Thursday, December 21, 2017

Reviews of the Good New Stuff

We've added a lot to our Sprinter this Fall,  cooler, A/C, a solar panel, a Gel battery, inverter, wall cabinets, drawers in the existing cabinets, a rear storage box, lighting, water pump and new faucet.

The Dometic ac unit only works when we're connected to shore power. It cools the van reasonably well, but the heat setting doesn't work at all. (Of course, heat starting at the ceiling isn't very efficient, since heat rises, so it's not a great loss.) It a bit noisy, but not obnoxiously so. I would feel guilty sharing a campsite with a tent, but not too guilty, especially if they asked us to share our site with them. I probably would try to avoid using it if we asked to share a tenter's site!

The ARB refrigerator is wonderful. It doesn't use very much power, and our solar panel generates enough power to keep it cool.  Sitting in our driveway, it kept its cool for two weeks relying solely on our meager solar cell.

Our solar setup is minimal. Camping World installed the smallest/cheapest panel they offer, which lies flat on the back of our van. They also installed a 1500 watt inverter, a solar controller, and a box to hold the fuse panel and wires, and a Winnebago box to hold the Gel battery underneath, behind the wheels. It is a clean installation, and since we really didn't know exactly what we wanted, it meets our needs nicely. So far we've added a separate line for the water pump, and a second dc outlet. Their box uses the same size fuses as the Sprinter, so we only need to carry one size to fit all uses. I would've preferred a more expensive higher output/efficiency panel, but I can't argue with its production.

We originally had a hand pump for sucking water from the jug under the sink, and the drain was connected to a second jug. That pump worked wonderfully. Once. The next day it wouldn't hold its vacuum, and no amount of priming would get it to do anything more than a few drops. It seemed that a leak formed in the system somehow, but the result is it never worked  for the rest of the trip.

So we upgraded to a nice faucet and a Sureflow pump and accumulator. It's pretty quiet, and the accumulator keeps it from going on and off quite as much. I'm sure we will go through a lot more water now, but it's delightful having the faucet work.

Update: I forgot to mention our lighting. I really didn't want to run a bunch of wire behind the ceiling boards, so we have a half dozen battery operated lights stuck on the ceiling and under the counters. Touch the center of one and it toggles on/off, or use the remote to control them all, either at full power or various dim values. They're bright enough, and we'll see how many AA batteries we eat.

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