Friday, May 20, 2011

Off-Grid or Off-Shore

Many people chose to retire and go live on a boat cruise around.

An even greater number of people buy a large RV or motor home and drive around to see the country. When they camp out in the wild not in a park intended for RV camping its called Boon Docking. 

A common aspect of all this to living off grid is the fact they all need to be self sufficient. The RV owner uses a holding tank and must find a ‘SANI dump’ to empty the holding tank. Boats cruising inland waters or within 3 miles of shore must also find pump out stations.  Building codes requires all homes on or off grid to have a septic disposal system.  In all cases, boats, RV or off-grid homes must provide their own power, lights, and heat in colder areas and cooling in hot climates.

Food storage and cooking is pretty much the same in all cases. 

Off-grid  homes have  several advantages because  they  have  adjacent land on which to place large  PV arrays or wind turbines not to mention storage  sheds  for fire wood and a work shop.  This is not practical for most RV and boat owners.

In practical terms there is little difference in the daily life.  You have to make meals; you spend some time doing maintenance and some time socializing with other people. After sun down is the biggest difference. Unless you have some kind of a battery system you are stuck relying on candles and Coleman style lanterns for light. 

Modern boats now have 24V battery systems while a lot of RV still sticks with 12V but modern off-grid homes rely on 48V battery banks.  The reason has to do with voltage losses in the wiring.  Because RVs often stay in parks catering to campers in 5th wheels and small older trailers and vans 12V is still very common with these people.

Larger boats and not to mention off-grid homes tend to power appliances with 120V AC appliances by using inverters. Once past the inverter it really doesn’t matter what voltage the battery is. Propulsion motors and generators have their own dedicated start battery so this doesn’t really make a difference either.



The bottom line is that these alternative lifestyles all have many things in common.

There is something to learn from each of these that can be applied to the others.

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