Battery Chart

Comfort Castle Location: Rockport, Texas
Adventure Location: Rockport, Texas

Another drizzling grey day here at the paradise called Rockport, Texas. The Truck has not moved today. The OFM has not moved much either.

The cold grey weather is giving the new batts a hard workout. Of course this is good since it lets me know the new batts abilities. Several readers who are looking to set up an electrical system for boondocking are watching my results to help them make decisions on their system size and style. Last night at bedtime the bats were down to 12.15 volts. We are now on day six of grey low solar input days. The old batts made it a day and a half at best. So the new set of batts has really enormously extended my boondocking time to maybe electrically unlimited if some sun shows up on occasion.

Now for those who do not have any idea what all the voltage readings are about here is the chart that the Team uses for battery usage.


My chosen bottom line is 12.0 volts absolute. At 12.06 drastic curtailment of electrical usage will be put into effect. Candle light will be used to save the electricity for things like running the water pump for water and keeping the refrigerator control circuits operating. The Castle’s style of heating does not require any electrical use. If the furnace was used, the seven amp fan motor would eat batts very fast.

It is heartening that even without tilting my panels; some gain is made each day on the batt charge. Tilting would not get me enough solar input to gain a lot on cloudy days but it would help. It is deliberate action on my part to test the set up without tilting in this campground so that if the system bottoms out it is easy to plug into normal 120 volt for charging.

Why not a generator you ask? For two reasons a generator is not in my known future. One is that many places on my bucket list do not allow generator use or only during hours that the walking Team would be out chasing pictures for the blog.

The second is that the decent small generators are all gasoline powered. The Truck is diesel so siphoning some fuel from the fuel tank would do no good. That means a container of gasoline would have to be riding in the bed of the Truck all the time. That is not something that is preferred for this Team from my previous experience carrying gasoline in the back of a truck.

There is no attempt on my part to say that my way is the correct way. It is just my way at this time. So make your own choices and meet me out trying to have tooooo much fun. TheOFM.