Shish kebab

Kathy bought a set of two prong Shish kebabs and they work great the meat or vegetables do not rotate like they do on a single prong.  Here you see two of them in use on one of our grilles.  We received a set of four through QVC.

Putting My CPAP on DC

A few weeks back we had a power failure at night and I had to use my back-up cans of O2 since my concentrater could not be used.  I did not want to go out to the RV because would have taken a couple hours to warm it up.  So I am setting up a DC pack to run my CPAP off a Motorcycle battery.  I checked my CPAP to verify I can use with a DC cord, it can.

 

All I will need to do is unplug the AC plug top left and plug in DC cord. I have a battery and have ordered a DC cord for my CPAP and will give it a try soon.

I got my DC cables!

Here is my battery and DC cable I added the battery clamps.  It all fits into about a third of a shoe box.  I made sure I bought the correct cord for my CPAP they are not all the same.  I hooked it up to my CPAP yesterday at bed time and it ran for just over 6 hours, than shut down.  (Battery was about 85% charged when I started).  I was happy with this! I can buy a bigger battery but I wanted to keep it basic and under 80 dollars total.  I also can plug into a car or RV DC plug if needed.  

I intend this only as a one night back up.  If power is out longer I would have time to fire up the RV propane heater or generator along with 2 electric space heaters.  I have enough fuel to run the generator for 4-5 days depending on temp.  Enough propane for 2-3 days with solar and battery bank for medical equipment.  Plus I have 3 standard O2 tanks for back-up.

I also have a 50 watt portable solar panel to recharge this battery and to maintain our house battery when off shore or generator power.  Our 200 watt solar on our roof is dedicated to our 300amp battery bank which is used only for my medical equipment.

Final Note/recap.

Went back and looked at the battery chart I have the smallest battery.  So it has a max of 30 amp hrs to empty.  If I add an inverter to the system there is not enough instant power amps to run the CPAP. But if I plug in directly as I did above with the DC cord I get 5-6 hours before shut down.  This tells me my battery no-longer has enough energy to run my CPAP after this time.  So I draw it down to about 40% before recharge is required.  With this heavy draw down and since it is not a deep cycle I probably will only get a half dozen uses max, but since it is only an emergency back up it will be fine.

Below is how I store my battery and cords.  The container is a old tupper ware 1/2 gallon ice cream holder and a lunch box the top and handle are out of the photo so you could see everything else.

RV Power Protection

For years I plugged in directly to the power posts in parks with no problems.  Now with parks getting older I am hearing more and more issues with power supplies at parks.  So a couple years ago we added a surge protector at the end of our 30 amp power supply plug for some basic protection. I recommend at a minimum everyone who RV's should consider adding one of these to help protect their shore power feed.  There are more protections you can have but this should be everyone's minimum.

Flaming Gorge 2017 Samon Run Start w Kathy

Flaming Gorge 2017 Samon Run Start with Kathy looking on.  It started early this year and we caught it right as it started.  In the stream photo you can see the red fish spawning.

 Look and you can see some of the now red fish below.

Secondary AC

Last Christmas Kathy's Moms house was in the 90's.  We can not run our generator in her driveway in town to run our main rooftop AC.  Also we can only hook up 15 amp to the house 110 sockets.  So this year in February's visit I am taking a small window AC we have.  If it is in the 80's or 90's this year while we are there I will set up this secondary unit.  It took me 10 minutes to figure out how and to do it.  Here it is.

Here you see our 5000 btu unit set up and plugged in.  I decided to plug in directly to the wall outlet to help overloading the RV fuse, it worked fine.

 I have it set up to go in and come out quickly so when driving it sits under the dinette or in a basement compartment.

 Below id another view.  It does not put out what our roof unit does but it is the only one we have that will run off house 15 amp power.

Walter filter priming

Priming our berkey's glad we did it at home to gain some experience with the manual system.  Here you see the manual filter (you need to assemble) for the big berkey filters.  The instructions worked for me and I recommend everyone do it at least once before you need it for the experience.  I bought the berkey go for those RV parks that do not have good tasting water (to our taste).  Also in a pinch if no clean water is around we can purify our own in small batches.

It takes a few minutes to get the water coming through the filter, once it starts keep pumping for a minute or two then your filter is primed.

Below the black filter is primed and ready to be inserted in to the berkey go container to start purifying water.

Here we have our berkey go, berkey sport, a zero water pitcher to keep full with our berkey go and a plain plastic pitcher to fill the two berkeys.  I do not need to use the zero but we have it so why not use it as well for its capacity, fits well in the frig.   Please note, I use the 18oz camp cup to fill the berkey go and if I leave the filter in when not in use it protects the plastic filter tip from breaking.

Here I am priming the berkey sport by squeezing a few bottles of water through to prime it for use.  I will take this with me while I am teaching today to see how it goes.

With this years summer hurricane's so many people had no drinking water my interest peaked. So I bought some Sawyer Mini Filters and as you can see along with some small Berkey purifiers.  Will leave at least one in our tow vehicle and one in our go bag. 

My New Solar Cooker Bag Mini

I got a solar Cooker Bag Mini for my 62 birthday and have been playing with it ever since.  Here was my first use.  It was 94 degrees and partly cloudy I put on a pot of red beans and rice at noon and pulled them at 4pm.  Temp hung around 175 with me moving the cooker about every 45 to 60 minutes.

At 4pm it is 100 degrees and dry here is our finished product for your viewing and pleasure.

Took some getting use to carrying this baking dish to and from but I did it with only a few drops spilled till I got to the tray.  To be true it dripped on the way in not the way out when it was less flimsy.

The oven worked great!  As long as we remember it is a slow cooker we will all be fine:)

Below I cooked a 4 pound Pork Loin in a baking bag and it was great and very moist.