If you have followed the blog for a while you’ve come to know we love to boondock during our winter snowbird travels in the southwest. Over the last few years, I’ve been slowly outfitting the RV for off grid camping. We absolutely love the freedom.
The core of our boondocking system is power generation in the form of solar panels, extra large battery bank, and a portable generator. But beyond those essential items, there are many other mods and gadgets that have made our self-contained RV life a little easier.
Trimetric Battery System Monitor
Getting a detailed readout on the state the battery bank charge is vital. You’ll know when it is time to charge up the bank or if you should be adjusting power usage to conserve capacity. Letting batteries like our lead acid type run down too far can lead to reduced life and buying replacement batteries sooner than needed. In that respect, a quality battery monitor will pay for itself over time.
Our Trimetric battery monitor helps out a great deal by listing voltage, amperage in and out, and percentage of charge left in the bank. After I installed the unit I wondered how I did without it before. Compared to the old OEM dummy light gauge or fussing with a voltmeter or hydrometer, the Trimetric is super convenient.
I purchased the Trimetric TM2030-RV since I’m also using Bogart’s SC2030 solar charge controller and they work well in tandem. Another brand of battery monitor I hear good things about is from Victron the BVM-700.
SeeLevel Holding Tank Gauges
Once I’m are well aware of how much power is left the next concern is fresh water tank level. In some ways, it is even more important since power can be generated but fresh water is limited. My OEM gauge listed 4 levels: Full, two-thirds, one-third and empty. Not all that helpful!
So. this summer I upgraded to the SeeLevel II monitor and now have a percentage readout that gives me 25 different levels. The huge step up in precision is tremendously helpful if we find the need to ration our water usage to increase a boondocking adventure far off the grid.
Remote Water Pump
If the fresh water tank does hit bottom I’ve modded an easy way of adding extra water to squeeze out a little more time before needing to break camp. I travel with an extra 12 gallons of fresh water in two portable jugs. To aid in filling our RV fresh water holding tank I’ve repurposed an old 12 VDC water pump and hose as a remote water pump.
I soldered on a 12-volt DC cigarette lighter style plug and use the remote pump arrangement to transfer water from the jugs to the main RV tanks. Since our Keystone Cougar trailer has a waste tank capacity of 120 gallons and a fresh water capacity of 60 gallons, I can do this a few times to extend boondocking stays.