Boondocking in michigan7/4/2023 ![]() ![]() Our trailer has a water filtration system, but the fresh water tank bypasses this system. With the pump we can put the bladder in the bed of our pickup and then pump it into the fresh water tank of the trailer. We purchased a 1/10 horsepower water transfer pump from Home Depot. The instructions said you can put it on the top of your truck cab and use gravity, but we were reluctant to put 350 pounds of water on the roof of the our truck, and didn’t want to take the chance of it sliding off while we were driving back to the trailer. We purchased a 45-gallon bladder from Camping World. ![]() ![]() However, that takes a lot of effort and physical strength to do so. Some people use five-gallon cans or buckets that they left up to pour into the fresh water tank. Unless you intend to hitch back up and pull your trailer to the potable water faucet you will have to have another way. You can fill your fresh water tank when you arrive at a campground, but over an extended stay it will have to be refilled. All waste should be disposed of at authorized dump stations. You should NEVER dump grey water on the ground. It’s a good idea to add a clear section on your waste line to see when dumping the waste tank is finished. It takes Bob 2-3 trips for each tank, first black water then grey so the grey water would flush all the black water waste out of the honey wagon. We bought a portable waste tank, often called a “blue boy” because most of them are blue, although ours is grey and Bob calls it the “honey wagon.” You dump your waste tanks into the honey wagon, tow it with your pick up to the dumping station. However, if you are boondocking for an extended period you normally don’t want to hitch up your trailer and set up all over again. Normally if you stay in a campground for a few days, you can dump your black water (toilet) and grey water (sink & shower) waste tanks at a dumping station on your way out of the park. If you’re like me and need your coffee every day, I use a french press to make coffee while boondocking, rather than the electric coffee maker. Your laptops and other such devices use fewer amps to charge than they do to run. Use your laptops on battery mode until they need to charge then charge them while you are running your generators already. If you don’t want to incur the expense of converting all of your lights to LED, you may want to convert the ones you use most frequently. Some good ideas are to change the setting on your refrigerator from “Auto” to “LP.” This will keep the refrigerator from constantly trying to go to electrical power and run down your battery charge. Obviously you don’t want to use more electricity than necessary, this allows your battery charge to last longer and allows you to run your generator less frequently. Small ones that will recharge a 12-voly car battery during the day can be purchased for less than $100, but if you plan to do more than use lights you will need a more powerful system. True boondockers will use solar panels to recharge their batteries and run the electrical equipment in their rig. ![]() You don’t run the generators all day long, but just when you need them to run appliances or the charge your 12 volt battery that only run your lights and specific 12 volt DC fixtures. Camping World will also sell you the parallel cable and RV adapter. Each one will produce power for a 15 amp circuit (or your normal house plug), but if you plan to run a microwave oven on full power, or an air conditioner which are on 20 amp circuit then you need to run the generators in tandem. For normal operations, one generator is sufficient. We purchased two Honda 2 kilowatt generators from Camping World that could be run in tandem for 4 kilowatts of power. Commercial generators like you buy in a hardware store for powering tools are generally too noisy for campground use. If there is no post to plug into, then you have to provide your own and that means a generator. Boondocking may be in a campground that has no hookups or you can be a true boondocker and just find a vacant piece of land in a national or state forest or on land operated by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). It is not unusual to have only a hook up to electric, or electric and water, but boondocking, especially for an extended period of time takes some special preparation and equipment. Boondocking is the term RVer’s use to describe a situation when they are camping without any hook ups to electric, water, or sewer. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |