Our KOFA Boondocking Experience

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camperAL

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Boondocking Report

Free Camping on BLM Land (sort of)

Part 1

After reading about camping out in the KOFA area by some of our fellow forum members, we thought we would try our hand on doing the same in that area. We camped in our Class A Coachmen Mirada 33 footer. The Mirada has a payload capacity of 3,100 lbs. Disclaimer: I'm not an expert at what I am doing and don't profess to be, but rather just attempted to do this sort of camping in order to see what all was involved. No doubt there are better ways of doing some things and always look forward to people offer bits of advise and comments not only for us but for others who might attempt this fun way of camping.

I thought I would share our first time boondocking experience with others on the forum who may want to try this sometime. Since everyone has different tank sizes/fuel sizes, your time out will vary compared to ours. There are many factors including how long you can go personally, if your with a partner how much they use or even how much you use the resources. It also depends on your comfort levels and how long you feel you can take living away from some comforts. Also depending on weather conditions (as I found out) how long you can spend out before needing to replenish your supplies. Our goal was to be out three weeks without having to go and replenish our resources.

Before the trip to camp we filled out tank up with water which is 55 gallons. We don't use this for drinking but for cleaning, washing and showers. We also took two blue 6 gallon tanks for drinking and fixing food, and nine one gallon containers for a total of 21 gallons. I filled the gas tank up after we got close to our camping site in Quartzsite. I took a chance with our LP as it was half full. You can only fill LP tanks to about 75% to 80% full so when the tank registered 50% it was about 2/3's full. We had stopped off at a big city and shopped for 2/3's of our food. We had bought food at the start of our trip and had use those supplies for two weeks before we boondocked and while on the road to camp. We had also went out to eat at some restaurants while near the big city so that helped save a number of our supplies. We also keep some boxes of freeze dried food for back up in the event we ran low so we did'nt have to run into town.

We drove to our camping spot (my wife liked a certain area and we checked it out and stayed) It was nice and big in the KOFA area without many plants to worry about, near some nice cactus and somewhat away from the noise of the main road and the road we traveled down to get to the site. It also had a nice camp site fire ring made of rocks that we could use. We bought some firewood before heading out as they don't want you using any of the wood in the camping area. It was also near a boarder guard check point which offered some feeling of safety in the area. Part of my goal while camping was to walk, do astronomy, enjoy the beautiful setting and do some work on my computer, mainly our taxes.
 

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Part 2

Since we didn't have any means of charging house batteries other than generator or RV engine we used an extra battery that I often use for power for astronomy, along with a 1500 watt inverter for power. This is enough to run TV, DVD Player and my apple computer. So when the generator was running, we charged everything we could so we could get along for a decent amount of time before recharging. We used 2 to 3 gallons of gas per day running the generator for 4 or 5 hours each day. Because we charged a lot of items we had, plus used microwave, lights and electric heaters (usually in the mornings) we probably taxed the generator a bit more than half which then eats more fuel. No one was around us so generator use is possible about any time but we still don't run after 9 p.m. We started it up in the morning to heat the RV and fix breakfast most mornings.

Our LP use runs furnace, provides cooking on our rv stove when gen set is off and keeps
refrigerator cold. Our extra inverter was ran about 3 to 4 hours each day. Our house batteries, runs furnace at night, kept refrigerator working, lights, rv radio and water pump. We used our barbecue to save energy and cook, we used the rv stove when generator wasn't running rather than microwave oven. Besides the water we brought, we also had other forms of hydration like pop, bottled tea, juices and beer.

To stay warm in coach after sun sets (we had about 12 hours of night!) we would wear our jackets so we didn't have to run the furnace as much. RV furnaces eat up a lot of LP when used extensively and in order to save resources as much as we could, putting on the light jackets saved a couple of hours of LP heat. Two other things we did to preserve our LP, we used a really good (expensive) sleeping bag that I have that can keep you very warm at night. This allowed us to turn down the thermostat to about 58 degrees. We also retired around 9 p.m. and drug ourselves out of the warm bed around 5 a.m. to 6 a.m.

Depending on the temperature at night the furnace would run from anywhere to two or three times a night to about ten times per night. It got down to 17 degrees one of our nights as we had a big cold front that kept things pretty cold for about 6 days. This caused us to run the furnace much more than we expected to. We never got cold under the covers (sleeping bag) but much like when you are camping in colder weather, we had to pull the light cover a bit over our heads to keep our faces reasonably warm at night.
 
Part 3

We used Sunlight on cold days to heat RV. We open window shades that lets Sun in and heats the cabin that way. One suggestion, use slippers to help keep feet warm. We usually have socks on but when cold, slippers are a better idea. We didn't have slippers so we toughed it out with socks or wore our shoes to keep our toes from getting too cold. There were some really cold days in that 6 day cold front that came through. While we were reasonably warm, we weren't as toasty as we would have been in a house or as we were when we were in bed under the sleeping bag that kept us toasty warm.

Cold Test

We turned down the heat to preserve our LP to 52 degrees on a night that was suppose to get down to 34 degrees (was 29 degrees at 7 a.m.) Furnace ran about 5 or 6 times for an average of 14 minutes. Ran generator to keep warm in the morning with electric heaters. I am somewhat a light sleeper and notice when the furnace would kick on. I'd check my cell phone on the night stand to check when, how long the furnace ran. We found by pulling in our slide on cold nights, saves energy, plus closing off our bathroom/bedroom door, keeps us warmer as furnace runs at night. This also helped keep the amount of times furnace ran to a minimum as well as how long. Simply put, it's easier to heat a smaller area, rather than the whole coach.

During the coldest part of the cold front, it only got to about 54 degrees that day. Because of this we ran the generator several times during the day to keep warmer. During the earlier part of the week when it was warmer and first week, we only used 1/4 of our LP fuel.

Here Comes the Rain Again

The Quartzite area gets about 7 inches of rain per year. While we were there, they got close to half of it!! It rained when we were at our first site and it rained when we were at our second site. It rained for about a day both times. I was afraid to tell anyone that I was trying to do astronomy as this would have tipped them off as to why it rained during that time in the first place. Seriously though, I figure any time it rains out west it is often needed and that includes at the expense of some astronomy. Not being from the area, I worried a bit about flash flooding and kept a weather radio tuned, in hopes of finding out if I was in a safe area.
 

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Part 4

Consumption of resources

First week we only used 1/4 of our cleaning/shower water from our 55 gallon tank. The second week was about the same and used another 1/4 from the big tank. We also used ten gallons of our drinking water in 14 days or used about 3/4 gallon a day of drinking water. We used 1/4 LP, and the gray tank was only 1/3 of the way full first week. We were 2/3's on the gray tank after two weeks and LP was down below the 1/4 full. Gasoline use was around 12 gallons (later on I determined that our gas gauge had stuck and I was getting false ideas of how fast things were going down in the gas tank). In two weeks we had used roughly 40 gallons of gas.

Most of the consumption was during the ice age (errr cold spell for a week). Because of the lack of LP, we went into Quartzsite and refilled our tank, dumped our black and gray tanks, put some more gas in the tank and started our second two weeks of boondocking. Had I filled the LP tank up, we could have easily lasted three weeks and possible four weeks. This is something we will have to revisit later on.

Total Costs for First Two Weeks

$105 Fuel for generator, $20 LP, $15 dump = $140 (trip over was $100) or $17.14 per day
(Fuel was at $2.64 per gallon)

Total Costs for Second Two Weeks

Trip back $95 fuel, Gen Set $53,  $24 LP, $10 dump at CG = $182 or $13/day
Average Cost is $15.07 per week.

Food Consumption

This will vary a lot for people depending how frugal you eat or how much. We estimated it cost us about $10.00 per day for two of us. This included some eating out at restaurants in the city we picked up items to boondock with. We also ate at Silly AL's Pizza a couple of times, one during our first week and one just before we left. We did pick up $6 worth of grocery items we wanted while we were boondocking. Before heading out we stopped at Costco and Walmart for 2/3's of our supplies.
 

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Part 5

What We Learned

Our house batteries were not charging to capacity during the time we ran the generator. The batteries in the coach were in the coach when we bought it. I am wanting to switch over to Trojan T125 golf cart 6 volt batteries, hook them in series and try boondocking with them next time if we go. I am guessing that my batteries are close to dying and didn't charge as well as they should have in order to give me proper use. There are a couple of 12 volts wired in parallel right now. I can't see the date stickers but will take them out, clean the compartment out, re-paint and see what I have before I spend the $400 to replace with the 6 volt batteries. Also I believe that 12 volt batteries should have been charged before they are ran down below 25%. Note, house batteries were 6 year old.

Fill your LP tank and your gas tank as you may need them. In our case we had below normal temperatures (believe me 17 degrees is cold!) 54 degrees isn't real warm during the day either.

Use solar for heat. Open windows so the sun can come in to heat the inside when possible. It is ideal to park with one side of your RV to the south so the Sun can hit a larger area of your camper. We have both white and tan colors so opening the windows and letting the Sun shine in for a time does warm things up when it is cold.

Have warm cloths to wear as well as warm jackets, I would have slippers next time so I don't have to wear shoes on the inside for more comfort.

A warm sleeping bag is in order. We have a couple and use them depending on the temperature at night. The zero degree sleeping bag was a life saver and did save a great deal of money on heating at night. It might have been the difference in being able to stay at our boondocking site or heading in to a camp ground if we couldn't stay warm. Besides sleeping bags we did have several warm blankets we could use as well. Those were used sometime when it was cold and we stayed up.
 

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Part 6

What We Learned II

Use the campfire or your grill to cook with, have extra charcoal as this is a means of saving some energy (and starting fires in the pit). We also have a small electric burner rather than the stove for use when the generator is on. We also used the crock pot when we used our generator more on the cold days. Secret was to cook things a bit on the stove top and get them warm and half cooked before transferring to the crook pot.

We have both phones and a lap top we charged and could use when the generator was not on. This allowed about 6 hours of online time for entertainment. It was important to plug everything in before running the gen set, like phones, computer, extra battery for extra inverter and to charge the house batteries.

With my extra inverter running, I could leave my power strip plugged into the inverter which would run the light on the power strip. At night I could look out into the living area and see this light and if it was on. If it would have went out, either the battery would have died or someone would have remove the clips to the inverter which was outside. Inverters warn by making a sound before they turn off. I put both the battery and the inverter on the side of the RV that was facing away from the road so they weren't seen. While I think there is little chance of someone bothering them, it was a safe guard all the same.

Having things to do is an important part of boondocking. We took walks, had DVD's we played at night, I do astronomy, we both had books we could read, played and worked on the computer while camping, and had a pretty good menu in order to fix things good to eat. We had steaks and chicken we grilled several times along with frozen vegetables. Since it was cold for a spell we fixed soup a couple of times, both chili and vegetable with beef both times. Besides that we had spaghetti, sloppy joes, chili dogs, burritos with rice and corn, hamburgers, brats, and a favorite of ours is hobo stew. We always have freezed dried food with us to supplement our food supply. We probably ate 5 or 6 meals that way when we were busy.

We do have LED bulbs in most of our RV so that saved house batteries.

Use paper plates and bowls as this saves water use. We then use these to help start our campfires when we have them. Also we took wet wipes to help clean up each day and for sponge baths. We also use a wash cloths to help us clean up.

Take showers consecutively to save on LP. I could take a shower only using about a gallon of water or less. My wife takes a bit more water but that is fine. We have a water shut off so I can adjust the water then let her take her shower. We caught the shower water that first comes out cold in a bucket for cleaning purposes.
 

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Part 7  Last Thoughts, Final Comments

A Couple of Options

If you decided that boondocking is a life style for you and you were going to do it often, then investment of a good solar system to charge batteries might be in order. Buying a system to simply charge the batteries or a system more elaborate to actually run things as well as keep things charged could be in order. See posts in the boondocking section that talk about this.
You need areas that the sun shines often enough for this to be effective. Also keeping solar panels aligned with the Sun as it moves east to west is a necessity. There are tracking systems that do this automatically. I'll let the experts that know this stuff much better than I do comment.

Another solution might be a 2000 watt generator that uses less fuel than your RV generator. Advertisers of these generators say they can go for about 6 to 7 hours on roughly a gallon of gas at 1/4 capacity. This would allow continues power at times to charge things plus run some items inside the coach. Heavier use might use about as much as your main generator but that is another topic of discussion. The disadvantage would be, only running it during hours before quiet hours.

One other idea would be to buy some of the insulating silver bubble wrap To keep heat/cold in or out. This might have help us keep things more uniform while we were using the furnace or electric heaters, plus would keep the coach from overheating during the warm days.

Costs of Boondocking, while it is free camping, the cost is the fuel to get there, the fuel to charge items on your coach with the generator, and the cost of LP to run items on your coach. One also has to consider the cost of your camper. $15 per day is fairly cheap camping for two but it is still a cost.

Side Note

I replaced my house batteries with two Trojan T125 batteries, wired in series for 12 volts/240 amps.
 
I agree :)) Great write up. I appreciate the fact that you kept accurate costs of fuel, etc. to show the true cost of free camping. I know you had concerns about not getting a full charge on your old batteries, but you may not be getting a full charge on the new ones either. I recommend reading Handy Bob's battery charging puzzle,

https://handybobsolar.wordpress.com/the-rv-battery-charging-puzzle-2/

The same principle applies no matter what you are using to charge your batteries, whether from a solar charger or a converter.
 
Thanks for the great report....Although I don't think I could convince the wife to turn the heat down that low.  :eek:
 
That?s warmer than we keep it at night. Just run the furnace a bit to take off the chill in the morning.

When was your stay? 17 degrees, ouch! We?re at KOFA now, would be tee shirt and shorts temps if the wind would calm down.

Great write-up.
 
Good writeup on your experience.  Also good info for those looking to boondock or dry camp.  (Dry camping being staying in a place with defined campsites, usually with fees as well.

You did really outstanding with your conservative water and gray/black use. 

About battery charging.  It takes longer than 4-5 hours to fully charge (100%) your batteries even with a 3 stage charger. If your rig doesn't have a 3 stage charger, it will take up to 24 hours or longer to charge a 50% discharged battery. Also with older batteries you most likely have lower capacity.  A 3 stage charger will provide a charging voltage at 14.5V or a little higher.  Trojan states 14.8 or 14.9V is what they want for their batteries.

You mentioned taking your batteries to 25%, I "think" you are writing that you only used 25% of your capacity (keeping them more than 75% full).  For longest life going no lower than 75% full is best.  Going down to 50% full cuts the number of cycles in about 1/2.  Typical 6V golf cart deep cycle batteries (not 12V marine or combo starting deep cycle) will give you around 2000 cycles going down to 75% full and then recharging.  Trojan used to state 3000 cycles, but I cannot find any references on the Trojan website any more.

In my opinion there is nothing magical about Trojan or any other expensive deep cycle batteries.  They are "supposed" to be great.  However if you accidentally abuse the battery it will be ruined just as easily as golf cart batteries from Costco or Sam's Club.

In addition to Handbobsolar here are some more links about battery & solar:
http://www.marxrv.com/12volt/12volt.htm
http://www.marxrv.com/12volt/12volta.htm

For some in depth technical info:
http://www.jackdanmayer.com/rv_electrical_and_solar.htm

Some general info:
http://www.rv-dreams.com/rv-electrical.html
http://www.rv-dreams.com/our-rv-electrical.html
 
Greetings,

Back2PA, Many thanks for your comment, I try to offer worth while ideas and share what we experienced.

Kdbgoat, I am going to go over that article carefully. I had read some things in the forum library about how to charge. This is Important!

Gizmo100, Having the sleeping bag we had, we never got cold at 58 degrees but I always got up before my wife and started heating the cabin up before she got up. We could enclose our bedroom and bathroom area (there are two heat ducts there) and stayed pretty warm while sleeping even during the coldest time of our stay. The thermostat is there as well so perfect setup.

Heli_av8tor, We camped from December 23rd to January 22nd. Perhaps we can meet at KOFA some other year. Be nice to meet up with others from the forum! I don't always travel out west, or southwest.

2PawsRiver, I appreciate the comment!

AStravelers, I appreciate the links! I will check those out. My coach monitoring system that shows the LP, water, tanks and battery use, showed the house batteries down to 25% or below the fair and on the Low. I am sure those are not real accurate but I am sure with 6 year old batteries they were dying with the use I put them through. My concern now is to preserve (as you said) the new ones and to keep them at 75% or higher for more cycles. I am going to check to see how high my charging system goes and if I need to replace or perhaps buy a stand alone. I do have a good meter for checking the voltage. I also plan to check the specific gravity on the batteries on a consistent basis.

Many thanks and hope to see more comments!
 
I enjoyed reading your detailed reports. Thanks for posting. I'm planning to do a week long boon docking along the Shenandoah River in April. Normally moderate temperature in Virginia that month, but haven't seen normal in quite a few years. I'm sure I'll make good use of the info on your experience.
 
Thanks for the detailed write up.  It will help us a great deal this coming summer, when we head to Alaska.
 
Yes, thank you for the detailed write-up! We have boondocked here in KOFA several years now, usually two weeks at a time. Some observations:


Solar makes all the difference. Part of the attraction to boondocking here is the superb quiet. I have a generator, but I hate using it. After my solar installation 2 years ago, we no longer need it.


We were here about the same time as you. I have 2 seven gal LP bottles on the trailer, and 2 more in the box of the truck. LP has never been a problem.  we set our overnight temperature at between 55 and 60 degrees. The furnace sometimes came on during the night, but only two or three times. We have sufficient blankets that we stayed just fine. While we both wore sweaters inside during the day, we ran the furnace up as high as 75? so we were comfortable.


Amazing how you went as long as you did with only 55 gallons of fresh water. That is the capacity in our trailer as well, and it only does the 2 of us about a week. This year I brought an additional 40 gallons in a tank in the bed of my truck, and used a transfer pump about 8 days in. That gave us sufficient for our 2 week stay.


6 year old batteries are getting long in the tooth. And, if you only have two of them, you really don't have a lot of capacity. we have six 6 volt golf cart batteries in our unit, and they will keep us going a couple of days with a 50% discharge. However, we also make liberal use of the microwave, electric toaster, waffle iron, and so on.
 
Hi Frank,

We used the 55 gallon tank for cleaning, showers, dishes and that sort of thing. I also filled two blue water containers 6 gallons each for eating, drinking and I also had 9 - one gallon jugs of drinking water, so I am not as talented as you might think. We didn't fill up with water the whole 4 weeks though. Really didn't buy much in the way of food during that time. It was the LP that got us, and made it necessary for us to go into town for a refill. Didn't want to fridge to shut down on us and food go bad. Figured that while I was in town, I'd dump the tanks and also grab some gasoline. I had two gauges stick on me, our LP and our gas gauges. That might have been from the extreme cold. Heck I wasn't moving around a lot during that time ;)

I appreciate your comments. I probably won't go the solar route, but I might buy a small generator and run that during the day to charge things up. I agree with the peace and quiet and don't want to detract from that. It really is the same thing as too much light at night when you want to see faint stars. One night we had someone pull in about 300 feet from us at 11 p.m. after we had went to sleep (non astronomy night). There were literally hundreds of spots in that whole area they could have choose. They were making quite a bit of noise and woke me up, and had bright light shinning on our RV. I was hoping they wouldn't stay. The next morning at 6 a.m. (end of quiet hours per KOFA rules) I started our generator up promptly at 6 a.m. to heat up the RV and fix breakfast. I'm sure the camper had plenty of sleep from around twelve a.m. to 6 a.m. ::)  :mad:      They pulled out the next day.

Hopefully that wasn't any of my sister's or brother's on here!
 
camperAL said:
Hopefully that wasn't any of my sister's or brother's on here!


OH SO THAT WAS YOU.... ;D ;D ;D ;D..If some comes in at 11 PM making noise they need to be woke up at 6 ;D ;D
 
Heli_av8tor said:
That?s warmer than we keep it at night. Just run the furnace a bit to take off the chill in the morning.

When was your stay? 17 degrees, ouch! We?re at KOFA now, would be tee shirt and shorts temps if the wind would calm down.

Great write-up.

Tom, too bad we didn't know you were back at KofA, our neighbor went with us up to the Desert Bar yesterday to enjoy some garlic fries and a nice non-IPA.  We got there about 1/2 hour later than when we all went, and I'm glad we were in one vehicle.  Would have really sucked to try and park a group.
 
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