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.

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.