Lou Schneider

Yep, there's lots of hilarious videos on Youtube taken by the owner of a towing company that runs a custom 4WD tow truck on the beach: https://www.youtube.com/user/HILLAUTOBODY/videos

All of the California coastline is under the control of the Coastal Commission and they have pretty much locked down any access except daytime use, i.e. park your car along the road or in a parking lot and walk to the beach. The only place that I know of in California where you can drive and/or camp on the beach is Oceano Dunes SRVA in Pismo Beach near San Luis Obispo. http://ohv.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=1207 There are other beaches in Southern California where you can fish, but you can't drive your vehicle out on the sand. Emma Woods State Beach along Hwy 101 west of Ventura has roadside RV campsites on the ocean side of the old road adjacent to the beach. https://www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=604 In Northern California, there's Lawson's Landing in Dillon Beach near Tomales (north of San Francisco across Tomales Bay from Pt Reyes National Seashore). Since 1957 the Lawson family offered freeform camping in the meadows and dunes on their 940 acres. Then about 10 years ago Marin County and the Coastal Commission forced them to develop a specific use plan with defined campsites. They still have sites within walking distance of the beach and a marina and bait shop where you can rent a boat if you want to fish or clam out on Tomales Bay. http://www.lawsonslanding.com/

I have a Honda EU1000i I purchased in 1999 when it was the first inverter generator on the market. When I'm boondocking I run it for a couple of hours in the evening while I watch TV and it keeps my batteries charged. It won't run my microwave or A/C but it will power my George Foreman grill. 20 years later it still runs fine and starts on the first gentle pull unless it's been sitting for more than a couple of weeks. Then it may take two pulls.

That's overkill, but what the heck. In that case you'll get 0.7% voltage loss between the combiner and charge controller.

You could go from panel to panel with 8 gauge wire, or you could use 10 or even 12 gauge wire from each pair to a rooftop combiner box. If you go with the rooftop combiner, using 10 gauge wire from each pair of panels to the box will only cause an extra 0.5% wire loss between a pair of panels 20 ft. away vs. a pair of panels adjacent to the combiner. That's using 80 volts at 10 amps for each pair of panels. You'll have to fuse each set of wires in case a short causes the rest of the panels to backfeed into them. Then use 8 gauge wire to handle the combined 45 amps current from the combiner box to the charge controller. Assume 25 ft of this so you can put the charge controller adjacent to the batteries and you'll lose 1.77% voltage along these wires, for a combined worst case voltage loss of 2.27%. Or go with 25 ft. of 6 gauge wire between the combiner and charge controller for a 1.1% voltage loss and an overall worst case loss of 1.6%.

You want to have equal length wires going to parallel batteries because even a few tenths of a volt difference between the batteries (due to unequal wire losses) will make a HUGE difference in the amount of current going in or out of a battery. Changing a battery's terminal voltage just a few tenths of a volt can make a tenfold change in the amount of current going in or out of the battery. The same doesn't hold true for solar panels. Going from a dead short to the maximum power point on a typical solar panel only changes the current flowing out of the panel by 10% or so. At the MPP few tenths of a volt plus or minus due to different length wires will only change the panel's output by a few percent. In other words you don't lose much by having different length wires going to your panels.

Yes. Panels (or batteries) in series add voltages while the current stays the same. Panels (or batteries) in parallel keep the voltages the same while the currents add up.

BTW, Chad and I are giving you different answers because he's assuming you're using 12 volt panels, not 36 volts.

Here's a quick sketch. The Victron MPPT 150/70 or above controller will handle this for a 48 volt battery. Note the Victron controllers are rated for an absolute maximum 150 volts input voltage, which rules out more than three panels in each series string. https://www.victronenergy.com/upload/documents/Datasheet-BlueSolar-charge-controller-MPPT-150-45-up-to-150-100-EN.pdf

The key is to use a voltage loss calculator that allows you to enter the source voltage, like the one I linked to above. You have two voltages to be concerned with, the panel to MPPT controller voltage and the controller to battery voltage. You'll get different percentages of loss depending on the source voltage The Victron controllers have an absolute maximum 150 volt input voltage rating. So you're safe putting two panels in series and then 5 sets of these in parallel and it comes out even for 10 panels.

No, I suggest making 5 series strings of two panels each, which would give 80 volts at 9 amps for each pair. Or 45 amps total coming off of the array. You're also way off on your voltage loss calculations. For 29 ft. one way distance, #6 wire has a 0.059% voltage loss, at 390 volts and 10 amps, not 2%. The voltage loss is a function of current through the wire and you have to take it as a percentage of the total voltage, so it's less at higher voltages. Maximum current from (5) 80 volt pairs of two panels each will be 45 amps. At 80 volts, the voltage drop through 29 ft. one way distance on #6 wire is 1.2%. What will be your battery voltage? This will determine the size of wire you'll need between the controllers and the batteries. Plan for 300 amps at 12 volts, 150 amps at 24 volts, etc. Voltage Loss Calculator

That doesn't sound practical to me. 390 volts is very high voltage and will be hazardous if you come into contact with the panel to controller wires. You'll have to cover the panels first to avoid getting severely shocked or drawing a large arc when working on the wiring, DC rated disconnects for that kind of voltage are also very expensive. What kind of controller are you planning to use? Most I've seen are only rated for 100-150 volts maximum input voltage. Five parallel strings of 2 panels each (80 volts and 18 amps maximum per string) would be much safer. You'll need larger wires and will lose a few percentage points of efficiency under maximum load but it would be a much safer system.

I think it depends on how you view retirement. Some people view the end of their career as the end of their active life and enter retirement without any future plans. Others view it as an opportunity to pursue travel or other activities that were denied to them while they were working for a living. I suspect most of the people here fall into the second catagory.

The Victron will show the net current going in and out of the batteries. The Amp Hour total will be negative if you've used more power than you've replaced via charging and will creep back towards zero as the batteries gain a charge. If there's a 30 Ah discrepency between what the panels are putting out and what the Victron says is reaching the batteries, that's how much current your RV used over that time.

The easiest way to estimate how many flushes you can get in that small tank is to measure the bowl's capacity at various levels. Fill a pint container with water and see what bowl level that represents. Empty the bowl and then add one pint of water, two pints, etc. This will give you an idea of how much "stuff" is in the bowl when you use the toilet, and all of this has to go into the tank. Simple division will tell you how many times you can expect to flush before the tank fills up. The actual flush itself doesn't use much water, maybe a cup or two unless you let it run to wash down the sides of the bowl. A piece of toilet paper will wipe it clean just as well.

No need to ... apparently it flagged Facebook's algorithm so they censored it.

Moving to another mail forwarding service isn't automatic, the Post Office won't let you submit a Change of Address away from a forwarding company. The Post Office won't pick out your mail from the high volume of mail going to the forwarding business, in effect they'd be doing the forwarder's job. Under normal circumstances, the forwarder is supposed to have a grace period where they continue to forward your mail while you notify all of your correspondents of your new address. I don't know if this applies if the entire operation is going out of business. If you're lucky, MyDakotaAddress will arrange for another forwarding service take over their entire business so they can have ALL their incoming mail forwarded to the new company. If they don't, when they close their doors all of their incoming mail will be marked as undeliverable and returned to sender. It will be up to you to contact all of your correspondents, update your address with them and request re-issuance of any returned mail. Then rinse and repeat if the new Mom and Pop forwarding company has a similar situation arise in the future. It's much less likely that a major mail forwarder like Escapees or FMCA will have these issues.

Before using uShip, take a look at Shipping Wars on the A&E Network. Just saying. They work on the principle of letting their contractors compete against each other, with the lowest bidder getting the job. To me this indicates a willingness to cut corners as needed. Try some of the companies Kirk suggested that deliver motorhomes from the Elkhart, IN RV manufacturing center to the rest of the country. Their contractors routinely drive motorhomes of all sizes from the factories to dealers, so you shouldn't have to worry about a novice driving your rig. The drivers have to arrange their own transportation back to the starting point, which is one of the factors (along with fuel costs) that are built into the cost of the move. Someone who has just delivered a motorhome to a Los Angeles dealer will jump at the chance to earn extra money driving another motorhome (or truck camper) back across the country instead of deadheading on Greyhound. The difference is the commercial transporters on Kirk's list pay their drivers a fixed amount per mile determined ahead of time instead of making them compete among themselves until they find the person willing to make the trip for the least amount of money.

I fixed the title, hopefully it's a little clear now. I think it would be poetic justice if people offer to carve their initials in their display booth or deface their display products the next time they show up at an RV show.

Andersen Hitches owner Ryan Andersen was photographed defacing Corona Arch in Southern Utah, then posing with his family in front of the damage: https://idahostatejournal.com/members/idaho-falls-family-facing-backlash-for-reportedly-defacing-corona-arch/article_06e2e5fe-de1a-5094-a557-95e53287525d.html http://kjzz.com/news/local/alleged-corona-arch-vandal-sparks-outrage-on-social-media http://rebrn.com/re/this-guy-vandalized-the-corona-arch-for-a-family-photo-this-week-4400070/ Similar graffiti was found in Arches National Park two years ago. Rangers said it was carved too deep to be mitigated or removed: http://abcnews.go.com/US/graffiti-etched-famed-rock-formation-arches-national-park/story?id=38761196

You're right Dutch. I've had both types and both the bad circuit board and the gummed up gas valve were on the Suburban water heater. Of course, it's OEM in my 26 year old motorhome so I'm not too disappointed in it.

I had the same problem with my water heater - it would refuse to start when the tank was cold, in warm weather or with warm water in the tank it worked fine. Plugging and unplugging the connector would fix it for a while. Eventually I removed the board, inspected it with a magnifying glass and found a cold solder joint near the connector. Wiggling the connector would flex the board enough to fix the bad joint for a while, but the real cure was applying heat and flux from a bit of new solder to re-flow the bad connection. On a related note, a while back the gas valve on my water heater was refusing to open in cold weather. I verified the valve was receiving the correct voltage to open and the solenoid coils showed continuity. I took the valve out of the water heater and and removed the cover over the secondary regulator diaphragm. The diaphragm action felt sticky when I tried pulling on it's shaft, so I carefully peeled open an edge of the diaphragm, filled the chamber with rubbing alcohol and let it sit for a while. When I drained it out it smelled strongly of the mercaptin oil that's added to propane so you can smell leaks. I think that's what was jamming the valve, and it's been working fine ever since.

A housing allowance isn't taxed if you spend it all on housing. If you don't, the unused portion is taxable income.

BTW ... WFCO stands for World Friendship Company. I just thought it was interesting trivia.

Another point, the db noise ratings are similar to the Hondas, but if you look at the fine print these measurements are taken at 23 ft. The Honda meets those same noise ratings at a distance of 9 ft, meaning it's significantly less noisy. Your neighbors will thank you.