Month: February 2013

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Disappointing News About Charging With the Truck

I really thought I was on to something as far as topping up the house batteries with the truck, but I’m afraid it’s a giant bust! 🙁

Late afternoon, I wanted to top up my laptop so I could perhaps watch a movie tonight. I decided that it was the perfect time to run a truck experiment.

By this point, I was pulling in only two amps from the solar panels:

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The battery monitor said the same.

I started the truck and this was the reading on the battery monitor:

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I was DOWN half an amp!!!!!!!

I ran the truck last night, too, and was pulling in a mere 0.9A, although I wasn’t sure of the reading at the time. That really isn’t worth the effort!

I do get a voltage boost after running the truck for an hour or so, but it quickly drops again after the batteries have rested for a bit. Really, there’s no point to the exercise except that I do get a quicker charge out of my computer. So I guess I could sit my computer in the truck for an hour every morning and charge it until I come up with a better way.

How disappointing! 🙁

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Battery Monitor, Laundry Day, and Friends

The battery monitor at present is claiming that I have about 5A coming in, which matches what the solar array monitor is claiming. It’s taken me a while to understand how the monitor displays incoming amps, even though it is very obvious. If I am using amps, there is a minus before the number. If amps are coming in, I get a positive number. I’m going to hook up the truck again tonight and see what the number is like so I will know if there really is any point to running the truck for an hour a day or not.

I now know that in the high part of the day, with more than 5A coming in, I can charge my computer without taking anything out of the battery bank (it draws 4A), but I only get 1A coming in. So what this tells me is to get that battery bank charged out to the max and then only charge my computer in the middle part of sunny days. This is a best case scenario, of course.

I’m heading out shortly to do laundry, having found a laundromat on the road into Port Lavaca. A wash is $1.50 and drying starts at 25 cents. I do believe this is only the second time since I hit the road that I am going to be putting laundry in my toad and driving to a laundromat. The first was in Eugene, and only because my hosts requested a lift to one, so it made sense to do mine at the same time.

I suppose I could set my Wonder Wash up on a picnic table near the public bathrooms and haul water, which I have done before, but since I’m not paying for anything here, I’m loathe to look so settled and use up so much water. I am just about out of water on the on board tank and will be filling a four gallon jug for the week, but it would take more than that to get through my current mountain of laundry. So the laundromat makes sense. I’ll bring the iPad and get some work done on my ebook.

As for friends, I got an email from my Colorado neighbours, R&S, asking me to call them so we can square away my little road trip to Port Aransas, Corpus Christi, and Nuevo Progreso. I made sure that they were not coming back just for me and then we agreed that they would watch the rig Thursday and possibly Friday night. The plan is to leave early Thursday, spend the morning in Port Aransas, the afternoon in Corpus Christi, and then drive to near the border to spend the night. Friday, I will cross early-ish, do some exploring and possibly shopping, have lunch, then go to my appointment at the dentist. If the border crossing is less painful than the one I had in Tijuana, I will drive straight home Friday evening. Otherwise, I will sleep en route and return Saturday morning. The plan at this point is to sleep in the truck, but if I find a motel under $50 I am going to splurge so that I can get a nice long shower!

Saturday evening, there is a concert at the Indianola Marina, which I have promised to attend with R&S. So the week’s schedule is filling up nicely!

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More Finetuning of the Electrical Setup

The battery monitor still hasn’t been working properly even after I redid the bad connection on it. I haven’t had a full charge to recalibrate it, but it would have been nice to get an accurate read on the amps going out instead of it claiming that my laptop was pulling 500A and that even with that, I surely had 150 hours of running capacity left! I ended up completely disconnecting it until I could deal with it properly.

Since I will have a full charge by the end of today, I could finally synchronize the battery monitor and get it working for me again. The plan of attack was to remove ALL the terminals, even the ones that seemed good, and replace them with new ones.

In a classic example of lack of foresight, I did not have what I needed to work on the project, so I had to drive back into Port Lavaca to find terminals and, perhaps, a better crimping tool. The Radio Shack didn’t have much in the way of terminals, leaving me at a loss and desperately missing Canadian Tire. I remembered that there was an auto parts store on the way to the Walmart, so I decided to try there. They ended up having a better selection of terminals and I found a crimping tool for just $11 that, *spoiler alert*, worked great! The connection kit came with two fork-type terminals that I replaced with ring ones, figuring that they couldn’t work their way loose from a screw.

I came in and spent a half hour cutting, stripping, crimping, screwing, and swearing (not necessarily in that order and sometimes in combination). Done, I decided that if I came in and the monitor wasn’t working or was still giving screwy readings, I’d done my bit and it was time to quit and call in a pro. Well… everything is looking good! I’m getting the correct amps out reading. I’ll be able to recalibrate shortly and life will be good!

One thing that I have concluded is that I have enough amp hours but not enough charging capacity. In other words, I have enough batteries, but I need another solar panel. I’m averaging 5A in average conditions (a little cloud cover), so with 11 hours of charging time total (the charger clicks on at about 7AM and clicks off at about 6PM), I’m getting in about 55A per day, which is about 10 more amps than I use in an average day if I’m not running the furnace and only using one computer. With another panel, I could double those figures and get about 110A per day coming in, which would be plenty to replace what I’m burning with the two computers running. And that 5A really is an average. I tend to get a full 1A coming in by 8AM, by 11AM I’m running at peak capacity with 8A or more, by 4PM, I’m down to just about 3A, and then I peter out as the day ends.

I’d really prefer to have another panel installed by AM Solar, but I don’t see myself getting back out to Springfield ever again. I could get a complete 150W solar panel kit sent to me for $400 (free shipping) or $300 for a 100W (I need to check how much space I have left on the roof), and I suspect they might be willing to walk me through adding the panel to my current setup since they did the original work. At any rate, I can’t afford that right now, but it’s a consideration before I return to Canada.

That math is good news. For $400, I could just about solve my electrical shortage, leaving me to use the truck in really dire circumstances. This is a MUCH cheaper option than repairing or replacing the genset.

It’s okay that it’s taking me this much time to get the electrical setup right. My math was good when I originally did it, but circumstances have changed and, thanks to an unusual amount of foresight, my system is expandable.

I’ve been here a week and a half already and I think I just might make my goal of boondocking for four weeks!

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Like Being At An RV Park

I am inexplicably exhausted and lethargic today. I think it’s because I’ve been getting up too early after not quite enough sleep. I always have that problem when I go to bed before midnight. I wake up super early and cannot fall back asleep. At least, I go out for exercise when I’m up that early, so the exhaustion isn’t for nothing.

Late morning, I headed into Port Lavaca for some produce. I had a disappointing lunch special at La Antigua. My special was a cheese enchilada (minus ‘beef gravy’), rice, beans, and a chicken flauta (which was a fried corn tortilla with yummy seasoned chicken in it). The enchilada was lukewarm and smothered in plasticky cheese sauce. I was really not impressed. They do serve their meals with a really nice salsa and chips so I was able to brighten up my lunch a little and give it some kick by drizzling the salsa all over everything. I’d go back there, but I’ll be sticking to their full priced menu next time as those items seem much fresher and have pico de gallo and guacamole.

I then got my groceries and headed straight home… to find this:

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