North America

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The Dirty RV Chore No One Talks About

One of the many things that sold me on RVing is that I would no longer have to worry about yard chores. Ha ha ha ha ha.

As part of my maintenance schedule, I like to get up on the roof fairly regularly (it averages out to about once per quarter since I don’t get up there in snowy or icy conditions).

Up there, I wash the solar panels, make a note of anything needing Dicoring (note to self, bring TONS up there next time), and… clean the gutters.

Augh! Gutters! I hated getting on the roof to clean them in my house and now I still have to do it in my RV! This wasn’t anywhere in the ‘This Is What You’re Getting Into’ manual, not even the fine print!

Thankfully they were fairly clear this time around so I was through in about 10 minutes. I spent two hours cleaning my gutters in Blaine after my fall in Osoyoos under trees!

In other news, I checked the real estate space on the roof, including where shadows are falling and, surprise, I can fit at least two 150W panels up there! Okay, now if only $400 would fall from the sky. 🙂

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Winter Bounty

It would take thousands of words to explain just why Texas is such a good place for me to be this winter. All I can say is that this is easy living in a good climate and my stress levels are lower than they have been in a very, very long time.

I’m getting plenty of sun and exercise and the abundance of delicious fresh non-wintery tasting fruits and veggies means that I am eating very well. With all of that comes mostly good sleep, the kind I thought I would never again be able to have. I am very well and refusing to even think about the impending return to Canada. This is a now I want to savour fully.

Lunch today was yummy. For someone who until a couple of days ago had no use for avocados, I sure had nooooo trouble figuring out what to do with the one I bought yesterday:

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I just mooshed it up with coarse sea salt, some minced garlic, and the juice of half of a small lime. OMG, avocado, where have you been all my life?

After I had devoured half of the contents of the bowl, I decided to grill a small tortilla so I’d have something with which to mop the bowl:

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With this, I had a whole orange pepper (sliced, no dip) and a whole mango for dessert. Winter bounty at its best!

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Shrimp Boil

As promised, L showed me how to boil shrimp southern style tonight. He does it simply, just shrimp and Zatarain Crab Boil, but you can add potatoes, andouille sausage, and other seafood. His secret is that he breaks open the bags of crab boil so that you occasionally get a shrimp with a spice seed on it for an extra burst of flavour. I really liked the Zatarain, which is good because he offered me the other half of the box. I have enough to boil 12lbs of shrimp… or 36 crabs! 😀

The fresh shrimp were beyond delicious. He dumped them onto a plate and we all helped ourselves, peeling the plump pink goodness until our fingers were sticky. He makes his own shrimp cocktail-type dipping sauce, which was delicious! There was also potato salad and coleslaw, crackers and hot sauce, and… raw oysters. Ah ah! I finally got a chance to try the dang things. Can you believe I have never had raw oysters before? Verdict? Meh. Slimy and briny. L said these were okay, but not great and that I need to try them again. Maybe. 🙂

His friends provided cupcakes for dessert, which were pretty dang tasty with the beer. 😀 We then gabbed for a few hours until the cold sent us home. It’s amazing how quickly the beach went from warm and comfortable to cold and nasty once the sun went down.

Our dinner reminded me of one of my favourite pre-Miranda travel days, and I have to say that peeling shrimp is tons easier when you have fingernails!

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How a Solar Two Stage Charge Controller Works

Greg at AM Solar just emailed me back with a reply to my question about my solar monitor flashing that the battery is full when it’s not.

The short answer is that the panel is poorly labeled. Solid light means that the charger is bringing me up to 80% capacity. Blinking light means that it is gently charging the other 20%. More below. But I wanted to comment on this part first because guess what my battery monitor was saying when the solar monitor started blinking? 80-ish%. It’s properly calibrated! Who cares that it’s registering 0.00V; it’s doing it’s job of tracking my amp hours! Woohoo!

This is Greg’s explanation:

“The 22B is a two stage charge controller when set for “Dry Camp” mode. This means the controller will deliver all available charging amperage until the batteries reach the set point. This is called “Bulk” charging and generally means the batteries are about 80% full. It then goes into “Absorbtion” (or Taper Charge) mode which means it holds the batteries at the set point while tapering off the charging amperage. This will finish charging the last 20%. As a general rule of thumb, when the charging amperage tapers off to about 1% or 2% of the battery capacity the battery is considered full.

When the 22B “Charging” light is on solid, the controller is in “Bulk” mode. When it starts flashing, it is in “Absorbtion” (or Taper Charge) mode and will continue delivering charging amperage at a reduced level so that it won’t unnecessarily drive water out of your batteries. So, for your situation, the 22B is still charging the batteries even when the light is flashing.”

He also confirmed that adding a solar panel is just a matter of mounting it then plugging it into the combiner box. Easy! Now, if I only had the $400 to order another 150W panel while they have them in stocked and boxed up. But I’d really like to be able to eat in March and I do need to think about moving on to San Antonio at some point, so I need to hang on a bit.

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Sun! Blue Sky! Amps Coming In!

The day started off really crappy, but the weather couldn’t be any better now! I’ve gained 16AH today and am still getting a good charge, so I will be ahead tonight.

I emailed AM Solar to ask them why my solar control monitor claims that I have a full charge when I know for sure that I do not. I was worried that the batteries would stop charging, but the battery monitor still sees the full amperage going back in, so I probably have a reporting glitch the same way I do with the volts on the battery monitor.

L and I went into town this afternoon to get shrimp for a traditional shrimp boil tonight. Mmmmm… sun, shrimp, beer, and ocean. This is the life!

We also detoured to the H.E.B. grocery store so I could check out their cat food selection since the Walmart didn’t carry Whiskas (!). Thankfully, I found my brood’s favoured food, and in the giant economical size to boot. What I bought them on Monday to tide us over hasn’t sat well with them at all and they were very happy when I opened that bad when I got home!

Finally, L took me to the post office so I could get my general delivery mail. Gina, your package hadn’t arrived yet. 🙁

It sure is nice to have someone else do the driving (and expend the fuel!). 🙂