I was awake at quarter to six again this morning. I doubt I’ll be getting up this early once I am once again free to use my computer as much as I want and won’t be as motivated to go to bed early. At any rate, skirt, tee-shirt, and flip flops on, cup of coffee in one hand, camera in the other, and half an hour of watching the sky.
“There is no shortage of good days. It is good lives that are hard to come by.”
There wasn’t much worth noting about today. I stayed in, did a little cooking and housework, and caught up on some computer related things that earned me a little money.
But I was also parked in the dead of winter on a gorgeous beach with the weather sunny and warm enough to go out in just a light skirt and tee-shirt and walk in the surf without freezing my toes.
Moreover, my battery bank was working as I’d hope it would, so I was able to spend a normal day following my usual routine and I really didn’t feel like I was boondocking beyond watching my water conservation.
It all sounds so mundane, but this is what I’ve always imagined RVing in winter should be like. This has been my grail, the vision I’ve worked so hard for in the last four and a half years. I’ve had some amazing days on the road, yes, but none that were more perfect than this because all the pieces have finally come together.
I’m going to go out on a limb and declare today to have been the best day of my life.
It left a wicked wake! So here’s some surf video for Gina!
All right folks, I think we can say that Rae’s battery bank and whole house inverter set up is operating at full capacity!!! I’m sitting in partial sun with about 12.8V only on all the various monitors and I am not only charging my laptop, but also using it! The inverter does beep when the clouds get really heavy, but just for a second! I still think the DC charger I’m getting tomorrow is my best solution, but I feel soooooooo much better than I did yesterday!
I really want to thank everyone who has given me input on my battery upgrade woes. Every single comment I’ve gotten has given me just a little insight into why things weren’t working correctly, how to fix it, what to expect in terms of performance, etc. I really had all the knowledge I needed and the right tools. The problem was with the execution. Make good connections, folks!
Croft asked me how long I plan to stay here and what my plan is if the weather goes bad. I was able to go 13 days on my old batteries with fewer amp hours in mostly crappy cold super overcast conditions. Right now, I’ve got the rig plugged into the whole house inverter and am running the fridge and charging the computer, for a total of 2.8 amps going out. I have 0.9 amps coming in. My monitor is telling me I could run like this for another 43 hours before depleting my batteries. When I was just running a light last night, I could have kept going for 150 hours before depleting my batteries.
So I have a lot of reserve capacity for cloudy days, especially since I don’t have to run the furnace. I suspect I will run out of water and holding tank space before I run out of power. I can haul water from the icky public bathroom and dump grey water there and I can go about six weeks on my black tank. So unless the weather goes really, really bad, I should be able to last four weeks here as I had hoped to do.
This experiment is going to serve me well since I’ve decided I’d rather not put much money into my property next summer. So I’ll leave here knowing if I stand a chance of lasting the summer without plugging in.
YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY. My battery bank has been operating as I would have expected it to for more than 12 hours now!!!!!!!!!!
Late yesterday afternoon, after some helpful comments by reader Dave, I took the wiring apart again, recleaned with baking soda, applied new gel, and tightened everything. While doing this, I noticed that the connection between the two batteries wasn’t as tight as it could be. That alone could have explained my problems!
Voltage last night never dipped below 12.3, no matter what I was doing, and rested at 12.5 when I had nothing but the fridge and a light on. I had a light on all evening and it would flicker when the water pumped kicked on, but voltage readings remained constant. Just for kicks, I turned on the inverter and vacuumed the hall carpet. No problem. The monitor was correctly registering my usage. When I got up this morning, I was reading 12.5V and no outgoing amps since I was already charging. Perfect!
The computer continues to be an issue and I remain convinced that the problem is not my system. I’m in the truck right now with the engine running waiting for full sun to hit my panels. When that happened yesterday, I was able to get a FULL charge out of my computer while running the whole house inverter and doing other things. My DC charger will be here tomorrow and life should be able to return to normal for me.
Being up early again this morning and not wanting to start the truck that soon, I took my coffee and went for a long walk on the beach. Then, had a pleasant chat with my neighbours who, in part, wanted to let me know they were moving 30 feet down the beach and it had nothing to do with me. How nice of them. 🙂 They commented on how people down here are so much friendlier than folks staying in RV parks in southern BC, something I wholeheartedly agree with.
I want to stay in today and get started on some painting. It’ll be nice to not go anywhere and, at some point, go play in the surf. 🙂