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Boondocking Tips for Entegra Owners (Quartzsite) — 9 Comments

  1. Awesome tips, we have a 2015 Aspire with 1600 watts of solar and 900AH of AGM Lifeline batteries setup for boondocking. The country fill idea is one we use often, never have seen anyone else document it so well. Great article!

    • Thanks! WOW, 1600 watts!!! I would be VERY interested to hear more about that, what brand/model panels you used and how you arranged them! Thanks for sharing!!!

  2. Pingback: Quartzsite – Our First Long Term Boondocking Experience – My Quantum Discovery

  3. Hi, have you looked at wind vanes for the RV?
    Any thoughts? Seems more reasonable than solar but just looking at it.
    Not sure if a 2017 Aspire is in the cards but I sure like the set up. Wish it had a Vega Touch but being able to boon dock for extended time w/o running genny all the time is the goal.
    Thanks

    • Hi Tom, wind is a potentially great option, especially out west. We saw a few rigs at Quartzsite this past winter with them. We do have some experience with them from the marine side. Let’s just say if you picked up a mooring or anchored up wind of me and had a wind generator I’d be looking to move somewhere else. The noise can be really annoying, although supposedly there have been some notable improvements in blade design lately. Another issue is vibration noises transmitting through the rig, at least on boats, but if attached to an RV it would probably be the same deal. Probably why we saw a few setups at Quartzsite that were isolated from the rig. There are also some electrical things that might need to be done differently depending on the windmill, they must be controlled in strong winds or they will self destruct and if the batteries get full, usually you need a “diversion load” of some sort. Finally solar can be on your roof and just silently working all the time, a wind setup would need to be deployed when you are not moving and stored somewhere when you are. Not that it isn’t a potential good option, you just need to think about some of the details and if it would work for you. I’ve always thought having both solar and wind would provide an ideal stream of off grid energy.

  4. Thanks for the great article! We are getting ready to head out on our first long trip in our 2015 Entegra Anthem – a 10 week trip through South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana and Wyoming. Although we have many reserved sites with full hookups and some with electric only there are a few state parks (e.g. Makoshika, Montana) and national parks (e.g. Teddy Roosevelt National Park) that have no hook-ups where I would like to stay. Worried that it may be too hot to go without AC so still figuring that out.

    • Petrina, congrats on the coach and hope you have a fun and fabulous time on your trip. The itinerary sounds awesome! It sounds like you have planned well, but yes if it’s hot and no shore power that either means doing some sweating, or some long generator run times – best to arrive with a full tank of fuel, assume your 12.5KW genset will consume about 0.7 gals/hour at half load and 1.3 gals/hour at full load (Onan QD spec sheet). We have the 10KW genset and I think we burned thru about 30 gallons in 8 days of dry camping and that was without running any AC – just battery charging time.

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