Traveling Smart on the Cheap / August 14th, 2017

Traveling Smart while Conserving and Saving

What are some interesting things that we can do to make travel fun without sacrificing things when it comes to our campers.  Well in this Travel Blog I hope to shed some light on a few things YOU the Traveler may have overlooked.  Let`s take a look at some of these things.
As I mentioned in my prior blog post, redesigning your camper to serve you better can be a whole lot of fun depending on how much you enjoy designing and putting in a little elbow grease.  Some things take some serious skills but most don`t and I`ve found that some of the things you may want to do in regards to electronics can be done fairly cheap.  With that being said, all the things you can think of with a camper can be a reality fairly easily.  The smaller the camper the easier it will be and less time consuming of course.
Let`s begin with water.  You typically have three tanks in a camper.  Fresh water tank, black tank and grey tank.  Fresh is obviously for fresh tap water going in and black for toilet and grey for shower and sink.  Hope I got that right.  Well, how many gallons of water do you use flushing your toilet.  I don`t know but I would say with two people about a Gallon or more a day.  You could be using that for an extra long hot shower OR just saving it so you don`t have to fill up all the time.  Here is what I did.
A few months ago I bought a Nature`s Head Composting Toilet.   Now these are not complicated, however you do have to dump them every 3 months or so but it`s a lot less messy than having to empty a black tank.  I mean, come on, who wants to deal with that.  Yuck!   Having a composting toilet means you don`t need to deal with the black tank ever again and that my friends is music to my ears.  
I simply unscrewed the Dometic toilet system that came with the camper, plugged the hole that led directly down to the black tank and boom that part was finished.  Total time to complete that task was about 30 minutes.  Next I have to prepare the install for the Composting Toilet.  I decided to go with building a small 2 in high platform that sits on the bathroom floor where the original toilet was and this enables me to have something between the new toilet and the floor.  This way I move the composting toilet further in the corner and I have more room for using the shower or mirror.  When customizing your camper make sure to think of all the options available to you before you start in.  You just might be able to make it way better than you thought.   Currently I am waiting to put down some tongue and groove flooring that will give a nice glow to the floor and then I will put down the new toilet and other items like table insert in the floor.  
Ok, now that my idea for my toilet system is underway I have t look at other things I can do to make life better inside.  The next thing I did was replace every single bulb to LED.  This was a really awesome move in regards to dry camping which means not plugging into a hardwired system for electric like a designated camp site where Id be paying anywhere from $35-$100 per day depending on where I am in the country.   An LED bulb draws about 10% of what a normal bulb will and that means being able to stay out dry camping that much longer.  BIG SCORE doing this.  My camper came with a standard Deep Cycle battery but I purchased a GOAL ZERO Lithium battery bank.   I have the YETI 1400 which can power my camper for days without recharging.  And because I have solar connected to my goal zero battery, I can keep my battery fully charged all the time even though I`m using energy from it as the Solar unit is large enough to do so with ease.  I would like to go into my Goal Zero system in more detail at a later date.  
The other thing I have done to my camper is seal the roof and prevent any water leaks from happening and this is a big preventative measure that keeps everyone cozy inside.  I used a combination of high quality sealants to do the job and do it right.  
I have several more interesting things to talk about very soon so please tune in to my next blog post and find out what we have going on. 


Thanks for tuning in!
​Scott / Alpenlore USA

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