That’s what you would think when you buy a new camper. At least, that’s what I thought. Caitlin and I got to go camping this week and we had such a great time. This is such a nice upgrade to the teardrop. A queen size bed, a bathroom, dinette, kitchen, refrigerator, AC, couch, and headroom! Lots of storage too. For our first outing, we decided to go back to Huntsville State Park. Being right down the road from the house, it’d be a good place to test everything out. Find out what works, what doesn’t, what we can do to improve things, etc. I’ve fixed the shower so the curb doesn’t leak anymore. Still need to do a few other things. Notably get the clean water tank fixed. I think I might do that myself. It doesn’t look too hard to replace. A new tank only costs $200 from the manufacturer and that would be cheaper than me driving it back to the dealership in LA and having to spend all that money on gas. If I can get it off, I might be able to fix the leak without buying a new tank, so there’s that too. I still need to see if there’s anywhere more local to me that does warranty work though. I’d rather them do it. For the most part though, we are very happy with this camper. It’s absolutely perfect for us and we love the layout. As some of you up north are experiencing this thing called fall with cooler weather, it’s still quite hot here in Texas. It’s 89.7 degrees per my weather station as I write this, so AC is very much a thing we desire. Unfortunately, we had some problems and had to fix some things. I’m no HVAC expert, but I’m pretty sure ducts are supposed to vent outside… I must constantly remind myself what I knew getting into this, all campers are built with the absolute least possible concern for quality, are mass produced to get out the door and let the dealers (or customers) deal with quality issues.
Anyway, it’s not really as bad as I’m making it out to be and I can’t emphasize enough how much we are enjoying this new camper. We love it! Now I’m thinking I want to take it out for a week or so and tour the great state of Texas. Make a bunch of videos, and have a lot more fun with it. I’d like to find some BLM land or something off grid. That would be so cool! Once it’s a little cooler out, I think I just might do that. The AC pulls about 100 amps when hooked up to 12V batteries and an inverter so that won’t last very long at all. If I don’t use the ac, I can open the windows and let the fan in the roof do its thing, which it does well, but in this heat, its more of a convection oven. With everything on that runs off of 12V, the whole camper only pulls about 10 amps from the battery (including the compressor in the fridge) so that’s not too bad at all. It has a solar input on the side. All I need to do is hook up a charge controller and some panels & I can recharge while camping. I’m pretty sure it charges the battery when hooked up to the car too (don’t quote me on that though). Here’s some links I mention in the video (most are affiliate of course)
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