Tips for conserving

Anyone have good tips for conserving water and/or battery power?

One way to save water is when you ready to take off boondocking make sure to load your black tank up with at least 5 gallons of water. This way when you do have to use the restroom you don't need to flush extra long amounts of water for the black tank. It's already pre-loaded with water.

As for battery power just get a small solar setup to allow your batteries to recharge during the day. Harbor frieght has a nice 45w setup that fits under most queen sized beds. As for conserving power just need to shut things off that you don't need. Like if you not going to need hot water turn it off. Even though the circuit board is small draw its a savings. Same with the water pump don't need it cycling in and out every once in awhile to build pressure. Set your furnace to lower temperature at night say 60-62* or lower if you can handle it. Change lighting over to LED's this will help a bunch. If you have a inverter like myself limit your TV watching so you don't burn through your batteries and not leave enough charge for at night. That once again depends on if you got solar our not.

You could carry a generator too to charge the batteries. Remember you'll still have to run the generator for few hours while the bulking process occurs for the batteries.

Another way to charge the batteries in a pinch is hook the trailer plug back up to the tow vehicle and allow the tow vehicle to charge the batteries. Of course with the engine running.

If you haven't converted you 12 volt lights to LEDs doing so can save a lot of power.

Prepare and/or precook meals in foil then freeze or refrigerate as needed. Cook or reheat on grill and/or campfire. Use paper plates and disposable utensils to avoid using water for clean-up. It will seem a bit of a chore to prepare meals ahead of time, but may be worth the effort for you when you realize that you won't be working as much having to prepare meals each mealtime. Meals prepared ahead of time also save fridge and freezer space overall due to no extra packaging. That saves weight from carrying extra packaging too, though a negligible amount. Styrofoam bowls work work well for us also. Use a "cat hole" when possible when boondocking like tent campers do. Do as Mopar says and precharge your blacktank with water, add a shutoff valve or turn off water pump when flushing toilet. Use a spray bottle to spritz toilet bowl. Run shower head into a bucket while waiting waiting for hot water to arrive at shower head. Use this water for flushing. If you use a CLEAN bucket, you can warm that water on stove or campfire for washing body or dishes.

Also, the water left from washing dishes and bird bathing can be used to extinguish your campfire. If more extinguishing is needed, I suppose one can drain some water from your gray tank to use for that purpose.

Before you shower capture the water that normally goes down the drain, in a bucket or container of some sort, while waiting for the hot water. Re-purpose the captured water such as, rinsing dishes, watering plants, pet water, making coffee. This also, will conserve your gray tank.

If using a cooler, repurpose the water from the melted ice. Fill a glass with water before brushing teeth. Use this to rinse toothbrush and mouth after brushing. Do this outside and you won't waste water rinsing sink. Use baby wipes to wash hands etc. instead of running water. On battery power, find and eliminate the parasitic loads. Don't turn off safety systems. If using an inverter, consider using two. One to power essential loads and the scond that can be switched off for the nice to have loads. Use a thermos to hold coffee etc. after being heated. Run the generator to charge batteris when heavier 120 volts loads are needed, such as microwave,  coffee pot etc. to save fuel. Only turn water heater when hot water is needed. It will heat up pretty quick with propane. If water needs heating  when running generator, switch it to 120  volts after you finish with other heavier loads. You may as well get the most out of the generator if it is running.

kdbgoat said:

If more extinguishing is needed, I suppose one can drain some water from your gray tank to use for that purpose.

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Please don't do this -  grey water is actually pretty vile stuff containing soap, food and grease residues that are attractive to all sorts of pests and insects. 

You'll  leave a smelly, greasy mess for the next camper.

Here's another idea...If your RV has an inverter that must be left on (like ours, because we have a residential refrigerator), consider installing power-interrupt switches for other AC appliances. Here's why. First, I've got a Trimetric battery monitor that tells me how many amps are going into or out of the house-batteries at any given time. As a test, I monitored the changes as I unplugged different appliances and here's what I found.

Our microwave/convection oven consumes .7 amps - just plugged into the wall when it's not being used. Our living area entertainment center (TV and DVD player) consume .4 amps, even though they're turned off. So that's 1.1 amps every hour that's coming out of our battery-bank - for just those appliances, even though they aren't being used. Over 24 hours, that adds up to more than 26 amps.

Let's say you've got a 400 amp/hour (AH) capacity battery-bank and you subscribe to the 50% theory  - you can only use half your battery's AH capacity - meaning you've got 200 AH to work with. That means more than 13% of your battery-bank's AH capacity is being consumed by just those appliances - even though they're (supposedly) turned off. And don't forget to factor in the inverter's consumption... they're only about 85% efficient. It's not uncommon at all for parasitic loads to consume 25% or more of your battery-bank. That's significant when boondocking. 

Now, you could turn those appliances off with their circuit-breakers, but breakers weren't meant to be repeatedly switched on and off. A better idea is to install some appropriately rated AC switches to interrupt their power. Yes, that means you'll have some flashing clocks when you power them back up, but it's a small price to pay for what you get in return.

Kev

Note: Here's a picture of one of our disconnect switches. It's installed out of sight in a cabinet above the microwave.

Really good Kevin...  8)

Variation of Kevin's setup is that I added a manual transfer switch to my 120V breaker panel and wired in the inverter so I could only power up the outlets in the RV and exclude A/C and microwave oven.

It doesn't help right now, but as we get into the cooler months I plumbed a quick-disconnect into my propane lines to run a Camco Olympian Wave catalytic heater inside.  It uses no electricity and, unless it gets really cold, I don't need to run the battery-depleting, propane-guzzling furnace.

I'm still on the fence about a catalytic heater burning inside the RV. I really do worry about CO2 issues.

I agree Jim. The only thing that uses propane in our motorhome are the three stove-top burners and they have, literally, never been used. All my cooking is done on the bar-b-cue outside and the previous owner (an 80 year old zillionaire) only used the coach to travel to 5 star hotels to party with his zillionaire buddies (Don't ask me to explain why). So I installed the same catalytic propane heating system we had in our previous coach - love it! Unless we're camping in near-freezing temps, it's all we need to take the edge off.  Zero power consumption and a miserly propane consumer. (And Mike, they really are indoor safe)

Kev

Mopar1973Man said:

I'm still on the fence about a catalytic heater burning inside the RV. I really do worry about CO2 issues.

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I hear ya - I did a lot of research before I finally decided to go with it.  They put out less CO than open flames, but even so I'm glad to have my CO detector.  The danger from catalytic heaters is that they consume oxygen, so I am careful to keep more than the recommended amount of window/vent space open for fresh air and cross-ventilation.  They make some with automatic cutoffs triggered by oxygen sensors, but I gather they tend not to work at higher elevations and, like you, that's where I do a lot of my boondocking.  So I went with this one which doesn't have that.  I don't leave it running when I sleep, though.  I am a suspenders-and-a-belt kind of guy when it comes to safety stuff like that.

I've got a Big Buddy heater here (portable) wouldn't that be the same?
http://www.mrheater.com/big-buddy-portable-heater.html

Mopar1973Man said:

I've got a Big Buddy heater here (portable) wouldn't that be the same?
http://www.mrheater.com/big-buddy-portable-heater.html

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When we lived in the Midwest, we used our Mr. Buddy a lot. However we don't have good results here in the west because we generally camp at altitude. The Mr. Buddy just doesn't work reliably over 8000 foot or so. Of course that is where we need heat more often.

Mopar1973Man said:

I've got a Big Buddy heater here (portable) wouldn't that be the same?
http://www.mrheater.com/big-buddy-portable-heater.html

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Yes, that is a catalytic heater. And the nice thing about that one is it gives you the option of running off those disposable propane bottles, or hooking it up directly to your propane tank. Those weren't available when I bought our Coleman heater, or I'd have bought one.

Kev

Mr. Buddy cautions against bringing a 20 pound tank indoors, so I don't do that. I use a 30 pound tank instead!

I saw a Tiny Houses show on TV and they had a water conservation idea that sounded pretty good. They took the grey water and ran it to the toilet tank for flush water...I must assume it went through some kind if filter system.

I thought it was a great idea,

Out here in California water is more valuable than propane or gasoline....

Ultra Van tried this in the 1960s.  Even with filtering using grey water in the toilet was a failure - any grey water that sat in the tank for more than a couple of days was too smelly, even after filtering.

And it's not that inexpensive - you need a second demand water pump and the filter.