To buy a generator or not...
Looks like we will be taking a week long camping trip up to Lake Syskyou near Mt Shasta, CA the second week of August. We looked at the weather forecast and the temps look to be ranging in the 90s to ...
Forum Discussion
Thanks for all the suggestions thus far. I think the generator is a Onan 2500 if I recall correctly. Probably get about 4 or 5 hours of run time out of a bottle of propane but I've hardly ever used it so that is a guess. In fact, generator has about 20 hours total on it and that is for probably the 20 years of the life of the camper.
Given this type of usage, why would I want to buy a gasoline generator if I hardly use it anyway? Well, I think my use is being dictated by the generator itself. It isn't efficient to run for long periods of time, makes a lot of noise and a lot of vibration. More than anything, I just don't want to be that guy running a generator in a campground such that it interfers with other people's enjoyment. At most if I use it, it is for the microwave or blender. The only time we use it otherwise is to run the AC during a lunch stop if it is hot outside.
I suppose one other option to consider might be to look at selling the generator and seeing if I can get enough to purchase another 200ah of LiFePo4 battery and setup the AC to run off the inverter. I've seen Phil's setup and his is pretty dang impressive. I've not really thought about going that far with it because I don't have the space for the batteries but if I eliminated the generator, that would solve that problem. If I did this, in addition to adding 200w more solar (already have 200w for a total of 400w) I would get a heavy duty DC to DC charger so I could charge the LiFePo4 from the truck alternator. If I am doing all of this, I would probably replace the AC unit itself to get something a little more efficient.
That I think would be the ideal setup but I'm looking at but that's a lot of money so I guess I will just do pieces of it over time.
Given this type of usage, why would I want to buy a gasoline generator if I hardly use it anyway? Well, I think my use is being dictated by the generator itself. It isn't efficient to run for long periods of time, makes a lot of noise and a lot of vibration. More than anything, I just don't want to be that guy running a generator in a campground such that it interfers with other people's enjoyment. At most if I use it, it is for the microwave or blender. The only time we use it otherwise is to run the AC during a lunch stop if it is hot outside.
I suppose one other option to consider might be to look at selling the generator and seeing if I can get enough to purchase another 200ah of LiFePo4 battery and setup the AC to run off the inverter. I've seen Phil's setup and his is pretty dang impressive. I've not really thought about going that far with it because I don't have the space for the batteries but if I eliminated the generator, that would solve that problem. If I did this, in addition to adding 200w more solar (already have 200w for a total of 400w) I would get a heavy duty DC to DC charger so I could charge the LiFePo4 from the truck alternator. If I am doing all of this, I would probably replace the AC unit itself to get something a little more efficient.
That I think would be the ideal setup but I'm looking at but that's a lot of money so I guess I will just do pieces of it over time.
