Our startup costs for full timing

Larryzv7 wrote:
Nazpaz, One of the refinements I made had to do with how I use propane, and this just may be me and I am not advocating it for others. I still include $60/month in my budget for propane but I rarely use that money to refill my propane tanks.

I am a fulltime RV’er, 24/7/365, and I seldom go to private RV Parks. I’ve heard that they charge extra for electricity if you stay a month or more, and I have substituted by propane usage with electrical usage. The only thing I regularly use propane for is to heat water for a shower.

I use electric space heaters to heat my 5th wheel, an electric kettle to heat water for washing dishes, and electric portable oven and an electric frying pan to cook food; this also allows me to broil, bake, or fry foods outside. I also have an electric bucket warmer, which is something that farmers use to heat up water in a bucket for their livestock.

I have 2-20 lb. propane tanks on my 5th wheel and those tanks usually last about 10-months before I have to refill them. So the money I budget for propane can usually be shifted to some other line-item where I may have overspent. The electric kettle heats up water much quicker than the RV’s water heater and I don’t waste propane.

When I use the RV’s water heater it heats a full tank of water which I may not use that entire tank and thereby have wasted propane heating a full tank. Like I said this is not for everyone; because some people like to leave their water heater on so that they can have hot water on demand, but I turn my water heater off, unless I am going to take a shower.

I have finished my 2014 camping route and have already made reservations for campgrounds right up to August 2014. I will be staying at 1-private campground for 7-days and the rest are State and National Parks, and military campgrounds. I’m looking forward to camping in the Olympic National Park Rainforest in Washington State and Zion National Park in Utah, as well as a lot of other places. :C

P.S. If I am dry camping I have 2-Honda 2000 generators which I sometimes piggyback to give me 4000 watts. The generators are rather quiet.

This is our first winter as fulltimers and we're spending it on the Texas Gulf coast. Right now we're in a park that includes electric in the monthly fee (really the best deal in the Houston area) so we've been living "electric" - in spite of some cold nights we've been quite comfortable, using a couple of space heaters plus the camper's heat pump along with sleeping under electric blankets. It's been unseasonably cool and I hate to think of what our electric bill would be if we were paying for it separately.

In 6 weeks or so we'll move south a ways into a park where we pay the electric. Depending on the weather our budget may take a hit.

I'm interested in your staying at state parks. Texas has wonderful parks but they are high in cost compared to what we generally end up paying. Still, we love the Texas parks so much that we're working a few in over the next year as we are leaving the state for the summer and again as we return next winter.

I too have started making reservations. I'm a planner (blogged about that last week) and I enjoy working through the trip ahead of time. We may cross paths as we're headed for the Pacific NW this summer. I can hardly wait!