My Thoughts On Dry Camping Thus Far
After six days of dry camping (aka boondocking) thus far, here are my thoughts and observations:
1. This is my first extended dry camping experience. I started this six day experiment by filling the propane and the fresh water tanks before I arrived, and with both the gray and black tanks completely empty. My fresh water tank capacity is 80 gallons. The gray tank capacity is also 80 gallons and the black tank capacity is 40 gallons. So, from a water standpoint, the limiting factor is my supply of fresh water (since the gray tank can, in theory, hold the entire contents of the fresh water tank after it’s been “used”.
2. I’m running the refrigerator on propane, and I use propane to make hot water, usually about once a day. These are the only two appliances using propane. The hot water tank is insulated, so the water stays at least warm for 24 hours after the propane has been turned off. I usually turn it on in the late afternoon to heat up water for taking a shower. After my shower, I leave it on for a bit to heat back up again, then turn it off. This gives me water that is warm (but not hot) for washing hands and doing dishes all through out the next day. I could leave the water heater turned on 24/7, but there’s really no reason to “waste” propane keeping the water in the water heater piping hot.
After doing all of the above for nearly a week, I refilled the propane tank today. It turns out that I used 2.4 gallons of propane over six days. The capacity of my onboard propane tank is about 12.5 gallons. So, 2.4 gallons is about 1/5 of the total capacity of my onboard tank. Or, to put it in more familiar terms, 2.4 gallons is about 1/2 of a standard BBQ grill tank. Replenishing the 2.4 gallons of propane cost me $6.97.
3. I ran the on-board generator every morning, usually for about 45-60 minutes, to top up the house batteries. While the generator is running, I use the electric coffee maker to make coffee. As an alternative, I have a tea kettle and a French Press that I could use to make coffee using the propane stove to heat the water, but as of now, I haven’t needed to do that.
4. For the first six days, I showered every other day, using hot water and taking very short “navy” showers. This campground has public showers, but they are cold water only. So, as part of this first trial experiment with dry camping, I opted to have hot showers in the rig, albeit short and every other day. I also used a pitcher to catch the cold water that comes out of the shower before the hot water gets to the shower head. I then used this water for doing dishes rather than letting it go straight down the drain to the gray tank. After a week, it appears that I’ve used about 1/3 of the fresh water from the tank, or about 27 gallons. This is only a guess by looking at the water level through the side of the tank before I refilled it today. So, after six days, I’ve got lots of water to spare. I topped up the tank today and I’ll allow myself to get a “navy” shower every day this week, rather than every other day. Woo Hoo!
5. For the most part, I’m cooking outside on the propane grill, using the 1 lb disposable propane bottles. I went through two of them for the six days I’ve been here. In my Weber Q-series grill, I have a grill surface on one side, and a griddle surface on the other side. This makes it convenient for whatever type of food I’m preparing.
6. It’s November, so the days are getting pretty short. I changed out most of the lights in the RV to LED lights. This lets me have lots of light after the sun goes down while putting very little drain on the batteries.
7. Regarding batteries, I have two LifeLine 225 AmpHour AGM batteries connected in parallel, for a total of 450 AmpHours of capacity. This effectively gives me 225 AmpHours of usable energy, since the manufacturer recommends discharging the batteries to no more than 50% of capacity without doing long term damage to the batteries.
8. I also ran the generator for a bit in the evenings, usually 60-90 minutes. This tops off the batteries for the evening. During this time, I can watch TV (I get a surprising number of over-the-air digital channels here). After I shut the generator down, I can continue watching TV using the batteries and the inverter to create 110 vAC for the TV. The TV label says that it consumes about 114 watts during operation. So, to watch TV for 5 hours in the evening on battery only, (if I remember my electrical engineering correctly and assuming an 85% inverter efficiency):
((114 watts * 5 hours)/0.85)/12 volts = 56 amp-hours
This means that I can watch TV for 5 hours in the evening off of the inverter and only use about 25% of my usable capacity out of the batteries.
Overall, the hour meter for the generator says that I’ve put about 16 hours on it in the six days that I’ve been here. I don’t know exactly how much fuel it consumed, but the manufacturer states that fuel consumption for my generator is about 0.7 gallons per hour under nominal load. So, that works out to just over 11 gallons of gasoline for the 6 days.
9. Temperature control. The other unknown at this point is temperature control. The temperature here has been moderate, so I haven’t needed to run the AC or turn on the heat. Obviously, if I need to run the AC, I will need to run the generator to do that. As far as heat is concerned, I can run the furnace on propane (for heat) and the batteries (to circulate air with the fan), but that’s hugely inefficient and burns through propane quickly, from what I understand. It will be fine for this short stint of boon-docking, but if I want to do more extensive dry camping stays, I will need to invest in a Mr. Buddy propane heater (or equivalent) that produces a lot of warmth while sipping propane.
10. Internet. Sigh. Just as with other services, there’s no WIFI available in this campground, so I have to rely exclusively on cellular connectivity. I have service on all 4 of the major carriers of one sort or another. For this location, the service is:
Sprint - Intermittent 3G. I remember in the early days of the iPhone when we thought 3G was lightning fast compared to the original AT&T EDGE service. So, it’s usable, when it connects.
Verizon - Good, consistent LTE service.
AT&T - Good, consistent LTE service.
So, I’ve been spreading my usage across my Verizon and AT&T services. And I’ve been burning through the data.
11. The water pump. The water pump has been behaving strangely. I can’t decide if there’s something wrong with it or not (but right now I’m leaning toward yes,). It works just fine to pressurize the lines and pump water. It’s a bit noisy, but most RV water pumps are. But, after running water, it will pressurize, and then shut off (as it’s supposed to). Then a few minutes later, without any new water demand, it will cycle on again, for just a short period, and then shut off again. After a few more minutes, it will repeat the cycle on and off. Typically, this behavior means that there’s a leak in the water system somewhere that is causing water to leak out of the line, requiring the pump to turn on and re-pressurize the line. I’ve looked everywhere and can find no signs of a leak. But, the strange thing about this is that after a few of these cycles, the time between cycles gets longer and longer, and the time the pump is on to re-pressurize gets shorter and shorter. Eventually, it will stop cycling and then go hours without cycling, which sort of de-bunks the leak theory. I’ll keep my eye on it, and eventually a leak with show itself or the pump behavior will get worse, signaling a repair or replacement.
Well, that wraps it up for now. Thanks for reading.
