RV Life & Technical Details

Preparing for RV Life:

Full-time RV living can be a wonderful way to live and travel, visit interesting places and family, follow the weather to avoid excesses in heat or cold. It can be a very economical lifestyle … or expensive, depending on how you approach it.

What RV should I buy?

This is a topic that is the subject of tremendous debate.

If you have not yet purchased a rig, take time to think about your lives together, what you like to do inside, what you want to do outside,

BOONDOCKING

First, boondocking means different things to different people. For some it is any “dry camping” whether in a Walmart or Casino parking lot or the middle of the Mojave Desert. And most of the principles are the same, so let’s carry on…

What does it take to “live off of the grid”?

TRUCK CAPACITIES:

We did a significant amount of research before purchasing our 2011 Silverado 3500 Dually.  As I reviewed the RVing forums (thanks to all the posters from IRV2 and ESCAPEES Forums) & analyzed the truck manufacturers specifications, I found that the trailer weight one can actually tow (at least for a 5th wheel RV like ours) is SIGNIFICANTLY different than the towing capacities the manufacturers like to toss around.   — More …

COMPOSTING TOILET:

Like other major endeavors with the 5th wheel, we tried to do our research.  Wanting to be able to function “off-the-grid” for periods of time, preferring to stay at National Parks, National Forest land, or Bureau of Land Management land, we needed an alternative to sewer hook-ups and dumping the “black tank” (a nasty & potentially messy job, at best).

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SOLAR POWER PLAN:

Since we want to be able to operate “off-the-grid” for periods of time, one of the KEY components of that plan is adding Solar Power to the trailer.

After much review of recommendations from various forum sources, especially from Jack Mayer’s excellent website (http://jackdanmayer.com/rv_electrical_and_solar.htm), The 12-Volt Side of Life (http://www.marxrv.com/12volt/12volta.htm), and of course Handy Bob’s “The RV Battery Charging Puzzle” (https://handybobsolar.wordpress.com/the-rv-battery-charging-puzzle-2/) we decided to go with …  More …

Our 5th Wheel Trailer – “Lucy”:

We spent months cruising the internet, reading RV forums, checking the reviews and comments, comparing prices on RVT.com and RVTrader.com.  We finally narrowed our search down to the Heartland Bighorn model 3670RL.  We found a 2011 in “nearly new” condition at an attractive price.  So here are the details:   More …

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