Days 23, 24 - Casa Grande, AZ

Monday - This is one of the reasons why I like RV parks. Or at least the ones with pools. And we are going to be in them for a while. After here, we will be staying in Needles, CA, through the holidays. This particular park has two pools but only one of them has a jacuzzi. It’s warm enough at 64°F and no wind which really does make a difference.

I finally got around to checking the propane. According to the gauge on the tank, we have ⅜ of a tank. So we used around 5/16th of a tank for the week in Quartzite. That would be about $30 of propane given how much we used the furnace, that’s not too bad. We filled with diesel after leaving Quartzsite having driven 58 miles. I was only able to get 14 gallons of diesel into the tank.

Tuesday - I went to the pool and from the comfort of the jacuzzi, watched a volleyball game already in progress. The only “project” was routing the audio from the front TV to the DVD player. Actually, it turned out to be an five SVD changer with an AM/FM receiver. The video-2 input had an optical audio input matching the optical audio output on the TV. Now, I may need to reinstall the sub-woofer which we removed a few months back...

Day 22 - Casa Grande, AZ

We are back in Casa Grande and will be here for a couple of weeks. I was concerned about driving through Phoenix at the end of a holiday weekend. Phoenix turned out to be a non-issue primarily since I no longer needed to be concerned about the engine running hot. There was a terrible accident between Phoenix and Casa Grande involving at least six vehicles including a large horse trailer. Several really munched up vehicles by the time we went by. Traffic was tied up for over ten miles in both directions.

We are here again as it’s convenient. Bridget will be flying back to Fairbanks for several days and not having to move during that time is convenient. This is an Encore park which we have access to as we have the Trails Collection option with our Thousand Trails. I’m looking forward to the pool and jacuzzi again!

Day 21 - Quartzsite, AZ

I can’t believe that it’s already been three weeks since I was in Fairbanks. The days seem to pass quickly.

Last night, the temperature dropped into the high 30s (°F) and we ran both furnaces. The thermostats set to 66°F. At 8:30 in the morning, the SOC was at 60% and we had used 178 amp-hours from the batteries. RV furnaces do use a lot of power to operate the blower. One popular solution are the catalytic propane heaters. Most are radiant heaters and a few have fans to help circulate the heat. Since we have the animals loose, running something with an open flame doesn’t seem to be a good idea. More useable battery capacity may be a better option.

I had mentioned in yesterday’s post that we visited with a couple whom we had met in Alaska. He was upgrading his batteries from six six-volt Trojan T-105 golf cart batteries to three 12-volt LiFePO₄ batteries. The 20-hour capacity of the 6 volt T-105 is 225ah so, when they were new, 675ah @12 vdc or 337ah useable for the bank of six batteries. The three LiFePO₄ batteries have a total and useable capacity of 300ah. But going from 372lbs to under 90lbs is a huge weight savings. He is currently using a MorningStar Tristar MPPT solar charge controller and with custom programming, it can be used for these batteries.

At some point, I’m thinking that at least three LiFePO₄ batteries may be a step in the right direction given our consumption. Especially if the Magnum inverter/charger can be configured appropriately. The real question is before or after solar...

Day 20 - Quartzsite, AZ

If I said that I wasn’t nervous I’d be lying. Just a little earlier, the NWS put out a high wind alert with gusts up to 50mph. We did get some gusty winds but I think it was closer to 30mph. I did pull in all the slides and I was tempted to pull up the jacks and move closer to the highway. But Bridget doesn’t seem to be the least bit concerned.

About 8:30pm I went out and looked at the dry wash. It was far from dry and my stress level went up. Bridget humored me and I moved the coach away from the creek to slightly higher ground. To me, just being away from the wash was sufficient. Stress level down it was time for pumpkin pie and vanilla ice cream...

The next morning was clear (and cold!) as the rain had ended around 4am. Last night, we had just moved to a somewhat flat spot but it was not very good and kind of close to some others. We moved back to where we were before as there was no more rain in the forecast. Based on the wet ground in the wash, it had filled up maybe ¾ of the way. I’m still glad we moved especially since it was easy as I already had all of the slides in due to the wind forecast. simply retract the jacks and go.

The battery bank was at 55% this morning. I had both furnaces running plus the inverter. It was only at 85% yesterday evening so we used about 30% of the capacity or about 130 amp-hours. Based on our power usage over the last couple of days, we would need to recover about 220 amp-hours per day. If we assume 5 hours of useable sun at this time of year, we would need a minimum of 570 watts of solar panels. And given the lower sun angle and cloudy days, I’m going to stick with my initial guesstimate of 1000 watts of solar. In multiples two panels. The ones high on the list are 210watt panels for $189. A pretty good price compared to the 5th wheel installation.

This morning, we drove up to the casino in Parker, AZ, to meet Camper Van Kevin. We have been watching his YouTube channel for a while. He travels around the country with his 3 dogs in a class A motor home with a Honda dirt bike on the back. Pretty entertaining videos.

This afternoon we visited with Chip and Ruth whom we previously met at the campout at Eklutna Lake last 4th of July.

Since we were having leftovers today, I had the generator running for a couple of hours this evening. As a result, the charger actually switched to float mode. This was sensed by the Victron battery monitor and it did a synchronization as to what was fully charged. The SOC jumped from 88% to 100%.