Love the RV Life!

Hey there!
Going to try and update you all on our adventures.

Wow it has been a long-time coming, but the 2018 Fuzion 371 is rocking her solar system hard! (Good thing!).

We bought her new in Alvarado Texas and stayed in RV parks for a few weeks until we pointed the wagon west to California to visit family. On board I had the solar panels and various items I had harvested off the Cougar before surrendering her to the dealer.

On our way, we stopped at a few truck stops and a couple of RV parks until we rolled into St. Johns Arizona. We have a parcel of land we call Mustang Rock and make that our base camp for long periods.

We came in to the Ranch and stored the panels and other items into the storage shed and then loaded my 4 wheeler that I had stored in the shed, in the garage of the toyhauler. The ‘plan’ was to meet up with Mobile Homestead Solar Services and have the solar system installed here at the ranch.

From there we headed to Joshua Tree National park by way of Flagstaff. I had placed an order for batteries, solar charge controller and a great  MAGNUM MS2012 2000 WATT SINE WAVE INVERTER W/CHARGER with its monitor, plus an assortment of wire and connection pieces. Eddie (of Mobile Homestead Solar Services) had given me a shopping list based on what we agreed would be our needs. This included 4 Fullriver Battery DC400-6 Sealed AGM Deep Cycle 6 Volts 415Ah batteries. They traveled in my truck bed until the time of install. Thats 500 pounds of batteries!

Onward to California. We decided to boondock in the Chiriaco Summit dry camp area. Sites are marked off and stay limit of 5 days. Our 40′ rig just fit. Unloaded the 4 wheeler and took a ride around.

The General Patton Museum is right there as well as a nice cafe and fuel station for tired travelers.

Our son arrived with his boy and girlfriend. The smile on that little boys’ face when daddy took him for a spin was so happy.

From there we set course back to Arizona but stopped for a spell at Ogilby Road BLM camping area. There we met up with Ray and Anne of LoveYourRV.com.

It was a great chance to really do a ‘shake-down’ of the new Fuzion and we put so many hours on that generator. When the gas tank was near empty was my cue to move on.

From there we arrived in Quartzite Arizona. Had some laundry to do so we stayed at The Scenic Road RV Park for a week. They have a doggy spa so I also gave little Cinnamon a bath and trim.

It was time to get out into the desert where we were to meet up with the Wyoming Gypsies, aka Mobile Homestead Solar Services.

Once they arrived all the way from North Carolina, they had many in the area who requested their services. So knowing we were headed back to the ranch to complete my system, they managed to get my batteries and inverter installed. At least that way the new AGMs would get charged when the generator was running. It was a while to wait, but then I’d have a complete, 100% first class system installed correctly and safely from an experienced full-time RVer who comes from a HVAC background.

The reason we went with AGM is due to the fact that the front hold on my Fuzion has an on-board generator in that space. So we would have to put them in the storage “basement” with no ventilation. AGM (absorbed glass mat) batteries are sealed and no gas will escape . Since I didn’t have a residential refer this was plenty of power storage. My toyhauler is designed for dry camping and why I figure they dont put the residential refers in them.  More for me! 🙂

I know it’s possible to have a residential fridge and have a system configured to dry camp, but it seems to me that’s a lot of extra weight and components just to have an ice maker. But then I dont know everything.

Our time in Quartzite was coming to an end and so we needed to move on, but the weather was being fickle. Rain and snow was forecast for our next destination that would have been Cottonwood Arizona or even the backcountry of Sedona, where we were last year, and that means mud and cold.

The Wyoming Gypsies were done with the local customers and we all headed back to the ranch. In hindsight, if we knew there would be so much demand for their services in Quartzite, I would have brought the solar panels with me and Eddie could have worked me in between jobs. Oh well. It worked out.

So we pointed the wagons east and landed on Mustang Rock!  Eddie (He is the “Dude”!)  got busy and had my panels up in no time! Pulling in 620 watts of the precious golden juice.  

Compare with the way he did my Cougar in this post.

The major difference is instead of 2 solar controllers, due to 2 separate installations, I now have one Tristar MPPT controller for the whole setup. Less stuff to configure.

The Magnum charge/inverter found a special home behind the wall of the basement storage. It works great there as it has good ventilation and its less than 2 feet from the power center.

With that being said, Eddie divided the power center so that the inverter is operating from its own dedicated fuse box, that powers things like the microwave, washer, outlets.

Original power center on the bottom.

And of course he did a beautiful job installing the 5 panels, all inline on one side with room to kneel for tilt adjustments. Plus a special request for a cell and wifi-ranger antenna riser.  I dont have a picture of the riser, or as I call it, antenna ‘puter-upper’ but here is a shot of the panels almost finished: 

Very happy with the work. 

Here is a video of the work done to date:

The panels, Inverter, Batteries, Controller and all their respective components were sourced from Arizona Wind and Sun.

Would love to read your comments. Like and share if you like it.

See you out there! 

-Kim