GMC Motor Home, Travel with Teri and Dan

Alright, things are better today. See this, I found my m&m candy. I have 8 pounds I need to get consumed pretty quick. Have a cholestrol test in 3 weeks. I have to start cramming for the test so these must get gone fast. I need two good weeks to prepare for my test. My doctor is always real happy with my readings. I also am taking my pills regularly this month. That will help also.

Now, back to living. Here is the Kill A Watt meter I told yall about yesterday. This is a must if you want to run ac appliances while dry camping. One needs to know how much current the appliance will consume. My icemaker takes 125 watts of power when the compressor is running. I can do it on the batteries but it would be like sucking 8 amps dc out of the batteries every hour. Cheaper for me to buy a 7 pound bag of ice a couple times a week when we dry camp. This meter can be purchased on line or at Cosco for under 25 dollars. It is the one with memory, the most expensive one. I like the memory so when we are at home I can see how much our 15 year old refrigerator is costing us a month. Also, I run a fan all night long, normally on high. Well, I found out, using this meter, that it draws half the power if I run it in second gear instead of 3rd. The meter will pay for itself in savings.

The most important meter for a dry camper. I found where the thief put it yesterday. This is a Trimetric 2020. There are others but I like the features on this one. When I took the picture I had 14.7 volts measured at my house batteries and the charge light is on. I can flip it over to "amps" and see how many amps the batteries are pulling in for a charge. At night, I can see how many amps are leaving the batteries when the sun is gone. I can also program this thing to see just what % I have consumed of the battery bank total capacity. A must have if you dry camp over a couple of days at a time, even if you don't use solar.

Let me talk a little about the led lights for a minute. This is mainly to the GMC folks. There are two of these overhead lights that are hooked to the engine battery. We like to sit up front and read at night. Our chairs swivel 360 degrees. The light that comes in these sockets is a power sucking hog called a festoon. I have replaced the festoon with two led light strips that stick flat to the back of the bulb housing and throw all light forward. More about that later.

Ok, we have a new furnace that we installed a couple of winters ago. The motor on that thing will draw about 7 amps when the blower runs. That is a lot of juice. So, what we do is use this Wave 6 catalytic heater. It is more than enough to heat the entire coach. I rarely use high on it. No draw from the batteries as it has no fan. The catalytic heater projects its heat onto objects and warms them up. If this is pointed toward the couch, the couch will warm, along with your body if you are sitting there. A must for cold nights. Leave a little crack in one window or roof vent for fresh air to get into the coach. I do not leave this on when we go to bed. Also, look closely at the lower right hand corner of the picture. I have an lp quick disconnect there for gas. Works absolutly great and uses very little lp compared to the furnace.

Back to the led lighting. This is a high powered stick. It will take .2 amp to run it. One of these is more than an 1156 bulb in brightness. There are 18 emitters in each of those 2 little squares. This is a fantastic light. It sells for about 25 dollars but you will never need to replace the thing. It is regulated for varying voltages. This particular light must be stuck to metal, such as the back of the 1156 housing. Or, we have a heat sink for 50 cents that comes along with the thing. The socket also comes with it.

Here it is plugged into the socket. This socket can handle 6 of these if you want to out shine the sun. What I have is lesser bright strips that I use 2 of in these sockets. Two of them, with socket, run about 22 bux. They look very similar to this strip and are what you saw in the upper photo above our heads in the driving compartment. This setup will draw about .1 amp. See, with strips we waste no light going backwards. All of the wide angle lighting from the emitters goes forward. There are various sockets so these can be used in other lighting arrangements that don't use 1156 sockets. 220 lumen from the high powered stip here compared to about 180 from the 1156 bulb. The lower powered strips run about 60 lumen each. 2 in one socket is 120 and will look as bright to you as one 1156 bulb because the light is much nicer, like a fluorescent.

Oh, you have a light that must shine 360 degrees? We will shortly have that for you. Look around on Prudentrver.com. There is some neat stuff on there. I love the fluorescent replacement lights myself. They really shine. These light strips are built in Mesa, Az. We have a very competitive price on all of our stuff. The warranty is so good you won't need to ever buy a replacement. This is because of the quality regulation built onto the board. There are lots of sites selling led lighting. Very few can compare to what I am showing you in quality and certainly have no warranty like ours. If you see something on Superbrightleds.com and can't find it on our website, email or call me. We do not do tail lights, only inside and the outside porch lights.

Oh, and here is my buddy Roger. We will soon be seeing him, and others like him, when we get to the swamplands of La. Can't wait. We have lots of friends that will be there. Teri and I love our friends. Each one is special and very unique. We can not imagine life without lots and lots of "close" friends.

I do hope the simplicity in which I have tried to convey things to you today and yesterday help you realize that anyone can do what we do. Live life to its fullest on modest means. Life truly is good. Today is that better day I told you about yesterday.

Dan