar you mention, especially. Boondocking is amazing as you know yourself. I'm glad you guys are making it happen. Thanks for watching and commenting!
Good tips, good to have multiple electric sources. You can lower your black tank usage by treating it like a sawdust compost and ling it with plastic bags. Technically you are not getting a free charge from the truck. you will burn more fuel and usually it is an expensive way to charge things.
I understand where you are coming from. (Nicole has no idea about all that stuff either...). Plug and play is great! Thanks for watching and commenting!
Good tips. We use the same jackery 1000 and dedicate it to the starlink. I've been regretting the jackkery due to it's slow charge times. We have 240w panel and there are other batteries that charge 4 times faster due to the lithium technology. The trade off is size. They are a little bigger, Great content.
The starlink takes a lot of power that is for sure. We have similar frustrations with the amount of time it takes to charge the Jackery 1000. Can be so easy to drain it and then forever to charge it back up. Thanks for watching and your comment!
Regarding gray water, if you're using organic soaps, there's no harm in showering outdoors and tossing water from your little pink basin. Your travel trailer probably has an outdoor shower. No reason to send that water to holding tank.
Did you know if you take the female plug off a cord and put on another male end, you can plug one end into the jackery ac outlet and plug the other end into any ac socket in the camper, it will run ac through the whole camper? Male ends at Home depot are like $5. As far as water transfer, I have a battery operated liquid transfer pump they use for kerosene heaters. $20 at walmart? Thanks for your video!
Good tip on the Jackery! People used to do that with generators at home too when they would lose power. We will keep that in mind! Haven’t thought of a battery operated pump. We will look into that. Thanks for the tip and commenting!
Looks like your camper is a keystone passport grand touring edition. We have 2770 model, my question is because ultra lights don't have what's called a "walkable roof", how did you fasten the solar cells to the roof? I replaced the vent fan in the kitchen with a maxx air fan so I know the roof is pretty thin and the trusses are made from aluminum.
We used a solar panel mounting Z bracket kit. We used a stud finder and each bracket has one screw into the aluminum stud, and one screw into the wood of the roof. The panels have a bracket at each corner. We inspect the roof to make sure everything is still secure. This answer your question? link to brackets - www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07HMCL13S/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
Pretty much, thx. Those panels are just 25 watts apiece? I was thinking that the screws into the trusses might work loose, being that they are aluminum. After 2.5 million miles over the road in big trucks, I have seen a lot of aluminum fail on tool boxes and other light brackets made out of aluminum. You don't have that much wieght in cells up there so it should be ok. P.S. we have lasted 9 days before our black has filled up and I'm lazy, I have a spare pump that I hook up to the battery and pump water out of our 5 gallon cans into the trailer, no lifting and no funnel needed.
question--I have a Coachmen class B van with 200ah AGM battery power. If I boondock, then by morning, just running refrig over night, I am down to 12.1V. We want to do some cold weather camping and I have a Truma Combi heater that I can run just on propane but need to run the fan to distribute the heat. I am afraid I will drop into the mid to low 11V range which could damage my batteries. So, if I bought a Jackery battery generator like you have say the 500 or the 1000, can I just plug that into the 12v male charging ports in the van to give the AGM batteries a little longer running life?
There is a female DC plug on the Jackery so I don’t see why not. You may want to visit the Jackery website to verify. We’ve only used the 12V plug on the Jackery to power our 12V cooler. We have a lot more experience using the Jackery to power our AC needs.
that’s amazing ! You guys have a natural talent for doing video, the high quality video capture, the drone footage, the narrative, the final editing. I hope to see more videos and more updates about your adventure
Great tips on Boondocking!! Hope to do that more! Merry Christmas ❤Zack & Linda
Glad you found the video helpful for your journey!
Really enjoyed seeing how you guys boondock. We boondock about 95% of the time and always enjoy seeing others setups. Mad props for doing it with one battery. - Kyle and Michelle
Funny that you mention the one battery. It is a continual debate to upgrade over here. I think we will go to lithium in the fall. We plan to go back to Baja this winter and we just don't need the battery as much as we do in the cold weather! I'll give your channel a look!
Boondocking is the best. Thanks for the tips. Take care out there and Merry Christmas.
Merry Christmas to you too! We love boondocking! Thanks for watching!
Great info on boondocking tips and new subscribers here!! Merry Christmas ❤Zack & Linda
Thank you for commenting and subscribing! Merry Christmas to you too!
Great job guys! Necessity is truly the mother of invention. We're FTers who boondock most of the time and find that fresh water is our limiting factor too. We can usually stretch our 110-gallon fresh water supply for the full 14-day BLM and Forest Service camping limit. If we find we're running short, we carry 3, 5-gallon collapsable totes in our toad that we can take to town and fill without breaking camp and moving our motorhome. We used to use the big blue 7-gallon totes like you do, but they got too heavy for me, so we switched to the lighter 5-gallon containers. We use a small submersible pump to transfer it into our MH's tank which requires a pressure feed, not a gravity feed as your tank does, so I don't have to lift the full containers out of the trunk of my toad.
We also added an Extend-a-stay kit to our permanently mounted 25-gallon propane tank so we can use the portable 20 lb cylinders and take them to get filled or simply swapped out at a nearby convenience store. Our gray tank fills first too, so when it starts to get full, we transfer some gray water to our black tank. Not only does this allow us to stay longer between dump station visits, but all the soapy water entering and sloshing around in the black tank helps it flush more thoroughly when we dump.
We quickly learned the advantages of solar and decided to build our solar/battery system in 2 phases, a 12v system for our basic 12v DC needs and a 48v system for our 110v A/C needs. We started our build 4 years ago with a pair of lead acid golf cart batteries and custom built a 620-watt liftable solar array mounted on the side of our motorhome. We lift the array to the optimal angle to improve their output by 20-30% vs flat mounted panels - even more in the winter, when the sun is lower in the sky. It serves as a nice bedroom window awning too, practically lifting itself to the desired angle with a couple gas struts, and it's easy to clean with a windshield squeegee, standing safely on the ground. This set-up, while far from optimal, allowed us to boondock till we could afford to do better.
We finished the 12v part of our build last January, with the addition of a 560ah LiFePo-4 battery that we built with 8, 280ah "A" grade prismatic cells. We use a Heltec 350amp BMS, and a 5a active balancer to keep the cells synched up. We typically use less than 20% of their capacity daily giving us enough reserve capacity for about a week of bad weather before we have to run our generator for charging. It cost us less than $1,500 to build this 560ah 12v (7.1Kwh) battery, including the high amp BMS and balancer. We chose these cells rather than a pre-built battery because they fit perfectly under the steps of our MH where our old pair of GC-2 golf cart batteries used to reside, saving 35lbs too.
We insulated the battery compartment, cut a 1" hole in our step risers and installed a tiny computer CPU fan to keep this space at close to room temperature, so we don't have to worry about the BMS shutting down charging if they get too cold - or their life reduced from getting too hot. We use an 80A Progressive Dynamics LFP converter/charger, a 1,000w Renogy PSW inverter (to run our TV, PC, ice maker, etc.), an Epever 50a MPPT charge controller and a Lnex battery monitor/shunt. This entire 12v system cost us under $3,500 to build and takes care of all of our basic off-grid needs except for air conditioning and microwave use. We have been running our 5,500-watt on board generator for this till we get our second 48v phase completed.
By mounting our solar array on the side of our MH, we left the roof free to rack 8, 550W Sungold Power solar panels (4,400 watts) down the length of our 35ft Class A about 15" off our roof, above our AC, fan shrouds, etc. They will cover the entire roof, providing some nice shade with plenty of cooling air underneath, further increasing solar output and reducing the heat load on the air conditioners too. We bought them for $2,226. That's only 51 cents/watt shipped to our door! We're assembling the components of this build now. We bought our aluminum racking material in Yuma, where we're wintering over this year, for under $400, which is the best price we've found. Our solar panels, wiring breakers, etc. arrived last week, but we're taking our time to get everything in and installed over the winter. At 67 yrs old, we're moving much slower these days. Our Sungold Power all-in-one 48V, 5,000W, 120V PSW Inverter/100A charge controller/battery charger just arrived. Our 48v battery bank will use 16, 320ah grade A prismatic cells which only cost us $1,726 from EEL batteries. So together with our 560ah (7.1 Kwh)12v bank, we will have a total of 23.5 Kwh of batteries onboard - kept charged over 5,000 watts of solar. We will be replacing our 24 yr old rear 13.5k btu rooftop Dometic AC with an EG4 28.5 seer-2 plug and play 12k btu mini-split heat pump. This second phase will provide 24/7 off-grid air conditioning, supplemental heat from the heat pump and allow occasional usage of our rooftop mounted high-efficiency Furrion AC in the front of our MH to cool things down quickly during peak afternoon hours, as well as give us whole house 120v ac power. We'll soon have total off-grid electrical independence on a budget we can afford, reserving our generator for emergency back-up use only. Take care, we hope to see you down the road!
WOW! thanks for all your comments, that is quite the impressive set up you have! There is a lot of information in there that we are going to keep in mind for future upgrades! We enjoy hearing how other people make this lifestyle happen because we all do it so differently. I like the side adjustable solar you mention, especially. Boondocking is amazing as you know yourself. I'm glad you guys are making it happen. Thanks for watching and commenting!
Good tips, good to have multiple electric sources. You can lower your black tank usage by treating it like a sawdust compost and ling it with plastic bags.
Technically you are not getting a free charge from the truck. you will burn more fuel and usually it is an expensive way to charge things.
Thanks for the comment and tips!
Excellent explanation! I like the lower budget stuff as all that extra solar stuff and connections are just too hard to understand, lol!
I understand where you are coming from. (Nicole has no idea about all that stuff either...). Plug and play is great! Thanks for watching and commenting!
awesome thank you. I wish I was this prepared
:) thanks!
Good tips - Thanks.
Glad it was helpful!
Good info, thanks for sharing
Thanks for checking out our video and commenting! Hopefully it helped!
Good tips. We use the same jackery 1000 and dedicate it to the starlink. I've been regretting the jackkery due to it's slow charge times. We have 240w panel and there are other batteries that charge 4 times faster due to the lithium technology. The trade off is size. They are a little bigger, Great content.
The starlink takes a lot of power that is for sure. We have similar frustrations with the amount of time it takes to charge the Jackery 1000. Can be so easy to drain it and then forever to charge it back up. Thanks for watching and your comment!
Regarding gray water, if you're using organic soaps, there's no harm in showering outdoors and tossing water from your little pink basin. Your travel trailer probably has an outdoor shower. No reason to send that water to holding tank.
We do have an outdoor shower only really use it sometimes actually. Thanks for the suggestion!
I'm so impressed you can make it that many days of boondocking. I bet by doing this you can go to more remote places and probably saves money too.
Thank you! The more mild the weather is the easier and cheaper it becomes.
Did you know if you take the female plug off a cord and put on another male end, you can plug one end into the jackery ac outlet and plug the other end into any ac socket in the camper, it will run ac through the whole camper? Male ends at Home depot are like $5. As far as water transfer, I have a battery operated liquid transfer pump they use for kerosene heaters. $20 at walmart? Thanks for your video!
Good tip on the Jackery! People used to do that with generators at home too when they would lose power. We will keep that in mind! Haven’t thought of a battery operated pump. We will look into that. Thanks for the tip and commenting!
Those work for me. Happy holidays! @@kyleandnicole
Happy holidays!
Looks like your camper is a keystone passport grand touring edition. We have 2770 model, my question is because ultra lights don't have what's called a "walkable roof", how did you fasten the solar cells to the roof? I replaced the vent fan in the kitchen with a maxx air fan so I know the roof is pretty thin and the trusses are made from aluminum.
We used a solar panel mounting Z bracket kit. We used a stud finder and each bracket has one screw into the aluminum stud, and one screw into the wood of the roof. The panels have a bracket at each corner. We inspect the roof to make sure everything is still secure. This answer your question?
link to brackets - www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07HMCL13S/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
Pretty much, thx. Those panels are just 25 watts apiece? I was thinking that the screws into the trusses might work loose, being that they are aluminum. After 2.5 million miles over the road in big trucks, I have seen a lot of aluminum fail on tool boxes and other light brackets made out of aluminum. You don't have that much wieght in cells up there so it should be ok. P.S. we have lasted 9 days before our black has filled up and I'm lazy, I have a spare pump that I hook up to the battery and pump water out of our 5 gallon cans into the trailer, no lifting and no funnel needed.
question--I have a Coachmen class B van with 200ah AGM battery power. If I boondock, then by morning, just running refrig over night, I am down to 12.1V. We want to do some cold weather camping and I have a Truma Combi heater that I can run just on propane but need to run the fan to distribute the heat. I am afraid I will drop into the mid to low 11V range which could damage my batteries. So, if I bought a Jackery battery generator like you have say the 500 or the 1000, can I just plug that into the 12v male charging ports in the van to give the AGM batteries a little longer running life?
There is a female DC plug on the Jackery so I don’t see why not. You may want to visit the Jackery website to verify. We’ve only used the 12V plug on the Jackery to power our 12V cooler. We have a lot more experience using the Jackery to power our AC needs.
What camera you guys use to film ? Amazing quality and editing.
All the video we took was shot on iPhone 13! Our boondocking spot clips would be a combination of iPhone and drone. Thank you for your compliment!!
that’s amazing ! You guys have a natural talent for doing video, the high quality video capture, the drone footage, the narrative, the final editing. I hope to see more videos and more updates about your adventure
Thank you so much! I appreciate hearing that! Thank you also for checking us out!
Good tips - Thanks.
You bet!