Boondocking in TM

This summer I plan to go out west to Colorado and Utah. We plan on doing some boondocking and would like some help. I use a CPAP system for breathing at night that is rated at 36 watts. I would like to know the best setup to avoid any problems of loss of power during the night. I do have an inverter and only one 12 volt battery. I am willing to add another battery if necessary. I was wondering how long the battery would last.....any information would be appreciated

Is the 12 volt battery that you referred to your TM trailer's primary battery? Or is it a battery dedicated for use with your CPAP device? Why do you want to use an inefficient inverter? Can't your CPAP device be powered directly by a 12 volt battery?

A typical small 12 volt deep-cycle battery (not lightweight at about 25 lb.) may have a 20 ampere-hour rating of 33 amp-hr when fully charged. If your CPAP device draws 3 amperes of current at 12 volts (3 amp. multiplied by 12 volts = 36 volt-amp. or 36 watts), then this size of battery will run your CPAP device for approximately 11 hours (33 amp.-hr. divided by 3 amp. = 11 hours). If you use your CPAP device because of obstructive sleep apnea, you might consider it essential to have a battery dedicated to the device when you're boondocking. ??? ???

One of the electrical engineers who participates on this forum may have some ideas on how you might hook up a dedicated battery for ease of recharging through your TM's circuitry.

[RockyMtnRay]

As someone who almost exclusively camps boondock style (hookups? What the heck is a hookup? ??? ), I agree with Larry that it's a very good idea to power a life support system device off of another power source besides the TM's house battery.

If you are planning on boondocking in any of the mountainous regions of either CO or UT, you will undoubtedly find the night time temperatures (usually down into the 30s and 40s even in mid-summer) will necessitate the use of the furnace (and don't expect to use a Mr Heater or Heater Buddy as those don't work above 7000 feet). If you also liberally use the lights (typical for people who are used to hookup camping), you'll find the TM's house battery can be drained in just one or two days of camping. Adding a 2nd battery will extend that to maybe 4 days. Adding the power drain of your CPAP to the mix could drain the house battery before even one night is out...and you're going to be in thinner air at higher altitude where the device may be even important.

Of equal importance is the question of how you intend to recharge the battery (ies). Unless you plan to be in a hookups campground every 2nd to 3rd night, you'll need a properly sized solar system to recharge the battery each day. I've found that trying to recharge the TM battery through the 12V line from the Tow Vehicle while traveling is pretty futile, particularly if you are running the TM's fridge on 12 volts while en route. The problem is that a fully discharged house battery will need around 70 amp-hours of charging current to be recharged. If the refer is on 12V, there's only about 5 amps of surplus current available on a typical Tow Vehicle charge line, so it would take around 14 hours of non-stop travel to recharge the house battery. If you have two batteries on your TM, the charge time also doubles.

Thanks for all this information I truly appreciate it. I have a jump start battery and it has a cigarette lighter type female opening. I think Im going to try this after it is fully charged one night before camping and see how long it would last. so what you are saying is that without hookup and carefully using the power, I can get a couple of days out of the 1 12 volt battery.....that may work until I alternate back to full hook up campground. I reallyt want to do the boondocking and find BLM places that are secluded and picturesque......thanks again....If you have any other suggestions, please feel free to post.

George

[RockyMtnRay]

Thanks for all this information I truly appreciate it. I have a jump start battery and it has a cigarette lighter type female opening. I think Im going to try this after it is fully charged one night before camping and see how long it would last. so what you are saying is that without hookup and carefully using the power, I can get a couple of days out of the 1 12 volt battery.....that may work until I alternate back to full hook up campground. I reallyt want to do the boondocking and find BLM places that are secluded and picturesque......thanks again....If you have any other suggestions, please feel free to post.

George

Most welcome there George. Yeah, one of those jump-start thingies might do the job...some do have decent sized (20 to 30 amp-hour) gel cells inside. But be sure to do a full duration test (like 8 hours during the day when you can monitor it) before you depend on it. If the internal battery is aged...or simply not large enough...it could peter out on you after only 3 to 5 hours.

As for the duration of the house battery in a TM, yes it's possible to get 2 or even 3 days power out of one. But you've got to be really frugal with the lights and water pump, and not use the furnace at all. Furthermore, the battery needs to be brand new (or nearly so) and have never been majorly (over 80%) discharged. I was able to get 3 full days out of my TM's Grp 27 battery its first year, doubt if I could go much over 2 days now because of age and a couple of deeeeep discharges. But no biggie for me now that I have solar to recharge each day.

As for boondocking, you really want to be looking more toward Forest Service than BLM if you want secluded and picturesque in Colorado. BLM lands, for the most part are the wide open range lands sans trees. Any trees. For boondock camping in Colorado, the very best guide book you can get is Colorado Campgrounds: The 100 Best and All the Rest. Not a single commercial campground in the book...but his assessment of Forest Service/State Park/National Park/BLM camprounds is absolutely spot-on. This is my camping bible.

Hi Grkman1,

No mention was made of possibly using a small portable AC generator, either to power the CPAP or charge the batteries after using them for the night.

I use both a CPAP and an oxygen concentrator at 2 liters/min when I sleep. My wife does not use a CPAP, but requires oxygen at night. We're both in our 70's and have backcountry-camped in many places in the West. There is no doubt that the needs for medical equipment somewhat crimps ones style in boondocking. However, with planning, it can be done.

I just checked the power requirements of the CPAP plus the oxygen concentrator at under 450 watts with a kill-a-watt meter. My CPAP alone pulled less than 30 watts.

My solution was to purchase a Honda EU2000i generator. These are light weight and spark-arrested for use in backcountry camping. The maximum output is 2000 watts, but the rated steady-state output is 1600 watts. The generator will run 15 hours on one tank of gas (1 gal.) at 1/4 load of 400 watts. It gets me through a night of sleep at 450 watts very nicely with one tank. The EU2000i is fairly quiet and doesn't make much more noise than our medical equipment is already producing. Besides, one of the advantages of boondocking is that one can camp off alone where there is no one else to bother.

The kill-a-watt meter is a nice little device to track watts output. I got mine from The Repair-Clinic on the web. You can look at it at http://www.repairclinic.com/0038.asp?AccCatID=10
It costs $40 and is very convenient to verify power usuage.

Relative to Ray's recommendation for camping in the US National Forests, I concur enthusiastically. Many National Forests permit non-campground camping at any location within 100 feet of a US Forest Service marked road. The Pole Mountain division of the Medicine Bow National Forest, which I frequent a lot in my recreational activities, allow this. This is real boondocking, often with no one anywhere near your site.

However, BLM has its advantages also. Enjoyment of the semi-arid, sagebrush covered desolation is an acquired taste. Besides, there are often opportunities for outdoor activities like rockhounding, ATV riding, reservoir fishing, etc. that are more crowded and less available in the forests.

My work has taken me all over Wyoming during the last 34 years, and I can attest to coming upon "little pocket wildernesses" of juniper trees overlooking a huge panorama of empty wild country that was a real pleasure to camp in. Sometimes, the local rancher will drop in and share a cup of coffee and swap local area news for a little company and break in routine.

A BLM area that I enjoy rockhounding is near Jeffry City and Sweetwater Junction in central Wyoming on "Bison Basin Road". The "Oregon Trail" runs through here, and one can camp back in the BLM isolation along the trail, and imagine the pioneers struggling along in the worn tracks 10 to 15 miles a day on their way to Fort Bridger and Westward.

Besides, the historical interest, one can hunt for jade "slicks" or "float" among the sagebrush. It takes quite a bit of hunting to find the jade, but agate is all over the place. There are also areas of petrified wood and some invertebrate fossiles. And you have many square miles of area all to yourself.

I am sure that you will enjoy boondocking and will find a way to manage your medical requirements.

Best Wishes,
WyomingRockHound

[mjlaupp]

??? BLM ???

BLM stands for Bureau of Land Management.

Best Wishes,
WyomingRockHound

[RockyMtnRay]

Errr, um, I figure I better toss in some WY/CO differences so there aren't any unpleasant surprises for George when he arrives in Colorado thinking he'll find the wide open and relatively unfettered camping opportunities that WyomingRockHound mentions above.

First of all, I have to say that I envy WRH his camping situation. Though Colorado and Wyoming aren't very different in size, they are very, very different in population density. In the 2000 census, WY had just under half a million folks or about 6 people per square mile. In 2000, CO had over 4.3 million folks (and was growing at about 100,000 people per year) for a density of 42 people per square mile. About 3.3 million of those Coloradans are suburbanites who live in the 100 mile stretch along the Front Range between Ft Collins and Colorado Springs. On any given summer weekend, about 20 to 30 percent (or about 1 million people) head into the mountains for recreation.

When combined with Colorado's mountainous terrain, that population density means there just aren't very many wide open spaces with picturesque views where camping can be done at will. Most of the National Forests here don't allow "dispersed camping" along roads (if you can even find a suitable place to pull off the road to camp with a trailer) and few, if any, ranchers/private landowners will allow camping on their land. There have just been too many cases of abuse by the swarms of city dwellers/suburbanites that hit every weekend. So, if you're going to camp with your TrailManor in Colorado, you should be planning to do it in a official campground. It may be a primitive campground sans any hookups but it will be a designated campground with marked camping sites. (I can think of only a couple of campgrounds in the entire state where you camp anywhere within the campground boundaries).

As for generator use, another aspect of the high population/heavy use is that most Forest Service/State Park campgrounds in CO are reservation only (with a small number of first-come, first-served sites). Certainly almost all within a 100 mile radius of either Denver or Colorado Springs are reservation only. That means campground hosts and hosts mean there will be strictly enforced "quiet hours" between 10 pm and 6 am. During "quiet hours", generator use is explicitly forbidden. Some campgrounds prohibit generator use until 8 am. I suppose you might be able to get permission from the host to run a quiet generator like the Honda EU series to run medical equipment, but it will take some negotiating/explaining. And you can definitely count on some hostile looks from the other campers in the morning.

I've seen a lot of hostility toward people who use generators...pointed stares, rude remarks, etc. Last fall someone had a fairly quiet generator in a crowded RMNP campground; when he shut it off after about 3 hours of use I'd guess that 6 or 7 people shouted "THANK YOU" (in a pretty sarcastic tone). That's why I went solar...it charges the battery about as fast as a generator does but doesn't engender hostility from other campers.

Hi Ray,

You points about lack of uncrowded camping sites near urban areas are well taken. I guess I presumed that if a person is on vacation, they can select their itinerary to stay away from population centers. As I recall, there are areas up near Dinosaur National Monument and the oil shale country of Colorado that are pretty empty of people. Also, one can find locations on the Western Slope and down West of Trinidad in the Sangre de Cristo mountains, as long as you stay away from local concentrations of population.

It probably comes down to what activities are desired for recreation. If some aspect of urban life is involved, then crowds are probably almost unavoidable.

However, my interests have mostly been in the opposite direction. I remember many years ago, camping one night at the Grand Tetons in the summer and being very dismayed by the teeming crowds of people and the traffic jams. The next night, we moved about 20-30 miles south into a National Forest campground, and found only one other camper present, over a hill and out of sight. The contrast with the Tetons, just a short distance away, was dramatic. Thereafter, I resolved to avoid the National Parks and Monuments and their tourist attractions, and haven't been back since, except well off season.

Of course, your interests have to be low key and somewhat offcenter from the popular choices. I enjoy immersing myself in the local natural history. birds, plants, animals, etc. I could camp in an isolated vacant lot and enjoy the insects and little critters crawling through the weeds. Even my rockhounding is not the popular lapidary type, but is related to the Japanese suiseki or viewing stones. There, one searchs for hand-sized rocks with sculptural shapes that make one think of distant mountain scenes or other objects. (See http://www.naturestones.com/
for examples.) Then too, as an academic geologist, my past professional activities have guided me to the more isolated and desolate locations.

I guess my point is, that if George and family are on vacation, and their interests and time constraints permit it, it is possible to plan the trip so as to find isolated areas for boondocking. It takes some effort, and certainly these type of sites are rare on the Eastern slope of Colorado. But the rest of Colorado has some potential.

By the way, Ray, why don't you pack up your mountain bike and come up to Laramie when the weather gets good. There are many nice biking trails east of town, and I would be glad to show you some nice camping sites. Give me an email if you want to do this. Currently, many of the trails are snow packed and being used for cross-country skiing. However, even now, I know some area on the Cheyenne side of the forest, in the direction of Kurt Gowdy State Park, that are largely clear of snow.

George, if you come through Southeastern Wyoming on your vacation, send me an email also, and I'll steer you to some very nice boondocking areas near here.

My email is [email protected]

Best Wishes,
WyomingRockHound