And my "tone" carried a smile. I hope it showed.
Joe
2012 Ram 3500 diesel, dually
2013 Lance 850
Pretty good truck, pretty good camper.
Just Sally (German Shorthair) and me,
full timing, and shooting and catching
most of our meat.
You are mainly speaking for the plains areas, high mountain areas, and desert areas for solar usage because they lack trees. East of the Mississippi, seeing anyone with solar on their RV's is like looking for hen's teeth. The land and most CG's are heavily forested with tall pine/evergreens trees and so many kinds of tall very large decidious trees with lots of shade always when the leaves are on the trees and that's when the CG are the busiest. The state we live in is Michigan which is still over 50% forested today and has over 11,000 inland lakes plus over 3200 miles of Great Lakes shores and all around nearly all the lakes are woods to thick forests. Trees mean shade, and that's where most of the CG's are. Forests, lakes/water, and shade is what the RV'ers seek in the east half of the USA.
Solar in my state is virtually useless as it is basically all over the east coast states and the S.E. states also because the S.E. is very hot with extreme humidity in late Spring, Summer, and most of Fall. You'd about croak without A/C on in an RV in the S.E. in Summer. By contrast, A/C isn't even needed along most of the Great Lakes as there's shade, cooler, and far less humidity than in the S.E.
We are in Florida presently for a couple months as we have lots of family down here to visit etc and shade rules here and well placed trees or sites in CG's are there to shade where the RV sits. You'd most likely have to park your RV in the roadway in most CG's to have full Sun 80-90% of the daylight hours. Even the National Park CG's east of the Mississippi are mostly heavily forested.
What works so well where you live or camp wouldn't be worth beans in the east half of the country and also in several of the northwest coast states either. Solar has it's place just like battery banks, inverters, and generators for boondocking or no hookups CG's etc. The area/region you are in makes so much difference! There's about 700 no hookup CG's, most in forests, in my state alone and another couple thousand with hookups where no alternative power source is needed. We've been RVing now for 50 years this year and have been in all 49 states you can drive to and Canada many times in all seasons and the needs for comfortable RV'ing are so different. What works fine in one area is useless in another.
A superb CC LB 4X4, GM HD Diesel, airbags, Rancho's, lots more
Lance Legend TC 11' 4", loaded including 3400 PP generator and my deluxe 2' X 7' rear porch
29 ft Carriage Carri-lite 5'er - a specially built gem
A like new '07 Sunline Solaris 26' TT
I've been on RV.Net for a few years now and never paid that muct attention to this sub-froum, what a mistake that has been!
This is an awesome project and something that is near and dear to my heart as I too have elected to do a ground up build of my RV (TH).
I can relate to the time and effort one has to take for a project of this nature. It's been amazing as I've just read through this entire thread of how common my build has been to yours.
I elected to use FRP riveted for the exterior siding but besides that, all else is pretty much the same. Nova Kool, Magnum, R-Max insulation, I'd say Morningstar MPPT solar charge controller.....
I'll stay tuned into this thread now I know it's here!
Awesome job!....you're obviously one heck of a craftsman!
Much respect,
Cee
Here's a link to my project BoonHauler Project
* This post was edited 02/16/14 09:22pm by BoonHauler *
05 RAM 3500 CTD 4x4 Q/C Laramie DRW/NV5600/3.73, B&W Gooseneck, MaxBrake, PacBrake PRXB, Brite Box Fogster, BD steering Box Brace
2014 BoonHauler 3614
How wide did you end up making your toyhauler? Our camper is 100.5 inches (not counting any awnings we might add).
I may pester you on some info about your ramp door when we get the main camper done and start on the toy/garage pod. I want a decent incline for loading the snowmobiles and may go with the extra folding section on the ramp like you did.
I went for the legal limit of 102" in width. Due to some shrinkage from the welding I'm just under that.
As for the ramp by all means, if I can help please feel free to ask and I'll be more than willing to offer my two cents.
I noticed that the ramp's incline was rather steep. I was up against the same issue due to the high ground clearance I built into my rig so the fold out leaf took care of that problem.
I also noted you've up'd the size of your fridge to the RFU 9000 IIRC. I was headed that way myself until I thought things through a little further and shifted gears to a seperate Refrig/Freezer stacked over each other. I'll now be using the R5812 fridge (no freezer model) and the F5810 freezer. I decided the much larger freezer would much better suit my boondocker mentality.
The one thing I would offer right now in your build logic would be to go 24VDC for your electrical system. That's the one thing I'd change right away if I had the chance but I'm already too far down the 12VDC road to change.
That new Magnum hybrid inverter looks like the way to roll as well but I've yet to sit down and take a real hard look at it. Going 24VDC is less money in the long run as all the wire sizes are smaller and much easier to deal with voltage drop issues.
I'd also point out that Thin-Lite has a complete line of fully dimable LED light fixtures now and that's the way I'll be rolling.
What window mfg. have you decided to roll with?...and how thick will the overall wall assembly be?
Like I said, awesome job!!...and I'll stay tuned.
Cee
The folding end on the toy hauler etc is great as I'd spected one to be built on our enclosed vee nosed trailer we had made and so glad I did. Obviously our enclosed trailer's floor is a lot closer to the ground and the inside height of the trailer is only 6'2" so the extra ramp length is only 18" long approx as I remember. However, it sure changes the incline angle a lot and for the better. It's at home and we are in Florida so I can't look at it right now or take pics. Also, mine is designed for 2,000 lbs capacity. It's thinned (angled) on the end that lays on the ground so there's virtually no bump when driving a wheeled item in. The snowmobiles wouldn't care but we don't have them anymore due to our age and my wife's disability. Had over 30 years of fabulous fun snowmobiling in Michigan and up in Ontario Canada and yes, we sure do miss it.
The reason I wanted the hinged extra ramp length is because we used to have a car hauler trailer I designed and had built to carry a full sized car or pickup behind our Allegro MH's. Had a 70" long folding ramp but was just too steep and the front air dam of our Cadillac would drag before the front wheel started climbing the ramp. Sometimes the bottom of the car would also hit at the top of the ramp. That meant either carrying a 3' X 7' piece of plywood and a 2 X 4 X 7' long spacer support for under the plywood to change the abrupt angle at the end or finding a dip to drop the trailer bed to change the angle. The plywood didn't help the bottom dragging.
So, I designed and welded up a self supporting hinged 48" extension for the existing trailer ramp that I first had welded 6 rectangular tubes 1" X 2" X .187 wall (3 on each side under where the vehicle wheels traveled the ramp. I'd calculated it to have a 6,000 min capacity on the ramp when done. My trailer had a 10,000 lb carrying capacity with a 20' long floor length and weighed 2860 lbs total. Surge brakes and 4 - 245/16/75 "E" Michelin tires with 3042 capacity each. Main ramp end had a 2" X 2" X 1/4" wall folding leg support on the back of the gate to properly support across the extension hinged area. Self storing 5/8" dia spring ball hitch pins made them instantly adjustable for about any gate to ground distance. Hitch pins are your friend and you can get lockable one too!
The ramp gate assembly was very heavy and very stiff when finished even with the mesh ramp floor and it wouldn't twist a bit so to raise and lower it, I bolted a boat trailer winch on the drivers side with vinyl cable rather than rope. Worked slick as can be. Bought a 12V electric winch for it because I'm lazy but never put it on because the hAnd winch worked so good. It had a vee shaped steel lockable storage box approx 3' X 6' x 40" deep in size on the front over part on the tongue to carry stuff and served as a stone shield too. Sold it to our daughter and her hubby and it's used for all kinds of things now.
Cool, we will have to be careful waving at each other when we pass on narrow roads!
We decided 2 days ago to go with a 24V system. It makes so much more sense. For powering the 12V furnace fan, water heater control, led lights, and random 12V accessories, I am going to either use a 24V to 12V DC-DC or I will use a battery equalizer like the Vanner 65-60 (which sort of bank switches between the series connected batteries and gives you 12V). The Vanner is about 2x the price of an equivalent amperage DC-DC. We are definitely going with the Magnum 24V input 4000 watt output hybrid inverter with 125 amp battery charger and generator sharing capability. Total overkill but +1 on cool factor.
I built my own LED fixtures by hacking home LED lighting, tossing the electronics, and putting in potted DC-DC converters. They work extremely well and I have set the current draw and light level exactly where I want.
The walls are 2 inches thick, with polyisocyanurate insulation (exact stuff you used). We have had the windows on hand for months...we had them custom made by easyrvwindows (Atwood mobile products). Double pane, openable..pretty nice and not too expensive.
Wow, that's a big inverter and might be a little overkill. I was just over at Northern Arizona Wind & Sun's forum site doing a little research and ran into your posts, funny, great minds think alike....
![[emoticon]](http://www.coastresorts.com/sharedcontent/cfb/images/biggrin.gif "biggrin")
I'd have to say you've got a little delimma on your hands with the battery bank. It will be interesting to see how you'll go about solving that issue. Personally, I think you're a little light on the battery bank size especially for the size array and loads your planning but I'm far from an expert in this field.
Be on the lookout for CrazyCooter on this forum, Tony has a big PV system on his rig and is a top-notch fabricator with a lot of knowledge. If you can get him to chime in it would be a real plus in your favor.
Balancing of the battery bank was a huge issue with me and I took every effort to make that right with very good results. The bank is balanced prefectly. I went with 260 AH Crown 6VDC GC2's. That's another thing I'd change if I had it to do again but again, I'd be up at 24VDC too.
My walls will end up at 3.25" thick when complete and the ceiling will be just over 4". To me, this is one area that needs close attention as if the shell is highly insulated and air tight, the energy inputs for keeping a comfortable enviroment will be minimal. One of the things I'm doing in the living quarters is installing a 'thermal break'. This is due to the highly conductive nature of the metal framing. This will be even a bigger issue on your rig due the conductive properties of the aluminum siding.
This was another reason for the FRP as it's very non-conductive in nature.
I'm rolling with Motion Windows, awesome warranty (lifetime on dual pane) and very competive pricing. I think they're the best in the industry.
I'll be interested in hearing about the space heater as I believe it's the same I'll be using.