Our little home away from home

Please feel free to describe your motorhome, campervan or caravan. (make, model, length etc)
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Firegirl54
Posts: 19
Joined: Fri Jul 28, 2017 6:44 pm
Location: South Coast NSW

Our little home away from home

Post by Firegirl54 »

Hi Folks, just joined the forum.
We have a Supreme Off-road 14 ft van, 2007 job, bought off ebay (yes!) about 3 years ago. Great price, but lots of little gremlins to fix.
Had intended to go smaller, and the previous owner assured us it was 13 x 7....must have roughly measured inside..he was a lovely old bloke and it had been his little project. First the towplug wiring was all wrong and immediately blew the brake light and trailer brake fuse in car..oops. He had swapped out the existing 3 way fridge for a two-way Engel, which we preferred, but had hooked it up to some inadequate lighting wires with dodgy connectors. And he had added a 2nd water tank which you could put water into but had no outlet!!! The hand pump had been replaced with a good electric one, but located in the front boot with wires and pipes all over the place. Otherwise it was almost unused, and had spent years in a big carport plugged into 240V.
Gremlins were soon sorted...luckily I had grown up in a very DIY household. My dad was a fitter by trade and his hobby was electronics ( built our first TV from first principles using a 6 inch CRT from an oscilloscope). Some of it must have rubbed off on me, just wish I had paid more attention!
Existing 100Ah AGM battery and 80W solar on roof was OK if you drove each day, but we like to free camp often for many days, so added another 200W solar. That was better, but still stuggled to get full absorption every day. So installed 100Ah Lithium, 4S Sinopoly cells. Victron 100/30 controller (14v absorb, 13.4V "float"), Housepower BMS as safety, victron 700 monitor, kept existing mains charger (Smartcharge 15A, use gel setting 14.2 absorb, set 13.2 float to charge, or as power supply at 13.2 if just connected for a while). New car is a toyota fortuner which drops the voltzge too low to charge at a decent rate, so added a basic 12 to 19v dc dc converter (20A 19V output, $24 ebay) that feeds the Victron controller. Have set the victron to 20A output and this setup provides just that (but rarely needed) Àlso another 200 odd W portable solar (rarely needed unless camped in shade). Not having to get the bats fully charged is great. Took a while mot to worry if under 50% though. Also added 1500W PSW inverter and 600W microwave (hmm, expected about 900W input from its specs, but it pulls over 1100, and 112A from battery). Have not used it a lot when free camped, but seems to work fine, nothing gets more than barely warm, and the lithiums are rated for 300A continuous. Great for that hot chocky before bed.....or quickly thawing out dinner after a long day walking.
Will add some pickies when I get a chance..and work out how!
Cheers, Leslie
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Dot
Posts: 23478
Joined: Fri Nov 23, 2012 6:12 pm
Location: Strathalbyn SA

Re: Our little home away from home

Post by Dot »

Hi and a warm welcome to the forum Leslie, the boys will help with some of those gremlins when they wake up.. :lol: :lol:
Queen of the Banal & OT chatter and proud of it. If it offends you then tough titty titty bang bang.
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dapope
Posts: 2019
Joined: Fri Nov 23, 2012 2:43 pm
Location: N.F.A.

Re: Our little home away from home

Post by dapope »

Good to see you got here Leslie. Enjoy :D
Wobblybox on wheels
Pace Arrow. La de da, property in two continents..
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Firegirl54
Posts: 19
Joined: Fri Jul 28, 2017 6:44 pm
Location: South Coast NSW

Re: Our little home away from home

Post by Firegirl54 »

Thanks Martin, seems to be a friendly and helpful place! :D
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T1 Terry
Posts: 13613
Joined: Fri Nov 23, 2012 3:44 pm
Location: Mannum South Australia by the beautiful Murray River
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Re: Our little home away from home

Post by T1 Terry »

Hi Leslie, we were originally living at Lake Illawarra, almost the start of the south coast of NSW, but we have moved to Mannum SA now so we could afford to buy both a great workshop and a really nice house, couldn't do that in the Wollongong area with the money we had.

Your van set up sounds great and it's great to hear you are comfortable with lithium batteries, a must if you want to comfortably free camp. We still haven't fitted a microwave in our Mazda, but we do have the coffee machine, toaster, induction hot plate, air fryer and milk frother to heat the milk coffee or hot chocolate that all run off the inverter and lithium battery pack. This is the pack with the mix of LYP and LFP cells and has not let us down for the last 3 yrs or so.

T1 Terry
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