Dry Camping?

[ajhaig]

We are heading north to Boston (from South Carolina), unfortunately something has come up and we will not be able to attend the POG Rally in TN.

The campgrounds in the northeast don't look that great, many only have 30 amp service etc. We have done very little dry camping and we have only stayed in one park with 30 amp service (Fishing Bridge in Yellowstone).

On 30 amp service should we run the generator during the day to charge the batteries?

Any tips on dry camping would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

AJ

[Joe Cannarozzi]

On 30 amp service I would use a cheater.

If you do not have this adaptor so you can plug your 50 into it and then plug the adapter to both a 30 and 20 ("cheating") I would get one. That is what I would do when power is available. If you are unfamilure with this device I can post a picture.

You could also buy a portable battery charger from Pep-Boys or someplace and power it off a separate plug at the pole. Even do both.

As for dry camping all these buses and the many different ways we use them really makes it difficult to respond to that. You have full-timed that thing long enough now to be able to judge for yourself probably better than any of us.

Does your auto-start work? Use that and watch the voltages and maybe run the gen for a couple of hours right before quiet time at night to insure no problems before daylight.

The season is right for boondocking that is in your favor.

What about your water situation. Do you have a gray water by-pass? If so deffinatly use it.

Boondocking with the wife and 2 kids on 125 gal of water........FUN

[dalej]

Do you have two 30 and one 50 Amp receptacles on your bus? we do. We plug in to the one the inverter is on so the batteries can stay charged. If we need the rear air conditioning we have to change to the other connection.

If the park has a 50 then we plug that into the bus.

Call me if this doesn't make sense.

[Joe Cannarozzi]

You better watch your spelling and sentence structure Dale you are gonna have Lew all over ya.:eek:

Hurry up and fix it before he catches it.

[dalej]

Thanks Joe, your the MAN!

[ajhaig]

Dale - We have one plug on the bus.

Can you buy a "cheater plug" or is it something that you make?

We were at Prevost in Jacksonville this week, some entertainer coaches ran their generators all night. Is it ok to run the generator all night? We don't have an auto start.

[gmcbuffalo]

One year I was at both Nashville and Mira Loma Prevosts and the entertainers were running their generators all the time. The guy washing one of them was the owner/driver and said there was a rock band in the bus still sleeping. Even during the shop repairs.
GregM

[Joe Cannarozzi]

You can run your generator all month if you like. Unless it gets too cold and your webasto is not working or you have a wore out set of batteries, that probably is not necessary.

Run it in the evening before you go to bed to make sure your battery voltage is up sufficiently enough (14.1 and 27.8) and shut it down till you get up.

I will post a picture of a cheater tomorrow unless someone beats me to it.

[Jon Wehrenberg]

AJ,

First about "cheaters". Unless the electric box in the campground is ancient it likely has a GFCI 20 amp and a 30 amp RV receptacle. If you use a 20/30 cheater the GFCI will trip. It is not worth the effort to go find a cheater plug. At one time that may have worked, but codes today require the GFCI. (That's the kind of recepticle with the two buttons, and it will trip if there is a ground fault, not to be confused with an overload which will trip the circuit breaker)

If you are in transit and just using the campground for overnight 30 amps will be more than adequate. Unless temperatures are too hot or too cold and you have to run an AC or have a heavy electric draw to run heaters you should be fine. Limit your current draw to about 24 amps and there will be no problem.

If your batteries do run down a little overnight because you would rather have heat or AC rather than charging the batteries, they will get recharged as soon as you start the engine and start driving.

We often dry camp overnight only running the generator for a few hours while we use the ACs and the batteries are still good enough to watch some TV or make coffee.

[0533]

AJ,

First about "cheaters". Unless the electric box in the campground is ancient it likely has a GFCI 20 amp and a 30 amp RV receptacle. If you use a 20/30 cheater the GFCI will trip. It is not worth the effort to go find a cheater plug. At one time that may have worked, but codes today require the GFCI. (That's the kind of recepticle with the two buttons, and it will trip if there is a ground fault, not to be confused with an overload which will trip the circuit breaker)

If you are in transit and just using the campground for overnight 30 amps will be more than adequate. Unless temperatures are too hot or too cold and you have to run an AC or have a heavy electric draw to run heaters you should be fine. Limit your current draw to about 24 amps and there will be no problem.

If your batteries do run down a little overnight because you would rather have heat or AC rather than charging the batteries, they will get recharged as soon as you start the engine and start driving.

We often dry camp overnight only running the generator for a few hours while we use the ACs and the batteries are still good enough to watch some TV or make coffee.
When I was returning From Coburg I stayed at campgrounds with 30 amp power a lot, mostly in fact. Just used the cheaters.

I manually adjusted the invertors to handle the load, changing them from 50/50 to 14/14 as max load for each unit, splitting up the 30 amp power for a max load of 28 amps. This worked great.

This is what Marathon told me to do when I was using less than 50 amps. Guess I could have even changed to 7/7 if I had only 15amps. Reducing the available max power down. You have to remember to change them back when you are underway and want full power again for the next stop with 50 amps.

[Jon Wehrenberg]

I do not think that AJ has a transfer switch that establishes a ground before connecting the shore power to the bus. As soon as he plugs in to a cheater the GFCI will pop.

I also do not think he has an adjustable inverter that he can program to share loads.

Different generation buses have different capabilities and I think yours Bruce allows you to tell the coach the power available and the coach then manages the loads. That is not the case with older coaches or even coaches from all converters.

[0533]

I do not think that AJ has a transfer switch that establishes a ground before connecting the shore power to the bus. As soon as he plugs in to a cheater the GFCI will pop.

I also do not think he has an adjustable inverter that he can program to share loads.

Different generation buses have different capabilities and I think yours Bruce allows you to tell the coach the power available and the coach then manages the loads. That is not the case with older coaches or even coaches from all converters.
Good point Jon. If AJ has no way of seeing if the ground is correct before transfer, its a real pain in the neck. How about a portable inline deal, (see link) something that he can place on his cheater big tail at the main power source.
See attached link:

http://www.tweetys.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=6747

[Ray Davis]

Can we define "cheater" here? So, I have 30 to 50A adapters, and I've used them on occassion when needed. I haven't had issues with GFCI tripping, but as Jon indicated you have to limit your total electrical usage then.

Generally you can't run AC's, or only one. Electric cooktops generally won't work then either.

But, for normal camping for a night, your batteries would charge. Heck, where I used to park the bus, we used a 20A to 50 adapter, when stored, just to keep batteries charged. Obviously nothing else, other than the fridge was running at the time, though.

They also make these dual 30A to 50A adapters, which I would consider more of a cheater? The idea with these is that you plug into two 30A circuits. I've never used this type of setup, although one came with my new bus.


Ray

[Jon Wehrenberg]

Ray, excellent observation about what we mean by cheater plugs.

In the context of trying to get more power than 30 amp I consider the dual plug adapters such as the 30 and 20 amp plugs going into a common 50 amp receptacle that will plug into your 50 amp cord is what I consider a cheater.

The intent is to get more power into the coach than just the 30 amp.

The problem I mentioned is that campground almost universally have GFCI 20 amp receptacles and unless the coach has a transfer switch that established a ground before allowing power into the coach it is unlikley the cheater will work.

Other plugs such as a 50 to a 30, or a 50 to a 20, or a 30 to a 20 are not cheaters, but adapters.

[MangoMike]

Good clarification as I think there was some confusion between cheater plugs and step down adapters.

In Myrtle Beach I have no problem keeping things humming with 20amps. Just no A/C (webasto's fine). And I have to let the inverter know that only 20 amps are coming in. Easy to do with the Hart Inverter on the Marathon.

Mike

[tdelorme]

Scroll toward the bottom of the page in this link to see what is commonly referred to as a cheater plug.


http://www.lawrencerv.com/progressive.htm

[Jon Wehrenberg]

Correct. That is what I was describing.

There is an unfortunate mixup regarding our shore power supplies due to what has become industry terminology.

We typically refer to the campground box as a 50/30/20 or a 30/20 or some other combination to define the breakers and receptacles we plug into. The problem exists because the 20 and the 30 refer to the number of amps on a 120V circuit for those respective receptacles. So when a cheater is used (assuming the GFCI does not trip) 50 amps at 120V is available.

When we plug into a 50 amp receptacle we actually have 2 50 amp 120V circuits, or a 50 amp 240V circuit. In short a 50 amp receptacle has five times the power of a 20 amp circuit, or more than 3 times the power of a typical 30 amp circuit so when we are on those circuits we really do have to manage our power.

[ajhaig]

Jon - I do have a transfer switch that I turn on after we plug in and confirm that the two green lights are on (sorry for being so technical). If I understand you, assuming that I can use a cheater plug, I will be getting 50 amps or 1/2 the power of a true 50 amp connection.

If I can keep the fridge (our fridge is only 10 cubic ft) and batteries up on 30 amp service that would be great. We could run the generator if we need to use the stove, etc.

Our plan is to head to Vermont after Boston, I'd like to do some dry camping up there. We've been staying at campgrounds almost exclusively so I really don't know what the state of our batteries is. The batteries were new in 2005, they are the fancy kind.

How will I be able to tell if the batteries are any good?

Thanks.

AJ

P.S. We are really bummed out that we are missing the rally!

P.P.S. M.Mike - what is the best campground near Washington DC?

[Ray Davis]

If I can keep the fridge (our fridge is only 10 cubic ft) and batteries up on 30 amp service that would be great. We could run the generator if we need to use the stove, etc.

AJ, a 30A used via a 50-30 adapter will keep your batteries charged, and allow you to use much of your bus devices just fine. Stay away from the high current draws like air conditioning and electric heaters etc. You might be able to get away using a single AC unit, with 30A power.

At worst, and Mango indicated, you may need to go to your inverter charging controls, and either step down the charging current, or on newer models, tell it that you're attached to only 30A plug.

If you've just driven for any length of time, your batteries will very likely be fully charged, and your inverters will very quickly go to float charging, using very little current.

Don't be afraid of 30A service, it's fine for "regular" use. I would be concerned when it's 110 degrees out, and you need to run multiple AC's to cool the bus.

Ray

[tdelorme]

AJ, this is a link to the most popular RV Park close to DC. I don't know about others but Mike might come up with something else.

http://www.cherryhillpark.com/

[lewpopp]

Dale, you damn Husker, he is the sentence structure Joe worries about, (yeah, sure).

It's not "Joe your the man", it is Joe, you're the man. Damnit get it right!

[MangoMike]

Aj,

Mel Torme is correct this is the place to stay. I've never been there myself, but all the reports I hear are positive. Plus they'll get you to the Metro so you can tour DC without the hassels of driving/parking.

Also i wouldn't worry at all about dry camping. We do it all the time and I just run the generator until bedtime and let the batteries take over until morning. We spent 5 nights in a blizzard on top of a mountain at Snowshoe ski area in West Virginia dry camping in the lodge parking lot. Snug as a bug and no problems whatsoever.

Mike

[0533]

Aj,

Mel Torme is correct this is the place to stay. I've never been there myself, but all the reports I hear are positive. Plus they'll get you to the Metro so you can tour DC without the hassels of driving/parking.

Also i wouldn't worry at all about dry camping. We do it all the time and I just run the generator until bedtime and let the batteries take over until morning. We spent 5 nights in a blizzard on top of a mountain at Snowshoe ski area in West Virginia dry camping in the lodge parking lot. Snug as a bug and no problems whatsoever.

Mike
Cherry Hill is a great choice. I've stayed there several times. In fact this is where I first went to a Prevost rally sponsored by Marathon back in 2002. Justice Thomas was on hand to say hello as well. There are lots of larger sites, big park, good camp store, great transportation to the metro and directly into all of the DC attractions. make sure that you follow the directions carefully, there are a few twists and turns.

For those of you that want to be near Baltimore or Annapolis there is a great KOA in Millersville Md. It has excellent pull through sites as well in a nice setting.

[ajhaig]

We had our first dry camping experience. Everything worked well, it is nice not to wake up to the sound of an F350 pickup truck!

Thanks for all the input.

AJ