Recommended Dry-Camping Mods to a Small TT

JiminDenver wrote:
I can understand getting the up grades at the beginning, just be careful about what they are charging you and what you get.

A solar trickle charger is meant to maintain your battery while in storage not recharge it while you camp. Ask the dealer to instal a trickle charger or maintainer and you may get a 15w panel when you may really need 10 times as much.

Another consideration is how much extra you may pay to get it rolled into the loan. What a dealer charges for a extra battery, propane tank or solar can be well above what you would pay for it yourself. This is especially true for solar.

You mentioned the solar strips and the only ones I know of are Uni-solar strips. The smallest is 65w and 9 feet long. You could drape one or two on the trailer when you are parked in the sun or roll them out on the ground when the trailer is in the shade. 65w isn't a lot of power so I would think two are in order.

We have two 20 pound propane tanks that we fill once a season. It's cold at night where we go, so lots of furnace use.

Replacing the incandescent lights with LED not for the horrendous price the dealer will want but rather a few bucks each off of ebay will save your battery like nothing else. We did it and instead of using a light or two, we light up the trailer at night like we do the house and never even think of it.

On the extra battery, don't let the dealer put two grp 24 batteries in. They will work but a pair of 6v will serve you much better and hold more capacity as well.

So now you will have two propane tanks, two batteries, some solar and LEDs. Unless you will need the air conditioning, I can't see you needing a generator for the short trips. It would be a prudent back up on the longer trips but you can always get away with turning the truck around, hooking up a set of heavy jumper cables and running it for a hour or so if the batteries get too low.

The one thing you didn't mention is fresh water and holding tanks. How big are the tanks on the R-pod? Honey and I can stretch 60 gallons to two weeks including showers and washing real dishes daily. Teaching kids how to not waste water is harder, do have plans for carrying extra?

Realistically, when we have a rainy day, we're going to have lights on, the water pump on and people using the lavatory, kids who grow tired after several hours of our attempts to promote traditional board games and want to run/charge electrical devices, etc.

If our goal was not to "trickle", but to actually extend observably the life of the 12V configuration on the unit...what's the minimum solar output wattage that you'd recommend? (Please bear in mind that we're buying an r-pod and not a Windstream...price is somewhat of an option...haha).

Regarding LEDs...we do our own wiring for basic things at home. Would this be analogous to switching out an outdated overhead light fixture in favor of a new one? Disconnect...black to black, white to white, ground to the fixture, and reconnect? Would we be looking specifically for "RV" LED light fixtures...specifically 12V...or just any space-appropriate, smallish LED light fixture?

We're going to need to look into a generator for A/C purposes. Anything you'd recommend that's reasonable noise-wise and would make for a reasonably economical choice? We can't get into a $2000 expenditure...but I also don't want to roll in with a "budget" model that's inappropriately loud.

Thanks for all the great info!