When you can't wait 2 years

This would probably be better as a 2/year 24-month post, but I just updated my expense spreadsheet and wanted to share my findings.

Here we are at the "22-month" status. My operating expenses come to $50month and if you factor in the original equipment costs ($4,750) divided over 22 months ($215), it comes to $265/month expenses. In other words, I spent $5,860 over the last 22 months vs $13,200 on an apartment ($500/month rent + $100/month utilities) for 44% savings!

Another fact I like to keep in mind is that all this equipment I've purchased (the van, the solar panels, the generator, etc) is all still in working order and should continue to remain so. So if my situation changed tomorrow (say I got to work from home)I would still have a working camper van and equipment to either use or sell.

Spring Cleaning

Today I did some spring cleaning in the van.  I also re-arranged the furniture somewhat, placing the bed at the back of the van.   This works for me, but for taller people, it would be rather cramped.  It's almost too small for me at 5'7.  The width is 66", so I sleep at an angle or with my knees slightly bent.  The one window does give a few more inches for my feet to hang out.

Winter wrap up, oncoming Spring

Since I replaced the battery, my power situation seems to be stable.  However, with some of the warm days, I tried running the air conditioner off of batteries (this is the 9500 BTU air conditioner) and it only runs a few hours.  My watt meter's screen doesn't appear to be turning on, so I'm not sure how much it is drawing.  I also tried running it on "fan only", and that seems to draw the batteries down just as well.    More on this further down.

Some tidbits from Winter:  I bought a heated blanket from Target.  It worked wonderful... for about 3 hours.  I woke up freezing.   Now, these blankets have an auto-shut off for 8 hours that can be reset by turning it off and on again.  That was not the issue.  So I exchanged it for another blanket and that one never turned on in the first place.  This was very frustrating.   I returned that one for cash.

I ordered a Sunbeam heated blanket from Amazon.  This works "ok".  It takes about 20 minutes to heat up, but does remain heated.  However, the blanket seems to only be useful if I foldit up around me (which the instructions warn me against doing).  Otherwise, you don't really feel any warmth from it.  I would say my sleeping bag remains more useful.

What would probably work better would be a mattress pad.  These are designed to be placed under blankets and radiate warmth.  I would love to have one of these setup with a remote control/timer.  Say at 5:50am it turns on and starts heating up.  I would get out there by 6:20 and just climb right in to heated goodness.


Finally, today marked a grand entrance into Spring for me with temperatures outside bordering around 90F.  I had brought the generator back down yesterday, topped it off, and had it ready for today.  It got to 84F by 11am, so I went out, started up the generator, and fired up the air conditioner.  The temperature started dropping nicely and I actually got cold enough to put a blanket on.  Sweet, sweet, air conditioned bliss.

Battery replaced

Battery D has been completely replaced now.  I ended up spending $49.77 for the replacement.  The warranty is 24-months, but the warranty is really just a pro-rating.  I will have to add that cost to my spreadsheet.

The battery pack held 24 volts overnight.  This morning, I ran the electric heater for a bit, which took it down to 23 volts.  I was expecting it to recharge that almost completely during the day while I slept.  It did not.  The reason is rather simple though -- the panel was covered in snow. 

I also managed to clean out the front and back of the van today.  I never let it get very messy, but there was some stuff strewn about under the bed and in one of the baskets.  Some bread I've been meaning to throw out for several months, things like that.  Since it's nice and cold, nothing was creating a stink, just going bad.

I also finished off another propane tank today.  I have been using the heater a lot more this winter than last.  I usually like to get it up to 50F before turning it off.  That takes about 30 minutes from 25F.  However, I realized that I could avoid that by purchasing a heated blanket.  Last winter, I didn't really have the power (except via generator) to run an electric blanket, but this year I can just plug one in and sleep under it.  It would also be nice just to heat up the sleeping bag before I crawl in.  So that's on my list for this weekend.

Nice weather

Today had some amazingly nice winter weather.  The temperature was at least 45 all day and I did not need to run the heat for anything.  I also managed to sleep till 4pm, which was sweet.

I dropped my battery off on Thursday, and they were supposed to call me either that day or Friday, but as of today, there is still no return call.  They were going to attempt to recondition it, so I hope that takes.  If that, hopefully they can pro-rate me the cost of a new battery.

Battery D is dead, probably.

I gained access to a decent battery charger last night and let the battery.  I let it charge at 10A and when I checked on it a few hours later, it dislayed F01.  I looked this up and it means "F01 Internal Shorted Cell Battery - Cannot be charged. Have battery checked by certified auto service center."  

So this week, I'm going to drop that battery off at the vendor and see if they can get it working.  Apparently, this is one of the first two batteries I got in Oct of 2009.  It's been going bad all summer, so hopefully I can get them to replace it if need be. 

On another note, I finally finished up the leftover tank of propanee from last year.  Yesterday and today I've been running the propane heater quite a bit.  Yesterday I ran it for over an hour during the day, and this morning I let it run for 30 minutes as it warmed the van from 25F to 50F.  So a new canister is in and I have 3 remaining.

Battery Saga continues

In my previous post, I commented on battery C dragging down the system. Since then, I recharged battery C and put it back into the array. For the first day or two, things were fine. However, when I returned the next week, the entire array was again reading 19V. I ran the battery equalizer function on the charge controller and this failed to resolve the issue.

I didn't do anything else with it right away, and then I went on vacation. Today however, I went ahead and investigated the batteries again. A&B had 12V while C&D had 7V. As a test, I decided to rotate the batteries, moving battery C to A's spot and battery A to C's spot. B & C paired together nicely, but when I went to pair A & D together, I got sparkage. A little sparkage isn't an issue, so I held the wire on. The contact area maintained an electric glow and after a few seconds, battery D began bubbling.

Now, I then tested each battery individually and found D holding at 7V while C had 11V. I also checked the specific gravity and D shows as being "fair" with some wells being "good". I don't like the sound of bubbling battery acid in my van, so I am going to take D home and charge it with the trickle charger. Alternatively, I might just take it to the store I got it from and ask them to check it out.

In the mean time, I connected two of my good batteries in series. At least this way, I have enough power to run the inverter because it will shut off if the voltage dips below 19V and 19V is about the maximum I can get out my system with the bad battery in.