Designing an electrical system is difficult on its own, but designing one that’s powered 100% by solar adds additional complications. Learn more about the electrical system in the Toaster.
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A collection of photos showing our 11-month long process of transforming a 2001 Fleetwood Prowler into the Toaster.
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Jerud and I want to thank everyone who came out to our open house yesterday at Highland Brewing Company. And also why we chose Highland to be our venue (hint - it has to do with solar panels - lots!).
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What is thing called "boondocking" that we seem to do all the time with the Toaster? How do we find boondock sites? What do we look for when choosing a place to boondock? Answers in this post.
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Every time I come across RVers who have switched to lithium batteries, the first question that comes to mind is: how the heck can they afford lithium batteries? It’s no secret that they are expensive! Lithium batteries can cost anywhere from $5,000 to $8,000. So then, how the hell did we afford them?
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About a month ago we realized our RV batteries were no longer performing at full capacity. Does that mean we ruined our lead acid batteries after using them for only two years in the Toaster? If so, what do we replace these batteries with?
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Solar panels have to be aimed at the sun to work. I’m serious. They really do. When they are bolted to a vehicle, that doesn’t change...but the location and orientation of the rig certainly does! So where – and how – you park your RV has a big impact on how happy you’ll be with your solar panels’ performance.
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We get caught up with the numbers too much. Especially because we keep track of the places we stay, total amount we pay for campgrounds/RV parks, when and if we plug in, how often we shower, etc. We have certain numbers that we are really proud of...
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We didn’t set out to rebuild a whole damn RV. The original plan was to buy a standard RV trailer, install solar equipment, and maybe hit the inside with some paint to cover up the original décor. But it turned into much, much more than that. It’s a good thing we didn’t know that at the beginning, or we’d never have started…and today we’re glad we did what we did. But yeah, it was a big project. Here’s a big-picture look at what we did, and what it took.
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Big news! The Toaster is 100% propane free! How? By taking out our last propane appliance - the RV stove/oven.
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Folks are getting really excited about residential fridges in RVs. Seems like a lot of this is driven by the desire for larger, more feature-rich refrigerators. But the move away from 2-way and 3-way fridges is exciting to boondockers like us, too. If you’ve been wondering what it takes to run a residential unit in your RV – and whether you could use one while boondocking – I’d like to share some info that might help you decide if it’s right for you.
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If you start reading about off-grid electricity or RV boondocking, you’ll come across mention of phantom loads pretty quickly. A phantom load is something that draws power but isn’t doing anything useful for you directly (and might be keeping itself secret, just to piss you off). Reading about these, they sound like a major obstacle to off-grid living, but our personal experience has shown that these loads are manageable once you understand them.
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If you have magic rectangles on your roof that turn sunlight into electricity, you probably want to make sure they get plenty of sun. You probably would go out of your way to make sure nothing else on your roof is casting shadows on them, right? But that’s pretty hard, on an RV roof. There’s not much space, and lots of other things up there to cast shadows. So what about little shadows? Exactly how much do you need to freak out about shading on your solar panels?
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In Electrical System Design - Part 1 I broke the electrical systems of our trailer (the Toaster) into the “solar” side and the “load” side, and discussed the solar equipment we are using. This post describes the other half of the system -- the loads, and how we use them.
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This is the third part of a four part series that talks about what prevents our RV from being perfect for us, along with potential solutions for the problems.
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This is the second part of a four part series that talks about what prevents our RV from being perfect for us, along with potential solutions for the problems. This specific post will talk about batteries.
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Back home I showered daily. Ok, sometimes I'd skip a day if I was lazy or just hadn't sweated enough. But there wasn't ever a need to keep track because I showered whenever I wanted to. I didn't have to think about whether there was enough water or enough electricity to shower. Since in living the Toaster, I don't always get to shower when I want to.
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We noticed a few days ago that we didn't seem to be getting as much power from our solar panel array as we used to, in spite of some really clear skies. So we took a closer look at our panels and decided they must be dirty.
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