Boondocking

[jim hol]

I'm thinking if you can afford such a nice trailer as an Ollie I'm sure you could invest in a nice generator for dry camping. Happy camping!

[TZBrown]

Originally Posted by jim hol

I'm thinking if you can afford such a nice trailer as an Ollie I'm sure you could invest in a nice generator for dry camping. Happy camping!

Many folks that enjoy boondocking don't want to listen to the drone and noise of a generator, nor be bothered with fuel cans and such.

If you like the noise, camp in a campground and enjoy the crowds.

The OP is trying to figure out how long without hookups....

We are only restricted by the black tank fill, we can bring additional fresh water in jerry cans if needed. There are many tricks to slowing the fill of blackwater also. Usually 14 days in a spot is average.

Never run out of power with 270W of solar

[trainman]

My idea of Boondocking is spending a night in a Walmart parking lot and then moving on as soon as we can.

trainman

[Defenestrator]

A reasonable general rule of thumb is probably 3-6 gallons of water per person, per day. Probably 2-4 of that goes to the gray tank and 1-3 to the black tank.

Power.. anywhere from 12hrs to 5 days on a charge, probably. Depending on battery size, usage, and whether you have solar. Potentially "infinite" if your needs are minimal and you have lots of solar and good sun. Just a couple LEDs for a few hours a day plus the demand pump? That'll last for days on a charge. Charging your laptop and your phone, running the furnace blower and other fans, etc? Could empty the battery in well under a day.

[Byron Kinnaman]

What does it really take in terms of water and battery. Like I said earlier it depends on what you think your needs are. We can't answer that. I can however tell what I use. First there 2 of us older folks.
The trailer doesn't have an electric water pump only an hand pump. No shower. All lights except for a couple CCFL lights are LED.

If one wants to really stretch things out you must evaluate needs and wants so that you mostly eliminate the wants and concentrate on the needs.


In our case battery usage depends on the time of year and where. We camp year around. I do have a 65Watt solar panel that comes out about every 4 days for a day. The battery will last at least that long with night time temps into the mid 40s Much colder and the solar time has change a bit. The furnace draws a bit so temperature and approx. furnace run time need to taken into consideration. Night temps above 55 I have no idea how I can go without recharging. I think I've gone over 2 weeks a couple times.


Water usage. Most of water we use is for coffee in the morning and bit of drinking water through out the day. We need a lot less than when we were climbing mountains with a 60lb pack and 45lb pack (me 60 wife 45).
There are large, thick, body wipes so you don't really need a shower. Hands are cleaned with baby wipes and waterless hand cleaner. The idea here is to find way to keep clean without using a lot of water.


That's what we do and it works well for us, but not for everybody. Like I said earlier there are needs and wants. The wants will always get you. The needs you deal with. You have to determine which is which.

[Fred762]

we just got home from 2 weeks stint at Button Bay state park in VT..[none of their SPs have water OR electric hookups BTW] plus 4 nights on the road each way from TN and back. We drive 60 mph or less and stop sooner than most I suppose..but we are not in a hurry!!! ;-)

We camped in our 17' Casita Independence, at a site which also had a permanent lean-to, so our 2 kids could join us and "Tent" therein...for a week

We all used the campground bathouse and shower mostly, and thus saved alot of water. We also use wet-wipes for "sponge baths" and hand washing when we can.

WE have power-miser LED lighting and did 98% of coooking on our "outside" free-standing propane stove or the fire. We tend to NOT cook stuff wh needs alot of pans..and when we can we "clean" pans and utensils w wet wipes...so as to NOT put greasy food residue into the gray tank at all.
Ran the frig on internal propane and still used less than one 20 lb bottle ...

we did occsionally run the generator a couple of hours in the AM..but that was mostly messing around w the thing(new). & to run the MW. The rest of the days we hooked up the 160W ZAMP solar panels and charged batts w them. [It was unexpedly sunny for VT in our experience!! ]
Weather was cooollll at night so we didn't need to run the AC at all for the whole 2 weeks while at Button Bay, tho we used the Max-aire fan alot in the daytimes.

WE did ok w water mainly bks we tend to not use too much. I guess son and I hauled a total of 25 extra gallons of water from a " water point"for the whole 2 weeks. We had to go "dump" tanks one time during the time there.

We are still new to TTing and this was our first attempt at 'docking w/o hookups.

[Borrego Dave]

Sounds like you had a good 1st BD outing Fred, nice.