wyleyrabbit
Well-known member
Hi everyone,
We're almost there with buying a 3055RL Bighorn, and we really like camping in the BC Provincial campgrounds which unfortunately don't generally have any hookups, electrical or otherwise.
I'm considering solar panels for the roof, but have been having a hard time doing the necessary "due diligence" on this issue. What I'm particularly having a hard time finding out is how many watts the furnace fan uses, the water pump, the lights, etc. I did some googling and found that the TV uses up to 170 W, and the stereo uses up to 60 W, but aside from that, I'm kind of stuck.
I can see wanting to use some lights for perhaps few hours in the evening, running the furnace on cold nights (and cold, damp days), and would like to be able to use a laptop for a few hours (homework, photo processing, maybe email), and would like to be able to have "movie night" and watch a movie maybe not every night but every two or three nights. Oh, and the water pump will need to do its thing when having showers, washing hands, dishes, etc.
Doing a bit of searching, I found one site that indicated for our usage, we would likely need about 400 Ah of batteries (would that be 4x12V or 8x6V?) and half the roof covered in panels.
Realistically, if I put on two of the 110W panels and had either two or three of the 12V 160Ah batteries, would I be able to do what I need? Keep in mind that we're not in the southern USA, but up here in Canada where the winter days are short and the summer days are long. Generally, I would think that our off-season camping would be in a campground close by that has full hookup and the boon-docking in the provincial campgrounds would be mainly spring, summer, and fall.
I guess I'd also need an inverter, but am not sure if I need to have a "pure sine wave" inverter or can get by with one of the cheaper "modified sine wave" inverters.
Any thoughts or advice?
We're almost there with buying a 3055RL Bighorn, and we really like camping in the BC Provincial campgrounds which unfortunately don't generally have any hookups, electrical or otherwise.
I'm considering solar panels for the roof, but have been having a hard time doing the necessary "due diligence" on this issue. What I'm particularly having a hard time finding out is how many watts the furnace fan uses, the water pump, the lights, etc. I did some googling and found that the TV uses up to 170 W, and the stereo uses up to 60 W, but aside from that, I'm kind of stuck.
I can see wanting to use some lights for perhaps few hours in the evening, running the furnace on cold nights (and cold, damp days), and would like to be able to use a laptop for a few hours (homework, photo processing, maybe email), and would like to be able to have "movie night" and watch a movie maybe not every night but every two or three nights. Oh, and the water pump will need to do its thing when having showers, washing hands, dishes, etc.
Doing a bit of searching, I found one site that indicated for our usage, we would likely need about 400 Ah of batteries (would that be 4x12V or 8x6V?) and half the roof covered in panels.
Realistically, if I put on two of the 110W panels and had either two or three of the 12V 160Ah batteries, would I be able to do what I need? Keep in mind that we're not in the southern USA, but up here in Canada where the winter days are short and the summer days are long. Generally, I would think that our off-season camping would be in a campground close by that has full hookup and the boon-docking in the provincial campgrounds would be mainly spring, summer, and fall.
I guess I'd also need an inverter, but am not sure if I need to have a "pure sine wave" inverter or can get by with one of the cheaper "modified sine wave" inverters.
Any thoughts or advice?
