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Plasticman · 11-27-2017, 01:09 PM

My DW and I are full timing in our RV while we work. For Thanksgiving week we were to boondock on our property. The first change to our plan was a delay to help out our youngest son this weekend. So I took the opportunity to road-trip with a friend to pick up a tractor for our property. This lead to us being delayed until Monday to leave. As we prepared the RV for the road-trip we discovered the engine wouldn't start. It's 1:30pm. After some troubleshooting we determined the engine batteries were in need of replacement. So off to the Caterpillar dealer I go to purchase two new batteries. I spend some time cleaning up all the cables before installing the new batteries. The engine started right up and off we go. It's now 3pm. Traffic caused us some delays leading to our arrival around 8:30pm. As I went to unlock our gate I found the chain to our lock had been cut and our lock was not part of the chain locking the gate anymore. Only the power company lock was locking our gate. Hmmm. I made a couple of phone calls and around 9:45pm we're finally let past our own gate to park for the week.

The rest of Thanksgiving week was relatively forgettable with the exception that the water pump is intermittent and somehow Friday night we ran the house batteries so low we had no power Saturday morning. So be it. It's game day, so we're eating out and off to the Iron Bowl. Ten hours later Auburn is victorious and we head back to the RV to let the dog out. Still no power. Now I'm a little concerned as the temperature is dropping outside and I can't run the heat (not enough power). So the DW and I spoon our son's hound dog who made the trip with us. We get up the next morning, it's really cold and we still don't have any house power. DW fixes breakfast (Hurray for the gas cooktop) and we pack up. I break out the owner's manuals and we learn how to pull the two slide outs in manually. That wasn't too hard. We're off and running around 11am. I stop to fuel up before hitting the interstate and six hours later we're home.

Lessons learned from this past week:
1) Nothing ever goes as planned (ask the Alabama football team about that)
2) Just roll with it (see #1)
3) On a used RV, if you didn't install it, it's on borrowed time (batteries in this case)
4) Vacation is supposed to be just that, vacation.
5) Adding a fan to our Dometic refrigerator really improved its ability to stay cold. Even without electricity, it stayed cold the whole drive back. It was full so there was lots of thermal mass to help.

Rob

okcnewbie · 11-27-2017, 01:34 PM

Even if you don't go solar you should consider a quality meter/shunt so that you know what's going in and out of the batteries.

saddlesore · 11-27-2017, 02:03 PM

Think I would put a auto start/stop for battery charging system on the gen set...

Plasticman · 11-28-2017, 09:28 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by okcnewbie

Even if you don't go solar you should consider a quality meter/shunt so that you know what's going in and out of the batteries.

We do have a single solar panel on the roof, don't know why it didn't do the job as the RV was parked in the sun all day. I have some investigating to do for sure.

Rob

okcnewbie · 11-28-2017, 11:21 AM

More reason to get meter/shunt. ....just sayin

TripleEEE · 11-28-2017, 02:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by okcnewbie

More reason to get meter/shunt. ....just sayin

And a generator......

@ Plasticman
Glad you made the best of the situation.

Crasher · 11-28-2017, 05:09 PM

I commend you for rolling with the punches as they came. Doesn't do any good to get upset. You do not mention a generator. Do you not have one? Running the generator would have charged the batteries up so you would have been comfortable. Also, a single solar panel will not recharge batteries. A single panel is only good enough to keep a bank charged batteries up with no load on them. Most RV's need to run the generator for a few hours every day when Boondocking. Only those with several solar panels can get by with just the sun for charging.