Randyretired

We mostly boondock in the west and prefer to stay in dispersed camping not in campgrounds. Most of those areas allow ATV use. Driving on public roads is complicated. That is area specific. Sometimes specific to a defined area or certain roads in a county.

What can also make this more complicated is many states have requirements for people working in the state. They require you become a resident and obtain licenses in the state. The requirements vary by state and there requirements like time that are included. Working while traveling can be complicated. State taxes are another consideration.

I don't know if this fits the bill. Our inverter has a receptacle on the outlet that I plug the shore wire into. The inverter input has a plug to connect a shore power line to. This way we can use the inverter or not. Generally when on shore power I just bypass the inverter. When we are without shore power (most of the time) I plug the 5er into the inverter and plug the inverter into the generator. Our setup also includes shore power access at the front or the rear of the 5er with these plugs and receptacles but that is another story.

Usually when cylinders leak it is just seals (O rings) leaking. Cylinder rebuilding is probably cheaper. You could do it yourself. There are YouTube videos on how to do it. The local hydraulic shop often has the seals needed. There maybe kits available also. I had some of the cylinders on my heavy equipment rebuilt but I don't do many of those because they are so big and heavy. I have to use a lift just to remove them.

The kitchen sink in our 5er is in a slide and it has a flexible drain. It took many years but it clogged. The entire flexible drain pipe was packed. After removing it and running a wire through it boiling hot water and detergent finally cleaned it out. The flex drain is corrugated so it naturally collected debris. The way it was clogged I am not sure a drain cleaner would work in a reasonable time if at all.

If DSL isn't available Dish will sell you Hughesnet. We have that but I don't recommend it and Dish doesn't sell it for mobile applications.

I went to the bank ATM yesterday and it is out of order.

John, bonding the ground and neutral is a problem I am looking at for our off grid PV. It will have 2 or maybe 3 inverters. These are designed to parallel up to 6. Each one bonds the ground and neutral. The 11,000 watt generator I have has the ground and neutral bonded also. I sure wish these companies would make the bonding optional. My preference is to bond in the main panel.

A park model if you can find one is probably better insulated and maybe better suited for the environment. Single wide mobile homes are another possibility and those are certainly better insulated. I agree that a typical RV with a RV AC or 2 might not be comfortable. I have little good to say about an RV AC. These are loud and inefficient. If you go with an RV a mini split is the way to go. Some place other than the extremes and wind of Bullhead might also be more appealing.

I mounted the outside unit on the rear above the bumper and the indoor unit replaced a couple of doors on cabinets on the rear wall.. We can still reach behind the unit by opening the adjacent door. That cabinet is so high and difficult to get to that it is rarely used. There are also ceiling units but these need a larger area than typical RV AC's. By using high SEER mini splits we are able to run ours with solar. We mostly boondock. Most of the larger mini splits require 240v. If that is a problem a transformer that steps up 120v to 240v can be used. We only have the one indoor unit but for your area I think 2 indoor units would be more comfortable. One other gentleman that posts on here occasionally put two 12,000 btu mini splits on his 40' Teton and said it easily cooled his RV in a Southern Texas heat wave when nearly every other RV was having a lot of trouble. In fact he said he could make it uncomfortably cold.

I put a mini split in our RV and we love it. These are residential units so installation is more involved. The reasons these are so popular is they are very quiet and very efficient. Typically using about 1/3 of the power of an RV AC. Ours is so quiet unless you are right next to it you can't hear it. These come in a number of sizes so finding one to keep your RV cool should be easy. Ours is 12,000 btu in our 40' RV but it wouldn't keep it cool in Bull Head. An 18,000 with 2 interior heads might but a 24,000 certainly would. These have an inside and outside units. There are YouTube videos that explain this and installation procedures. These also reverse to provide efficient heating. We own property in Bull Head and if I were to be there in the summer a mini split would certainly be in my RV or even a house. Prices are as cheap or cheaper than a RV AC's but the installation is more involved.

Jim, Load related problems such as the one you are having are actually quite common. Typically these are caused by a bad connection or faulty device such as a breaker. The voltage appears to be intact without a load but the actual connection isn't good enough to support a load. If you have ever had a dirty battery cable connection in a car and cleaned the battery cable to fix it it that is like what is happening. The heating problem you described often can evolve into a burnt or bad connection. I have seen breakers fail like this also. Switches and even receptacles can have this problem. The question here is where is it? Others have provided methods to find this and some have even suggested points to check. Isolating a problem like this can be very frustrating because voltage reading without load are not very helpful. I have just been mostly watching as you have some good advice and knowledgeable people helping already and I will just try to add as I can. From what I have read there appears to be a number of likely suspected locations. The pedestal could be one but the overheating may have been a sign of a problem. Possibly a bad or dirty connection when wiring was changed. Or just about anything in the circuit. I have listed some of the ways I would go about finding the problem as have others. This may be a frustrating problem to find but you have some pretty knowledgeable people on your side and I don't think more is better. So I will only post when I think my $.02 might help. When you are checking voltages under load somewhere depending on the problem you will find a place where the voltage doesn't sag or disappear under load and you will know that the problem is between that and your receptacles.

When I called my HDT a toterhome National General was ready to drop me. When I sent a picture and explained it is an HDT with a bed and it is just a tow vehicle for my 5er they happily insured me. They explained the don't insure HDT's with any RV home built on the back. If your HDT is a tow vehicle you might not want to call it a toterhome. Just my experience.

We have been with National General for many years. No problems so far.

Congratulations. You will like those batteries. Clean install

Another test that can be helpful is to read the voltages from the neutral to ground and the hot or non grounded conductor to ground at each accessible location while testing the above points.

Certainly sounds like a load problem. Assuming that with the breakers in the RV on, the power into the RV breaker box ceases, then a voltage test at any point that can be accessed would help isolate where it fails. This needs to be done with the breakers on. One spot that is often accessible is the transfer relay. Maybe at the input and output of the transfer relay. Often the power cord from the pedestal has terminations that can be accessed. That would tell a lot. Again all of the voltage tests are with the RV attached to the pedestal and the breakers in the RV on. Jes, testing powered circuits involves certain risks and safe procedures are required. If you are not comfortable and confident in your ability please hire professional help. I am not familiar with your background so we need to trust your judgment.

Yea John if we were there it would be easier. If you and Kirk haven't found though it probably won't be easy. I will try to work with you to bring another set of eyes.

John, I am late to the party but there seems to be a concern that this may be a problem when under load or just not connected. That is what I am trying to address in my post. If the RV is plugged into the pedestal and all of the breakers are off in the RV there should be voltage at the RV panel. If the voltage isn't present then there isn't a connection to the source (wiring for instance). If there is power but it diminishes or goes away when the breakers are turned on it is a load problem. From that we can try to trace the problem. Has this already been done and do we have an answer to that?

I hate to get involved as you don't need a bunch of people all giving advice. However, one way to determine if it is a problem under load is to turn off all the breakers in the RV. Measure the voltage at the RV breaker panel. If it is good then drops when the breakers are turned on it is a load problem. If the power isn't there then somehow it isn't connected to the source.

So glad you will be OK. Wind can come up quickly and I encountered strong wind gusts some years back. We were lucky after the first big gust hit there was a rest area. That gust lifted the semi ahead of us off the passenger side wheels. We spent several hours in the rest area to wait it out. Sorry it happened to you and hope you are doing better soon.

Hyder Alaska watching the bears catch fish. I have never been so close to black and brown bears in the wild. A brown bear with 2 cubs ran under the open platform we were on. Only a few feet from us. A black bear walked within about 20 feet of us. Armed Forest Service Rangers were there to protect us. Their speed in the water catching salmon is unbelievable. Eagles were in the trees above us.

I don't have any pictures as we no longer needed it. However, let me try to explain this. This can be done on just one side but this will tend to divide the bed. It may still fit your needs but be aware of that. I will try to explain just one side and it could be extended to the other later. Take two 2"x"6 boards long enough to extend from the head to the foot of the bed. Probably need to buy 8' long boards and cut them to length. Then cut the boards at an angle from nothing to however high you want the head raised. If you need higher a 2x8 could be used. A 2x6 will raise the bed about 5 1/2" and a 2x8 7 1/2". Fasten these cut boards to the outside edges of the area to be raised. Running these from the foot to the head of the bed. Fasten these with screws through to the existing platform. I used one screw at the head, middle and near the bottom. Cut a piece of 1/2" plywood to cover the raised area and fasten it to the plywood using screws. This will need a mattress for each side of the bed. This 1/2 of the bed approach is going to be difficult. My suggestion is to consider raising the whole bed. That is the way we did it and both of us slept just fine. Neither of us even noticed the difference. Whole bed. Use 3 2"x6" boards cut like above. Place one board on each side and one in the middle. These boards run from the head to the foot of the bed. Secure with screws to the existing platform. Cover the entire area with plywood. This will require 2 sheets of plywood. I put one sheet across the bed cut to length and then cut a second sheet to fit the remaining area. Hopefully I didn't leave any step out. If you have questions or comments just post them and I will try to answer them.

Any carpenter or handy man should be able to do it. We needed that and I ripped 3 2"x6" from nothing to the height we wanted. Put a few screws to hold it to the existing bed deck and covered it with plywood. Took longer to go get the supplies than to make it. Not fancy but easy to remove if needed.

Are campground fees also going up like everything else?