Power and Our Home - Puff's View

Hello

I am sure many of us don't think about power and water with regards to how does it enter our home and how do we use it.  It is fairly simple on the RV side with regards to our coach a few exceptions which are our choices.

I already covered the water hose and how to insulate it for the winter time and cold weather.  Should it get below -3c  we and all of our neighbors will turn on the taps in our homes and let the water run.  Now before you get all upset the water usage it is the only practical thing to do so we do not freeze and or blow lines up.

That being said we are off the power side.  In our coach like most others we have a combination of 12volt and 110volt.  The 12v is just like the power from your car's battery, in our case we have the same kind of battery.  Our 12v battery is a little different in that it is designed for use in an RV or boat, in actual fact we have three 12v batteries wired in parallel to give us a super 12v battery.  It is still 12v just a much stronger, longer lasting supply of energy cause we do not want to be discharging our battery all the time.  Now there are many things that work off the 12v in our coach.  We have lights, the water pump ( when not hooked up to city water ), the electric spark for the fridge and the hot water tank and the exhaust fans in the ceiling. I may have missed something or not....LOL.  Our fridge can run on propane or 110v depending on what settings I select, hence the fridge will turn itself on when running on propane just like a everyday fridge however it needs that spark to ignite the propane.  The hot water tank is the same principle.

The 110v in our place is the same once again as the power in your regular homes.  I have an over sized power cord the plugs into our coach and then a box outside ( supplied by the RV park ) and we have power!  Items in our home that require 110v are the TV's, microwave, air conditioner, washer and dryer, ceiling fan and fire place. As you can see nothing on the list is essential.

Should we have a power outage I will still be able to cook ( stove and oven are propane ), Furnace is propane so I will be warm, I will have lights cause they are 12v, I will be able to take a shower ( hot water tank is propane ).  What else does a person need?!  OK we will have to find a laundry mat open and working for some clean undies but I have enough to last a few days...LOL.

Should the outage last more than day or so we have purchased a small generator to help out.  I do not plan on running anything large off the generator as I said it is a small 1500 watts.  I plan to hook up a battery charger which I purchased from our local Canadian Tire, on sale I might add!  The plan is to start the generator up, plug in the charger and hook it up to the batteries.  My power situation will not change, everything will be the same I am just charging the batteries, your car does this automatically while driving I am just using a generator.  I may be able to run something else small but will have to see when the time comes, if it comes!  Now some of you may ask why not just install or start the built in generator.  Well our unit did not come with a generator installed, it is an option and can be done however it is very costly.  My first quote came in around $6,000.00...........a little hard to swallow!!  My small unit was again purchased from Canadian Tire ( NO I do not receive endorsements or work for them..LOL ) at a cost of $180.00 and the battery charge is a heavy duty unit on sale for $59.00, grand total of $239.00 and and extension cord.  Anybody can see the cost savings instantly, yes I will have to get off my but a start it rather than pushing a button inside my coach to start the on board unit but getting off my but will not cost me $5,761.00

Other than a few minor exceptions here and there regarding some difference from coach to bus and smaller units that pretty much covers it.  There were some other options like buying a big enough generator to run the whole coach but then we are talking more money, more weight and taking up more space not to mention there is a whole bunch of other electrical issues when hooking up a larger unit.  Some other day if asked I might elaborate!

From the warm and dry happy Crickit and Puff Coach.........hey C.P.C......not bad!  Oh and BTW, just because I am warm and well feed while the power is out does not mean this is an invitation for all to join me for dinner.  OK, OK, fine......dinner at my place but bring your own towel and shampoo...LOL

Have a great day!