MOD: TESLA Powered Tiffin!

That is not a typo… our RV is now powered by TESLA! Well, Tesla battery modules that is! Oh, and the Sun! Yes, the Sun, too!

WARNING — This post is full of technical content. Here’s the TLDR;

Our original House batteries only powered part of our coach via the inverter, and could only power the coach in a boondock situation for about 4 to 6 hours. After that, the battery voltages were below 11.8vdc and we’d have to start the Generator.

Our new Tesla batteries can power ALL of the coach, not every load in parallel, but 2 of 3 ACs can be running at the same time! Given the same loads that would only last 4 to 6 hours on the old batteries, we can now last indefinitely on the batteries / solar combo!

Check the bottom of the post for loads of photos!

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Office Space

After seeing the custom built desk Chris at GeekRV had, we went crazy with ideas for our workspace. Thanks to Ron Gatchell we have enough space, and it looks like it came from the Tiffin factory floor this way.   A few highlights and details about our design: The Corian is 144″ long, and Read more…

Mods: Window Valance LEDs

We decided to add LEDs behind the valances of our coach windows.  We’ve seen some other brands that have a similar setup, but they appear to be down the sides of the windows and cause a lot of light bleed to the outside, even with the night shades down.  We only put them along the top valance and found that this gives plenty of light without any bleed outside when the shades are down.

The LED strips we used are color changing (red/green/blue – RGB) strips.  I also went with WiFi control modules for them so we could adjust the color and brightness from our smart-phones.

Thanks for the original idea from David of OutsideOurBubble.com!

Pictures and parts list after the break… (more…)

Mods: Whole RV Reverse Osmosis Water

Spending a large portion of our time in the desert south west, we’ve come to the conclusion that 2 stage filtration and a water softener simply isn’t sufficient.  Plus, with the hardness of the water in this area, we’re having to regenerate the water softener every week (about a 30 to 45 minute job).  It’s not particularly difficult, but gets old after 10 weeks..

So, we decided to move to a Reverse Osmosis system for the whole RV. (more…)

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