I'm Givin' it all She's Got, Cap'n!

The portable vacuum just didn’t sound right, and worse, it just wasn’t picking up the dirt.  Damn!  I hate it when the vacuum doesn’t suck.  I guessed that we probably had a math problem – the generator could only put through enough power to either a) run the water heater, or b) run the vacuum.  “c – both of the above” was apparently the wrong answer. 

Last year, our campsite at Warm River had electricity.  Shady Dell does not.  So we’re back to lighting up our nights, heating the water, and controlling the thermostat using battery power charged by solar panels and an occasional boost from the gas-powered generator.  We’re back to heating water to wash dishes, and we’re back to stovetop coffee.  Warp engines offline – it’s strictly impulse power for us this year.

This is as designed.  Most systems in the trailer run off the 12-volt battery.  For the past couple of weeks, however, we’ve been struggling to keep the battery charged.  We replaced the battery.  Twice.  Both times the battery discharged and wouldn’t ever come up to a full charge – no matter how sunny the day or how long we ran the generator.  And last Tuesday, as we watched the snow level rise and the battery charge level fall, we knew we were in trouble.  We didn’t have enough battery to run the furnace. 

Being the ever-prepared campers that we are, we put our zero-degree sleeping bags between the sheets of our bed and hunkered down for a cold night.  We woke to 33 degrees outside and 37 degrees inside.  Brrrhhhh!  A portable propane heater and lots of hot coffee came to our rescue. 

We tested the inverter.  It was OK.  We tested the wiring.  It was OK.  Must be the battery – again.  So while Paul took the battery into town to be tested / charged, I decided I’d break out the vacuum.  I started the generator.  I plugged the vacuum in and turned it on.  Nothing happened.  I tried every outlet in the trailer.  No power.  I guess I should have paid more attention the last time the vacuum didn’t suck.  Apparently, for the past two weeks, all our generator has been generating is noise and fumes.

Last weekend’s challenge was to keep the battery above 50% so the solar panels could keep it with enough charge to run the lights and the refrigerator’s electronics.  Running the furnace was out of the question.  Thankfully the snow melted in favor of more temperate evenings.

Today’s mission – to boldly go and buy a new generator.

 

Easy Being Green - Solar Power at Hoop Lake

On April 7 I posted Easy Being Green about our plans to install solar panels on the trailer.  We selected the Go Power 50 Watt Solar Power Kit, had it professionally installed, and invested in 2 six volt batteries.  Our plan was to minimize the need to run a gas generator to keep the batteries charged and power the inverter.

The number one lesson about solar panels is – they don’t work so well when the sun is not shining.  When we arrived at Hoop Lake to snow, we used a lot more generator than we would have liked.  Thankfully, there weren’t many campers to disturbed with the loud noise and noxious fumes. 

As the weather warmed up, we rarely had to run the generator – the solar panels generated enough battery power to keep us in electricity.  Our solar power ran the lights, my curling iron, and most important – the stereo system.  We were able listen to music pretty much all day.  I was nervous about using the inverter to power the laptop directly, but was successful using it to recharge the battery.

We never did get enough power in the morning to run the percolator, but we adapted and truly enjoyed our “camp coffee” cooked the old-fashioned way – on the stovetop.  The solar panels didn’t generate enough power to run the microwave or the vacuum.  I used the microwave for storage, and yes, we ran the generator once a week to vacuum.  It was a small compromise for cleanliness.

We learned that the 2 six-volt batteries didn’t work together as well as we thought they might.  We will likely invest in a single 12-volt battery for our next adventure.

Our cost for the solar panels, including installation, was just over $880.  Our company advised us that most campground hosts used five gallons of gas per week in their generators. We stayed 15 weeks at Hoop Lake.  If we assume we used two gallons per week the first two weeks and one gallon a week after that, and assume an average price of $3.50 per gallon, we saved $206.  While this means the financial payback will be achieved over four+ years, the knowledge that we did our part to keep gas fumes and noise out of our little corner of the National Forest has been, well, priceless.