North Carolina

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Not the Most Fun Afternoon On the Road

It was steady going into Charlotte this afternoon. I was due for fuel so I started looking for some about 30, 45 minutes before I reached the city. I got off at an exit that promised about a half dozen gas stations, but they were all RV unfriendly, so I circled through town and got back on the interstate.

A sign for a Pilot travel stop was a welcome sight and I was quite surprised to find a dinky little gas station with most definitely no room for RVs. Oh, but there was a truck entrance thataway. I went into that entrance and all the pumps were marked diesel only. Oh. I tried to swing around and encountered… a dead end. Where I was blocking about five truck fueling lanes.

Many of these drivers had seen me come in and had plenty of time to tell me to stop and get around. Or a couple could have backed up to let me get through their lanes the wrong way. Nobody did. Thankfully, I was in a straight line so I could unhook… to the tune of a dozen of truckers honking their horns. What a bunch of assholes! I managed to get unhooked, got the truck out of the way, backed the motorhome out of there, and found a spot where I could hook up again. Needless to say, Pilot did not get my business. Painted arrows on the ground are all that would have been needed.

Thanks to this delay, I hit Charlotte at the start of rush hour with a stalled vehicle in the fast lane. So it was stop and go through most of the city. Not difficult, just slow.

I saw a sign for a Love’s fueling station just before my exit and decide to try them. Fuel in North Carolina had been about $3.35 and I fueled in South Carolina for $3.05!!! So maybe the Pilot fiasco wasn’t so bad after all.

I’m now parked at the Walmart in Rock Hill, SC… where I have no power. At the batteries, I am registering 12.6V, so they are charging fine, but there is a drop to a mere 9.5V between them and the fuse/shunt. Everything’s tight, the cables are short and #1 gauge. In short, it should all be working fine. I am seriously sick of this s***.  Anyway, the fridge is running and that’s all I need for tonight. It supposed to get cold again, but I’ve had cold furnaceless nights and mornings before and I will survive. I’m just irked that I’ve spent thousands of dollars to not be in this situation again and am. A professional electrical person will be in order before I leave New Orleans. And if I’m going to pay that kind of money, then I am going to seriously consider having the stupid battery bank relocated to a place where I can actually get at it without twisting myself into a pretzel.

Yes, I’m cranky. 🙂

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Just Call Me MacGyver!

I did some more research about Macbook Pros and voltage before shutting down my computer earlier this morning and found information that led me to believe that I could still charge under slightly lower than optimal voltage, it just wouldn’t be as efficient.

The motorhome engine battery puts out more than 14 volts when the engine is running. Could that be enough to charge my Macbook Pro while I was driving? Hmm…

All of my inverters are designed to be hard wired to a battery, so they do not have a 12V plug. I had a one of those left over from when I added my 12V outlet in the study, so I spliced it into my 300W inverter. I got into the cab, plugged in the inverter, turned on the engine, turned on the inverter, plugged in the computer and… voila! I got a solid hour of charging while getting to the next rest area, giving me 50% battery capacity.

By managing my computer use, I will be fine for computer power while I’m traveling, but this is obviously not going to work when I stop to boondock for an extended period of time. So I will be ordering the 12V charger to be sent general delivery to a post office in the New Orleans area.

I’m feeling much, much better now that I understand what has been going on and am now confident that my battery bank is working as it should be! It’s wonderful to be sitting here with the solar array monitor telling me the batteries are fully charged and that the battery monitor and the batteries themselves confirm it!

I called ahead to the Walmart just south of Charlotte that I was eyeing and they definitely allow overnight parking! They’re only a couple of hours away from this rest area, so I will spend several hours here and will leave around 2PM or so to avoid rush hour.

Tomorrow is the big day: Atlanta. I’ve done my research on the RVing forums and the consensus is to stick to the interstate’s centre lanes through the city rather than use the bypass and to go through at either midday or midnight.

At the rate I am going, I could be in New Orleans by Thursday or Friday, but I’m just playing it by ear. I’m really enjoying these short driving spurts coupled with long pauses at rest areas, even if the semis are noisy!

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Frigid Night in North Carolina

BRR!!!!!!!!! We went well below freezing last night in Henderson! It’s till unpleasantly cold out there. At least, the sun is out!

I treated myself to a new duvet before leaving Hampton Roads and it is divine. I didn’t even know how cold the rig was until I poked my nose out from under the blankets this morning!

I had left the furnace set to about 50F (thinking in degrees F? I’ve been in the US too long!) and it kicked on seconds before I reached the thermostat to crank it up. I went back to bed with the iPad since the Lowe’s had wifi (!!!!!!) until it was warm enough to get up.

Since there’s a rest area a few minutes down I-85 from Henderson, I decided to just dress and go there (here), where I could have breakfast, assess my electrical situation, and hang out for a bit. I’ll be shortly moving on to another rest area as there are 50 billion signs here saying no loitering, 2 hours max.

My laptop’s out of juice, so more later. Hopefully, I can find some power for it today. Gah.

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Bad News About Charging a 17" MacBook Pro Through an Inverter

This morning, I ran my battery bank through the paces to eliminate problems one by one. The problem is either my inverters or my laptop. I can’t imagine having three bad inverters, so the answer must be the laptop.

I’m running off a battery that’s at about 97% right now (12.5V) with a draw of about 0.3 amps, which is the fridge. BTW, I never, ever run my fridge on auto, so it cannot switch over to electric.

If I turn on the big inverter. No problem, I’m now drawing about 1 amp. Turn on the UPS for the office stuff and run the external drives. No problem, I’m below 2 amps. Plug in the laptop and it charges for about five seconds, long enough to tell me I’m drawing about 6 amps, and then the inverter starts shrieking that the voltage is too low.

I pulled the Kill-O-Watt metre into the inverter to see what kind of wattage the charger is drawing right before the inverter cuts out, and it fluctuated between 90 and 120 watts, the lower end of which is comparable to what the battery monitor was telling me.

So I finally did a search on solar powering a MacBook Pro and, surprise, surprise, there is no easy answer… because the MBP requires a higher voltage than that supplied by an RV system. There’s the answer! The MBP is trying to draw something like 16V out of my system, which obviously won’t work!

I found many references to a guy who has successfully hacked a Magsafe MacBook brick to run straight off of 12V power, not through an inverter. It’s pricy, $170, but if that’s what it takes, that’s what it takes. In the meantime, I need to find a Starbucks. Gaaaaaaah. Apple, why do you do this to me!

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I Am Missing a Piece of the Electrical Puzzle

My electrical system is working perfectly, only it’s not.

I started the evening with a fully charged battery. I ran the furnace a little, an LED light for a couple of hours, and the fridge. Three hours later, the battery monitor says that I drew 6.5 amp hours from my battery bank, which makes sense and still leaves me about 145 amp hours.

I turned on the inverter and the monitor said that it was drawing 4 amps when the inverter shrieked out a low voltage warning and shut itself off.

Amps-wise, I’m fine, but I seem to be having a voltage shortage that mystifies me. My entire system has smaller gauge wiring than specs call for and I have short cable runs.

I am baffled. Even the 300 watt inverter refuses to work tonight, and by work, I mean charge my laptop. If I can’t charge my laptop, then all of my upgrades were made for nothing.

I’m so disappointed. But at least I’m warm, so I guess that’s something. 🙂