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12-volt

Energy

River mobile battery

Backup batteries? Got ’em. Mobile charging stations? Check. But I need a mobile battery that will keep my beer cold and charge my phone and laptop all day when I am in the field — my off-grid field that is.

River, by EcoFlow, checks all the boxes.

It’s not what you’d call practical, at least not in the sense that you can stow it in a pocket or backpack. After all, it’s about the size of a car battery and tips the scales at a whopping 11 pounds. But there’s no denying its utility. A single top-up takes about six hours via wall charger (or nine hours by car charger) and lasts a year. Once charged, River can supply a total of up to 500 watts to 11 devices simultaneously.

This mobile battery has a ridiculous number of ports. You’ll find two USB 2.0 Quick charge ports, two regular USB ports, two USB-C ports, two AC outlets, two DC outlets, and one 12V car port. The 114,000mAH battery is also smart enough to regulate voltage, giving each device precisely what it needs without going all Note 7 on us.

For the outdoorsman, there’s even a River foldable solar panel ($299) capable of fully charging the power supply in 10 to 15 hours (dependent on weather). It’s also water resistant with an IP63 certification. That’s not quite up to modern smartphone standards, but it can handle the occasional splash.

With a battery this reliable and any top quality solar panel I really can go for days without needing a Utility supply. I still need to be careful not to waste power – turn the laptop and phone off when not in use, but its a case of swings and roundabouts. The freedom is worth the extra hassle.

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Community

Replacing our 12 volt water pump

12 volt pump

Most of the time, items are replaced when they fail, break or quit working. We decided to get a jump on replacing a critical piece of our daily life before it stopped working, I’m referring to our 12 volt water pump. I have written about our water system before, the pump is an integral part of our water system.

We had a 12 volt Shurflo pump, it came out of an old RV and has served us well. I liked having a 12 volt system because it hooks up directly to the batteries, not going through the inverter, so even if everything else is not working, as long as the batteries have juice, the pump will work.

old pump

We replaced it with a newer 12 volt Shurflo pump, but an improved model, this one has greater flow and it’s quieter. Honestly the noise factor for us isn’t such a big deal, PB has isolated the pump as much as possible from the structure of the SkyCastle, and most of the time, it’s just us here and we are used to any potential noise it might make. Also, there is a light switch type switch over the sink to cut off power to the pump should we wish it.

new pump

A day after the pump arrived, PB went to work exchanging the pumps. That went smoothly enough, we have the capability of draining the outside pipes/hoses so we don’t have to worry about it freezing and breaking. The pump needs to be able to draw the water up some 6 feet from the water tank and this one does it quite nicely, the first time. The second time we drained the water and turned the pump back on, no water.

The pump came on and make the appropriate sounds, but it was clear that it wasn’t pulling the water up. After some reading and troubleshooting, we discovered this pump has a bypass system built in, I’m not up to speed on all of this, but it has to do with the size of the pipes/hoses used, apparently if you are using smaller diameter hose/pipe on the intake side than you are using on the outgoing side, it doesn’t work. BUT after reading the info on the paperwork it came with, it turns out you can adjust the bypass part, once PB got back under there and fiddled with it, it works like a charm.

12 volt pump

Our water system is fairly simple, it starts out in a tank outside, gets drawn into the SkyCastle, through the pump, next the pipe/hose is split with one line going back into the water tank, we merely have to turn a valve to drain the system for freezing weather. It goes next into the pressure tank, that keeps the pump from having to cycle every time the water is turned on.

From there it splits again into …

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Community

New golf cart batteries

gcb1

Today was the first full day on the new batteries, we had everything hooked up to them, including the new chest freezer to refrigerator conversion, about a month (or so) ago our old one smoked on us, fortunately it happened during the day and I was there to catch it, it might not have gone any further, but as far as I’m concerned, when you see smoke, fire usually comes next. I’ll do another writeup on the new fridge very soon, until then you can read about how I DIY’d the conversion here and here.

Our previous batteries were marine type deep cycle batteries, I’ve been told on more than one occasion that those types of batteries aren’t true deep cycle batteries, in fact the newer ones being sold have cold cranking ratings on them instead of amp hours, and that has little (or nothing) to do with being deep cycle, that has to do with starting motors and such. Those are a hybrid of regular and deep cycle batteries, more robust than a standard car or truck battery but not as heavy duty as a true deep cycle battery.

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12-volt guide book

Tips on running a domestic setup with car batteries, or how to add extra power outlets to your car

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