JiminDenver wrote:
Ahhh for the good old days when rigs only used power if you turned on a switch. No blower on the furnace, no pump on the water. no control boards and you lit the pilot yourself. On the downside, those furnaces took forever to warm up the rig. It was a pain to go out and relight the pilots when they blew out. My brother and I took turns with a bike pump on the water system so the old folk could take a nice hot shower. Then they tossed our butts in the lake with a bar of ivory. (it floats)
Our rigs biggest issue was we never intended to go back to boondocking. We had roughed it for decades and were going to see how the other half did it. One trip in campgrounds and we found out we couldn't stand being crammed into a tiny spot with noisy neighbors. So we were stuck with a rig that couldn't go more than a few days without life support.
Had i done what was recommended back then, I would have mounted the two extremely mismatched panels and confused the heck out of the recommended controller of the day, the Rogue 30a. Even Mark at Rogue didn't mention the problem with mismatched panels, I figured it out in my yard testing.
AGM was and still is the best thing since sliced bread and back then I had a line on four Lifeline AGM 8-Ds. They would be toast by now as my controllers, converter and home chargers wouldn't do well with them.
I would have a very expensive generator that would never get used. Oh wait, the solar system would be messed up and the AGMs dieing, so maybe I would need it after all. ;)
Being able to test different panels has been a blessing. Try to tell someone about the results and they will read the hype off of a web site and tell you are wrong. They will never know the difference because they buy one type of panel and that's it. If a mono panel takes a nose dive, well it's cloudy stupid. what did you expect.
Niner, I wouldn't pick on you, well no more than anyone else I suppose. lol I think that anyone here that has worked out their systems to meet their needs is doing pretty well. I would never tell another that they were wrong considering my set up is about as far from recommended as you can get. Too much solar for the banks, batteries that are being used for things they were not intended for. My generator, inverters and controllers are all cheapies. It's amazing we haven't blown up and lit the forest on fire. lol
All I am saying is wouldn't it be easier to have a sticky labeled "Taking your rig off grid? You need...." and then list every high dollar, most recommended equipment that full timers need because they depend on it in all conditions.
Isn't it wonderful that we all take different wonderful bumpy roads, and chose different forks in the road to take when dry camping? There is no one way to skin a cat. Options, options, options.
