VIDEO: Gear to Get with Brian Brawdy - Xantrex PROwatt SW Inverter Series

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our E-mail Digest or RSS Feed. We will then send you the stories that are posted each day in an e-mail digest. We use a service called Feedburner for delivery of these emails. You will receive an e-mail from Feedburner after you subscribe and you must click on that email to activate your subscription. Thanks for visiting and enjoy all the information! RV.Net Blog AdminStarting my second year as a full time RVer and boondocker, I needed to find a better way of accessing power. In that I’ve used my six solar panels and wind turbine to capture those natural enegies and store it in my six 100 AMP Kinetik Power Cells, I needed to learn how to let the genie out of the bottle. In searching for an affordable soultion to supply portable AC power for all my electric devices including video and still cameras, computers, cellphones, Duracell backup batteries and iPods, I turned to Xantrex. I first learned of Xantrex when I installed the RS3000 Sine Wave Inverter/Charger and C Series Charge Controller on the Green RV. In this video you will learn about the new Xantrex PROwatt SW Sine-Wave Inverter Series. _______ To learn more about Conservation thru Exploration and Greening your RV, visit BrianBrawdy.com Tell a Friend Read More →

New Converter and Charge Wizard upgrade!

Progressive Dynamics Converter 9160 and Charge Wizard Project After getting tired of adding water to my batteries and them never getting an actual full charge I decided on a change. After research I found that many 5′ers and travel trailers come with a “less expensive” basic converters. Many do not manage the charge to your batteries well in that when you are plugged in they constantly charge your batteries and never give them an actual full charge. In addition the constant charge means you have to often check and ad water to the batteries. With the Progressive Dynamics 9160 Converter combined with the Charge Wizard you get great DC power management along with proper battery charging and maintenance resulting in a managed charge to your batteries and less water loss. The install went pretty smooth and here is a link on such a project. A must see! The Charge Wizard is fantastic and you can read more on it here. Below are some pics of what I bought and installed. The new reconditioned converter and new charge Wizard were approx. $225 delivered to my door. This along with 2 new Trojan SCS 150 batteries I have plenty of power (over 200 amp hours) and my batteries are well maintained. Batteries were approx. $120 each. The batteries are fully charged in about 2 hours with my Honda 2000 generator. What a big difference in battery and power management! A couple years ago I spent nearly 6 weeks on a dry camping trip to test everything while I was dealing with a family... Read more

Step One in an RV Makeover

For over 16 months now I have lived full-time in my Lance Camper. 48 States and an odometer pushing 70,000 miles gave me a personal best. With a wee bit of celebration in mind, and to kick off the Summer of ’09, I wanted to treat myself right so I turned to Thetford. There is something about a porcelain toilet. Now, if you’ve never spent a year and a half on a factory installed plastic one, you’re probably thinking, “it’s not all that big of a deal.” Well, for me it was time for an upgrade, and a state-of-the-art one at that. Now when Nature calls I’ll be answering with a new toilet. Read more Tell a Friend Read More →

Installing a 3″ dump valve in a blue tote, life made easy.

This blog pretty much goes hand in hand with my last blog titled “Boondocking and Dry Camping Solutions here. A real money saver and effortless dumping! Dry camping has become such a breeze for me with the purchase and use of the macerator pump as I simply pump my tanks into my two blue boy totes. I have a 22 and 15 gallon type giving me a total of 37 gallons I can dump each trip to a dump station. Of course the benefit of this is you never have to hitch up go to a dump station, return and re-setup the trailer, and so easy. My problem was when at the dump station I would have to get up into the bed of the truck and lift the heavy totes up to dump them. With my bad wrist this was becoming a chore. I had decided to invest the money ($250 or more) to buy a 32 gallon tote with the dump valve on it so all I had to do is hook the hose to it, pull the valve and done! Rinsing with the same method this also eliminates you having to tow the totes through a campground to the dump station as well and especially if the dump station was off site and a mile or two away. After speaking to a Rob, owner of Morro Bay RV and Marine he suggested I just put the valves in my 2 totes instead of spending all that money on a new tote. $45 worth of parts and a little time saved me about $200 or more! Some people ask why my totes are in the back of my truck in the first place. Hey to me it’s all about making life on the road as easy as possible. Here’s a pic of my 22 gallon tote before... Read more

RV Weekly Round-Up (June 6-12, 2009)

Check out these highlights of RV-related news, events and video from this past week. 1. Enter the Go RVing Video Contest: Go RVing is calling for entries in its first Internet video contest, hosted on Facebook. The “Tails from the Road” contest asks contestants to create a positive, humorous video featuring a pet traveling in an RV. Entries will be accepted from June 1 through July 10, by uploading your video to the Go RVing Facebook Fan Page. See the Go RVing webpage for full contest details. Read more Tell a Friend Read More →

Boondocking and Dry Camping Solutions

I’ve learned some good stuff on boondocking and dry camping. Us with trailers hate to have to hookup to go dump and take on water etc right? Well there actually in most case is no need to go through all that. You can go indefinitely without hooking up and re-setting up your trailer/RV in most cases. Below are some suggestions that work real well that I learned on my first trip to Quartzsite Arizona and boondocking in the desert. Read more Tell a Friend Read More →

Extended run time fuel tank for generators!

Super money saving tip! Extended run time fuel tank for Honda 2000 generators (and others) Here’s en excerpt from my RV Tech Tip book of one of my many tech tips…..While dry camping I got tired of fueling the Honda 2000 once or more times a day depending on use. I decided enough of that and after a little surfing on the web decided to make my own extended run time fuel tank. I found these on line for $100 or more + shipping. The exact same thing and cost me a whopping $36! All that is needed is…. A 6 gallon marine fuel tank. Mine is an Atwood marine tank from Wal-Mart ($15!) A Honda mower gas cap. Make sure the one you get fits the generator you’re using! They make different sizes with different type threads! You may also use the stock generator cap. (see below). 6′ or so of fuel line A 1/4″ bulkhead fitting of some kind (or suitable item), usually found at marine shops. All for under $40 or less! The fuel line simply is ran from the marine fuel tank which has a 1/4″ pickup tube in it and then connect the other end of the fuel line to the 1/4″ nipple on the gas cap. Everyone asks what about venting since the original 2000 gas cap comes with a ventable cap. Well the 6 gallon Atwood marine fuel tank (which can be bought at Wal-Mart for $15) is vented so it accomplishes the same thing as the original cap with the ventilation knob. The fuel line and stock Honda mower gas cap was bought at a local Honda and mower shop. Talk about extended... Read more

The Boondocker’s Air-Conditioning System

By Bob Difley Spring suddenly blossomed into an early indication of the summer to come, with temps soaring this weekend in Northern California to the mid-eighties along the coast, and high 90s inland. Desert temps are driving the last of the snowbirds onto their northerly migration as temps soar over 105 degrees. When that kind of weather hits suddenly, without much time to acclimate, many RVers fire up their air-conditioners and stay inside, hoping the heat will not last for too many days. Boondockers are different, though, heading up in altitude rather than in latitude because of what is known in weather circles as “lapse rate,” the increase or decrease in temperature with the change of altitude. To complicate things, the rate of change varies with the moisture in the air–the humidity, just as the temperature spread between day and night at the same altitude varies with the humidity. You’ve all noticed that in humid areas, the mid-west and south for instance, in summer the variance between day and night is minimal. Remember trying to sleep after a 90-degree day when it cooled off to only 80 degrees overnight. Or how nice it was in the desert after a 90-degree day to have the night cool down into the 60s. In dealing with altitude, though, the amount of change for desert–or dry–air is called the “dry adiabatic lapse rate” and is equivalent to 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit (3 degrees Celsius) for every thousand feet of altitude. What... Read more

RV Weekly Round-Up (April 25-May 1, 2009)

Check out these highlights of RV-related news, events and video from this past week. 1. The Best Tip to Limit Exposure to Swine Flu: Expert RV traveler Brian Brawdy discusses the most important way to stay healthy in the midst of this emerging influenza outbreak. Staying healthy while traveling can be a challenge, but it’s not impossible if you follow this basic tip and take care of yourself. Read more Tell a Friend Read More →

Use That Generator!

Like most motorhome owners, we have a generator in our rig to supply electric power when we are not plugged into a campground’s power outlet. And like many RVers who own generators, we had been abusing our Onan auxiliary power plant for a long time. Not by using the generator too much, but by not using it hard enough! Read more Tell a Friend Read More →

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