Casita build, solar/electrical help.

[krebsatm02]

I'm going to feel like an ************** for doing this, but I don't have the time to fully research all of this. I didn't anticipate completely rebuilding the floor of our casita, so I'm looking for advice and suggestions. I'm already lifting it and building a new frame for it, so I'm in a time crunch. Wife and I depart Sept 18th on a 2.5-3 week trip from TX, through NM, CO, UT WY ID and back to Texas. Tow vehicle is a 2016 Toyota 4runner, hopefully I don't kill the transmission. We'll have a mixture of camping on BLM/National forest for a few nights and then at an RV park for a night. I have a Honda EU2000, but I'm trying to minimize weight as I'm concerned about towing on grades in the mountains, so I want to leave it at home.

Electrical needs: I have a National Luna 52L fridge on the way, I'm guessing 1.5-2 amps per hour. Other consumption will be water pump, lights at night, charge phone, maybe camera. If it's hot, the fan, but I don't anticipate needing it. For this trip I don't want an inverter as I don't think I need/want to run anything 120v while camping. What am I missing? If I run a heater, it will be a Mr. Heater without a fan, hopefully we don't die.

A few hours of research has led me to 6V GC2 golf cart batteries as the best bang for your buck. I know they are heavy... I'm planning on two of them.

I know that mountains will kill the available light, but not sure how much? How much wattage do I need 200-300 watts? I hope someone has experience with this that has similar electrical loads. We'll be in Silverton, Moab/Arches area, Yellowstone, etc.. I should have plenty of real estate on top of casita for panels. Suggestions on brand of panels?

Controller will a Victron of appropriate specs for amount of panels.

Anyone have a suggestion for a converter/charger? Possibly a Progressive Dynamics? We don't have a ton a 120v needs. 8000BTU AC, small microwave, a couple of plugs. Previous converter had 2 15 amp circuits which seemed adequate.

If we got in an "emergency" and fridge was close to low voltage, we could charge with 4Runner? I could install Anderson style plugs on both Casita and 4runner with heavy gauge wire?

Help, product selection, advice, hey your *edited* is greatly appreciated. Thanks - Doug

 

[trae]

You say you don’t need an inverter for 120 and then talk about ac and a microwave. Which is if?

A good starting point is to determine your daily power consumption to base your battery bank decision on. The amount of solar will be derived from that.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[krebsatm02]

You say you don’t need an inverter for 120 and then talk about ac and a microwave. Which is if?

I'll only use the 120v when I have shore power.

 

[Buddha.]

You could run 2awg wires back to the trailer from your tow vehicle, I did. I run it to a 40A Renogy dc-dc charger that’s in the trailer, that’s not completely necessary though. I also have 2 6v GC batteries. My travel trailer is much bigger than yours but I don't have much electrical load, unless it's cold out then the high draw furnace fan dictates how often I plug into the truck.

I would run 200w to 400w of solar panels. I'd use the tow vehicle to bulk charge the batteries until they batteries stop taking a big charge and then let the solar panels trickle charge them full.

Are you changing out the converter/charger and 120v panel? Why?

As for killing the transmission I'd add some kind of trans temp gauge if you don't have one, and a bigger trans cooler if you see the temp is too high. Heat kills transmissions.

 

[Martinjmpr]

So we live in Colorado and we camp with a trailer in more-or-less the same class as your Casita, although ours is a big bigger and heavier (R-Pod 179.)

We do about 50/50 camping at electrical and non-electrical sites.

We do not own, nor have we ever used, a generator. And we camp from April through November.

We have 2 x 6v golf cart batteries that I bought in 2017 (when we had our T@B Clamshell.) They work great for everything we need. Trailer interior lights are all LEDs and have a very low draw.

You say you have a NL fridge - that's in the 4runner, right? Your Casita should have a 2 way (120vAC/Propane) absorption fridge unless you took it out. Our Pod has a 3 way absorption fridge (will also word 12v off the battery but we ONLY do that when it's hooked to the truck and we are traveling.) If you're concerned about running down the 4runner's battery, you could leave the NL at home and just use the 2 way in the Casita.

We absolutely LOVE having a propane fridge. It uses hardly any propane and keeps our food nice and cold. Our previous T@B only had a compressor fridge (12v/120v) and that meant when we were camping at a site with no electrical, we couldn't use it.

For off-grid power, we have one folding 100W solar panel and it works great at keeping the 2 x 6v batteries fully charged when we camp. I think the lowest I've ever seen them go is maybe 85% (according to the display on the solar controller, at least.) Ours is an HQST folding panel I got off of Amazon for maybe $200 about 3 years ago.

We also have an Indel-B 12v Truck Fridge that rides in our tow vehicle (2018 F-150.) For that one, I decided to bypass the truck's 12v system entirely and built my own 12v power box to run the fridge, and that 12v battery recharges from a Renogy 20A DC-DC charger. If I drive the truck even an hour every day, the battery pack stays fully charged.

And since I'm a "belt and suspenders" kind of guy, I also carry a Lithium 12v jump pack in the truck, just in case.

If you search this sub-board you'll find the writeup on both my 12v power box and my DC-DC charger install.

 

[krebsatm02]

You could run 2awg wires back to the trailer from your tow vehicle, I did. I run it to a Renogy dc-dc charger that’s in the trailer, that’s not completely necessary though.

I might just do one in the front right now incase we need to charge...

Why are you changing out the converter/charger and 120v panel?

It's old, making noise, and I'm tearing everything else up...

As for killing the transmission I'd add some kind of trans temp gauge if you don't have one, and a bigger trans cooler if you see the temp is too high. Heat kills transmissions.

Yeah, I'm going to grab one of those OBDII readers, I think it's a scan gauge. I'm probably going to get a tranny cooler as well. It voids the warranty though.... but not if I take it off.

 

[krebsatm02]

So we live in Colorado and we camp with a trailer in more-or-less the same class as your Casita, although ours is a big bigger and heavier (R-Pod 179.)

We do about 50/50 camping at electrical and non-electrical sites.

We do not own, nor have we ever used, a generator. And we camp from April through November.

We have 2 x 6v golf cart batteries that I bought in 2017 (when we had our T@B Clamshell.) They work great for everything we need. Trailer interior lights are all LEDs and have a very low draw.

You say you have a NL fridge - that's in the 4runner, right? Your Casita should have a 2 way (120vAC/Propane) absorption fridge unless you took it out. Our Pod has a 3 way absorption fridge (will also word 12v off the battery but we ONLY do that when it's hooked to the truck and we are traveling.) If you're concerned about running down the 4runner's battery, you could leave the NL at home and just use the 2 way in the Casita.

The NL fridge is for the Casita. Our 3 way fridge was dieing... I wanted something I could use in multiple scenarios and thought one of these kinds of fridges fit what I wanted.

We absolutely LOVE having a propane fridge. It uses hardly any propane and keeps our food nice and cold. Our previous T@B only had a compressor fridge (12v/120v) and that meant when we were camping at a site with no electrical, we couldn't use it.

For off-grid power, we have one folding 100W solar panel and it works great at keeping the 2 x 6v batteries fully charged when we camp. I think the lowest I've ever seen them go is maybe 85% (according to the display on the solar controller, at least.) Ours is an HQST folding panel I got off of Amazon for maybe $200 about 3 years ago.

We also have an Indel-B 12v Truck Fridge that rides in our tow vehicle (2018 F-150.) For that one, I decided to bypass the truck's 12v system entirely and built my own 12v power box to run the fridge, and that 12v battery recharges from a Renogy 20A DC-DC charger. If I drive the truck even an hour every day, the battery pack stays fully charged.

And since I'm a "belt and suspenders" kind of guy, I also carry a Lithium 12v jump pack in the truck, just in case.

If you search this sub-board you'll find the writeup on both my 12v power box and my DC-DC charger install.

Crap, I replied in the quote, expand it. Thanks for the info. I think I'll check out a DC-DC charger.

 

[Buddha.]

Crap, I replied in the quote, expand it. Thanks for the info. I think I'll check out a DC-DC charger.

You could go without the DC-DC charger if you wanted to save a few dollars, the 2awg cables will put a lot of amps back in your batteries by themselves. The DC-DC charger will keep your batteries a little happier though because you wont have to worry about the voltage drop, and Toyotas don't typically run at a very high voltage anyway(unless you modify something?) so it'll get the batteries from "mostly full" to "full" faster than without a charger.