Earlier, we talked in broad sweeps about what steps to take to get ready to boondock. In this article, I want to dive a little deeper into how to better approach your power management when boondocking with your rig.
Managing power while boondocking is part passive habit and part active choice. Let’s look at the power consumers on a rig and how we can manage them better:
Power Management: the Fridge
Easily the biggest “needed” power user for most of us. Anything that makes heat is going to be power-hungry. That said, most RV fridges actually use heat to cool. As a general rule, 3-way fridges like ours work best with propane. They work well with AC, and ok with DC. To get the most “chill” for your dollar, try and run your fridge on solar. This works as long as you’re generating more than you need to keep your batteries topped up. Be sure to switch to propane at night, or when you start to see your battery levels drop. When we forget to switch it over and leave our fridge on AC overnight, it can easily eat 60% of our power reserves.
Other options
Some boondockers and nomads don’t even use a refrigerator. Traditionally refrigerated foods like eggs, butter, and some condiments don’t even need refrigeration. They can go weeks at room temperature. Though with eggs, you’ll want farm-fresh and not chilled eggs from the grocery store. Items like meat can be purchased canned, and dry-cured deli meats last a long time in a quality ice chest.
Power Management: Heating and Cooling
There are three reasons to want to control the climate inside one’s rig: health, comfort, and moisture reduction.
Health
The human body can only handle so much. Much colder than 50F(10C) and much hotter than 90F (32C) and your body has to work hard to operate. Unless you’re acclimated and/or ready to spend big money on extra water or calorie-dense food, these conditions can quickly tailspin from misery to becoming un-alive.
Comfort
If you’re not comfortable you are not having a good time. Granted, you’ll have to broaden this comfort range as holding a rig perpetually a 72F (22C) will be prohibitively expensive, energy-wise.
Moisture
Moisture is the silent killer of RVs, buses, and vans. We bring it in on our clothes after the rain, run it through pipes in our walls, breathe it out with every breath, and carry it in on the wind. While keeping a dehumidifier running may seem like a luxury, consider it more of a maintenance item.
So how do I heat my rig?
For heating, you want to think about where your heat is coming from. As we said above, using electricity to make heat is EXPENSIVE. The other option is burning something. You can get either a diesel or propane heater for your rig. Both have their pros and cons. Both systems only cost a little energy to start up, then comparatively little to run a blower to circulate the hot air. Propane does create extra moisture if it’s not vented outside your rig.
Other things to consider are extra blankets, thick curtains, and cuddling. Keep the heat you generate, and run the furnace sparingly. You just have to keep the rig around between 50F and 60F. Cold, but manageable. Also, consider the path of the sun. If you can park your rig pointing north or south, the rising and setting sun will hit your rig’s sides and help keep the inside warmer.
How do I cool my RV?
For cooling, if you’re running enough solar to run some AC, just make sure to watch your consumption. Don’t turn it on until the sun is well up. Turn it off before you start to eat into your overnight reserves. If you’re in a desert, it will get cold at night and you can open up the rig. Don’t forget to button up during the day. If you can, park your rig pointing east/west so you’re not getting the setting/rising sun hitting the broad side and giving you too much heat.
We’ve found that when we’ve got full sun we can easily run 1 mini-split and not touch the batteries, so we close off half the rig, opening the windows in the closed section for a cross breeze, and only cool the front half. This keeps us and more importantly, the animals healthy and comfortable even if it’s over 100 outside!
Of course, the simplest solution if you’re boondocking, especially full-time, is to move. Winter in the south, and summer in the north. Also, look at elevation, and higher will generally be cooler. When your home is on wheels, home is where you park it!
Power Management: Cooking
We’ve all got to eat, so we’re going to want to eat. At the very least, we’re going to want to boil some water to rehydrate dried foods or steep some coffee!
Luckily, we’re camping! Unless you’re in an area with a burn ban, you can have a campfire. Wood can often be sourced locally, either through foraging or purchasing. Don’t carry firewood with you long distances, as it can carry invasive species to new regions and wreak havoc on the local ecosystem.
Other than a campfire, you have the option of propane or electricity. Cooking with propane inside the rig can dump a lot of water into the air, so it’s good to have an outdoor option.
As previously mentioned, it uses a lot of electricity to heat with it. But if you do use electricity to cook, look for induction hotplates, versus regular hotplates, as they use significantly less energy.
If you have the option to cook with either propane or electricity and have a good solar system, then you can stretch your propane by cooking with electricity during the light of day and morning and using the propane only after dusk.
Power Management: Lighting
Most of this is ensuring that you’re only using light when you need to, and when you do, make sure your lights are running on your DC power. All LED lights are 12V DC, but a lot of them have built-in transformers to step down 120V AC to DC. Anytime you convert you have a loss of energy, so when you switch your lights out, make sure you’re going DC to DC.
Also, there are a staggering amount of solar lighting solutions available online and in stores. These are especially great for putting around your campsite for security at night (and to discourage critters from making a meal out of your wiring and hoses!). And unlike the dinky units most of us got in the mid-’90s that cast a dim glow for about an hour after dark, today’s units are bright enough to read by, and last all night long.
Power Management: Small Electronics
We all love our tech, and some things are just hard to let go of. When it comes to charging these things, this is where your solar array comes in. Charge in the light. Also, there are solar chargers available online as well that are built specifically around charging tablets and cell phones. Another source of energy to charge batteries for small electronics is your rig’s motor! While driving, your rig generates DC power. The power your vehicle generates goes to topping off the starter battery and running the vehicle’s electronics. Once the battery is topped off (just a few minutes into a drive), that extra energy is wasted. There are many USB-charged AA batteries on the market that you can charge from your rig on travel days and harvest that extra energy; the batteries can then be used for lanterns, small radios, old Gameboys, or whatever takes AA batteries.
The other side of this is reduction. You’re out here to experience life, see a sunrise, find cool rocks, and study local history. Do you really need to browse Insta-Twit’s headlines over your coffee? Also, consider manual options when possible; a broom and dustpan can clean just as well as a hand vacuum or battery-powered blower; a paper book tells the same story as an e-book.
One more point. If possible, get 12-volt DC appliances, or convert them if you can. A lot of appliances that have a big cube on the end of their plugs are DC! That cube is a transformer. A direct DC appliance will save a ton of amps vs converting to AC and then back to DC.
Power Management: Vampire Loads
What is a vampire load? It’s any power draw from any device while it’s powered OFF or otherwise not being used. TVs are notorious for this, but another big vampire on your rig is your inverter!
One thing that I didn’t cover above is a piece of equipment that most rigs will have if they are running any kind of AC power: an inverter. If you’re generating power with wind or light it’s going to be coming in as DC, and batteries, regardless of the style, live in DC. To get AC power from batteries you need an inverter. And just like those cubes on appliances, they are a converter with their own loss.
Other vampires are laptops (when plugged in) and PCs, any appliance with a light, a network, or a remote control connection.
Even when “off,” networked devices are partially awake, listening for a signal to turn on and work.
The easiest answer is to unplug a device you’re not using or charging. If items are hard to get to, you can turn off the circuit to them. The nuclear option, if you can access your inverter easily, is simply shutting down your AC power for the night.
Really where vampire loads will get you is in the overnight lull. Assuming you’re using solar, if you don’t have enough reserve capacity in your batteries to feed the vampires, you risk damaging your batteries. It’s never a good idea to completely drain a battery, as it WILL reduce the capacity of the battery. Your 100-amp-hour battery is now an 80-amp-hour battery, then a 60, then just 30, then nothing.
Parting Thoughts
At the end of the day, power management all boils down to 3 key points:
- Use the cheapest energy you can, when you have it.
- Be a conscientious consumer of energy.
- Set yourself up for success.
By following the above advice, always looking for ways to save a bit more energy, consume a bit less, and simplify your lifestyle, you’ll be boondocking with comfort and class!
