Lou Schneider

A vehicle that can be towed 4 down is a big advantage, hitching and unhitching is easier than hooking up a tow dolly or trailer and strapping the car to it. Plus you don't have to worry about finding room to store the trailer or dolly at a campsite. 4 wheel drive is a plus to explore the back country roads and trails. It doesnt have to be extreme, something like a small SUV with a transfer case that can be put into neutral or a manual transmission can be towed 4 down in most cases. Fulltiming can be as frugal or expensive as you make it. You may not be able to afford $50 a night luxury RV sites every night or travel several hundred miles every day, but that's being in vacation mode, not fulltiming. There are many ways to stretch the budget without having to camp host or workcamp, unless that's something you'd like to try. When you get tired of the East Coast, the desert southwest offers (generally) warm temperatures and low cost or free camping during the winter months while the rest of the country is snowed in. Then follow the weather the rest of the year. Like you said, stay for a week (or a month) in one spot and get reduced camping rates while you explore the local area. Don't forget you won't be sightseeing every day, you'll still have to do chores like housekeeping, food shopping and laundry, as well as leave time for other pursuits and hobbies. Check out cheaprvliving.com and their YouTube videos. While that style of fulltiming isn't everyone's cup of tea, they show how people are successfully fulltiming on extremely small budgets, some as low as $500 a month. And no, it's not stealth camping in a city and hoping you won't be rousted in the middle of the night. Another example are the WINs. They're a group of singles that are very resourceful at low cost touring. They find free or low cost places to stay for 4-7 days at a time and explore the local sites before moving on. More information including details about their current and upcoming circuits are at rvsingles.org

The problem with the 12 volt coffeemakers is there isn't enough energy available at 12 volts to get the water boiling ... only 1/10th as much heat as an equivalent amount of current at 120 volts. Three way refrigerators had the same problem, it took too much current at 12 volts to generate the amount of heat needed to run the absorption system.

The article says the motorhome carries 228 amp-hours of battery, but since they didn't give the voltage of the battery pack it's not possible to know the battery capacity or how long it takes for the solar panels to recharge it. However, the solar array can generate "up to 3000 watts" of solar power. That's equivalent to 4 horsepower. How far or how fast would your motorhome go if you replaced it's engine with a lawnmower motor?

Kirk, I installed one of these in a previous RV and the difference between having it in-line with the pump versus not is like night and day, Since the larger tank is the same price as an RV one liter accumulator tank I decided to go with the larger capacity one. Another benefit of adding an accumulator tank to the cold water system is it eliminates the need to maintain an expansion air pocket in the water heater. The reason you need an air pocket is an RV has a closed water system with one way check valves at the pump and at the utility water inlet. When the water in the tank is heated it expands, in a house the excess can expand into the connected city water lines. In an RV there's no place for it to go until the system pressure rises enough to expand the plastic plumbing or the water heater's overpressure valve releases the excess pressure. An accumulator tank on the cold water side solves this problem. You're right about the pressure relief valve for the tank referenced in the original post - it's only rated for 100 PSI. I'd go with this one instead, which matches the 150 PSI rating of the relief valve on the water heater: https://www.lowes.com/pd/Utilitech-2-Gallon-Expansion-Pressure-Tank/1038591

Then there's the Titan Missile Museum about 20 miles south of the Casino on I-19. It's the only remaining Titan II missile site open to the public and you can tour the underground complex and silo.

I saw a Break-Before-Make transfer switch fail with it's contacts welded in opposite positions, connecting the generator and shore power together. It was on a radio station remote van with a 6 Kw generator that could run the broadcast equipment and the air conditioner. It was set up at an RV show, sharing a temporary, daisy-chained 20 amp power feed with about a half dozen other display RVs. They had just started a 3 hour broadcast, and the technician in charge of the van decided he wanted to run the air conditioner When he turned it on the compressor load pulled the shore power voltage low enough to make the transfer switch relay chatter on and off. He quickly turned off the air conditioner, then during a program break started the generator without first unplugging from the shore power. The equipment in the van was backed up by an on-board UPS, so there was no reason not to unplug from the shore power first, he just forgot. The show management wasn't happy when the shore power feed blew it's breaker with a large bang while smoke poured out of the converters in the other RVs sharing the feed. We wound up paying for those. The on-board UPS exhausted it's batteries about an hour later so we also lost over half of the scheduled program. When the van got back to the shop, I opened the transfer panel and found the shore power relay welded shut. So was the generator power relay. No mechanical interlock between them, just the control circuit logic to keep them from both energizing at the same time. The chattering shore power relay welded itself shut when the tech tried to start the air conditioner on shore power, then when the generator relay pulled in, it's power backfed down the shore power line and the surge welded the generator contacts shut. Only the 20 amp breaker at the start of the daisy-chained power feed kept the generator from self-destructing. The onboard UPS protected the equipment inside the van, the other RVs sharing the circuit weren't that lucky.

Uh, Rain ... your link points back to the start of this discussion.

Your best bet would be to stay in a commercial park or established campground. Not cheap but reasonably safe. rvparkreviews.com shows what's available along with descriptions. The closest campground to Venice would be Dockweiler Beach County Park. Bring earplugs as it's directly under the LAX flight path. As is Hollywood Park for that matter.

I wouldn't recommend it. Like Pappy said, it's in the middle of a major construction project for the Ram's new stadium and the casino itself isn't that large, just a card room and sports book. And it's not in the best neighborhood. I'd look for an overnight stop outside of the L.A. basin. Depending on your route, there are a couple of large truck stops on I-5 north of the Grapevine and two casinos that allow overnight parking along I-10 at Hwy 86, at the eastern edge of Indio (Palm Springs). Then time your trip through the L.A. for very early Saturday morning to miss most of the traffic.

I don't mean to argue, but you might want to verify those figures before you are disappointed in the performance of your system. 95 amps at 110 volts is 10,450 watts or 10.45 Kw. Here's a description and photo of a 7,600 watt (7.6 Kw) residential system, from the Altenergy, Inc. website. Notice it uses slightly more than 4 panels, and a bit more roof space than you have on your RV. A system that delivers 1,140 peak watts will give you 95 peak amps at 12 volts. That matches your battery voltage and is a lot more realistic for a system that will fit on the roof of an RV.

Whoa, pardner! You don't have nearly as much power as you think. The panels will provide 95 amps at 12 volts, not 95 amps at 120 volts. Power = Voltage X Current, so 10 amps at 12 volts equals 1 amp at 120 volts. The peak power from your solar panels is equivalent to 9.5 amps at 120 volts, or 1140 watts. About half as much power as you can draw from a single 20 amp outlet. Same thing for the 120 amp alternator on the main engine. That's 1440 watts, or 12 amps at 120 volts - at high RPMs. The output will be a lot less at idle speeds. Given all of that, I'd still go for a home refrigerator. It won't die if you don't park perfectly level, it's performance will be much better than an absorption refrigerator, especially in hot weather, and the new Energy Star models use much less power than older refrigerators. The daily power draw is well within the capacity of your solar and battery system so you should be able to boondock indefinitely without the refrigerator draining your battery.. But I'd think about including a generator unless you only want to run the air conditioner or an electric heater when you're plugged into shore power.