first time owner- no shore electric all summer

[jbanske]

hi - a few basic questions
1- does the water work without shore power?

2. since we will have zero electric sites and cannot use generators in Wi state parks..wth are your thoughts on solar. and battery needs to be able to make coffee via mr coffee maker and use electric griddle fans and such I understand that the microwave and airconditioning are nice to look at but wont be able to be used

3. any other random suggestions for the first timer are welcome..

[wags999]

Ill leave answers as to what solar can and can't' operate. But anything with a heating element is going to draw a whole bunch of power and quickly drain batteries. Will you have "city water" or using your tank and pump ? The pump will operate on 12 volts. If city water than you need no power to operate your showers, toilet etc. If you take watts divided by volts it will get you amps. Check your battery amperage and you can calculate how long a fully charged battery will last, knowing you never want to drain your battery too low.

Good Luck.....may want invest in a good camp stove and use that for coffee and griddle.

[jbanske]

i think we are no water hook ups..

[Mustang65]

How long will your stays be.. a few days at a time, week, 2 weeks?
The use of high wattage items such as coffee pots, and microwaves are not recommended, as they put a large load on your battery(s). Will you be using laptop computers, gaming systems? Charging cell phones? Regular lights or LEDs?

State parks usually have a lot of tree cover over their sites, so SOLAR will be a challenge unless you have spots with a lot of sunshine. You would need to compensate for the lack of DIRECT sunshine with a lot of SOLAR panels $$$. But let's say you have a site that has full sunshine.

You will need to purchase an INVERTER, to change 12Volts to 110VAC, to operate your TV, and coffee pot if need be. The coffee pot, granted will only run for 10 minutes at a time, but will need a 1000 watt inverter, if you only run your TV off of your inverter you would only need a 400 or 500 watt inverter. I only recommend inverters that are designed for use with electronic devices, these units cost more.

If your length of stays is only for weekends, the SOLAR design would be smaller than for a system that needs to supply power for long periods of time (week or weeks).

In any case I would not recommend a system that is less than 200 watts and DEEP CYCLE batteries less than 220 Amp hour rating. You will need to monitor your battery voltage level as you should not let the voltage drop below 12.0 volts, which means, of the 220Ah's you can only use 110Ah of the 220Ah total (50% rule).

Take a look at our RVing with SOLAR social group, click on COMMUNITY at the top of this page, then select Social Group and scroll down to the RVIng with SOLAR. There is a lot to think about before sinking your hard earned dollars in a SOLAR system.

Oh, we use our Mr Coffee without electric when dry-camping. We took a small Tupper ware cup that fit inside the basket, drilled a few very small holes in the bottom, fix your coffee the regular way, insert the Tupper ware cup in the basket over the coffee grounds, heat your water on the stove and pour into the Tupper ware cup. Same taste, less time and no electric.

Good luck, and give us a little more info and we can assist you with a SOLAR setup you will be happy with.

Don
I apologize for spelling or spacing errors as I am typing this on my tablet x!;(#%.....