Refrigerator
So Brandon and I are still in the beginning stages of this project, but we are committed to making this happen. Since we are committed, why not buy some of the essentials? Over New Year’s week, so many places had great sales. Brandon found some great online sales on camping and RV sites and we made many purchases!
One of the biggest, and most important (in my opinion), choices we made was the type of refrigerator we were going to get. Now, this is important to me because I am a bit of a foodie, and I did not want to sacrifice cooking or food storage on our trips, even when boondocking. Our first debate was whether we spend $1,400 on an “AC/propane” refrigerator. This is one that can run off of both electricity or propane while traveling. As we write this, we still debate our decision, but ultimately decided that going with an AC one with an inverter and extra batteries was a more cost-effective choice and logical for our uses. Once getting to Lowe’s, we stood in the refrigerator aisle for about 15 minutes, debating back and forth about the pros and cons to having a refrigerator with a freezer.
Pros: Freezer space for frozen water bottles and ice packs for hikes, storage of some easy frozen meals to be made on the stove or in our future toaster oven (we are not getting a full oven!), spontaneous frozen sweets for summer (I mean, duh….)
Cons: Loss of refrigerator storage, time and energy it takes to get freezer to temperature
We ultimately decided that having a freezer was worth the loss of space, and made a purchase! It costed us $159! The inverter is estimated at about $200, which will come soon! The cost of the entire set-up is about $360, giving us a ton of savings from the other, much more expensive option from above!
Air Conditioner/Heater
Our entire system for air conditioning and heating needed to be gutted completely. This included duct work, ceiling unit, and propane lines. We went back and forth about how we would do heating, as we did not think we would use it in the winter as often, if at all. Therefore, a furnace didn’t seem like a logical choice.
We found a reasonable solution in another rooftop AC unit, with an installed heat strip. A heat strip would allow our AC unit to function as a heater if need be. This not only eliminated the need to run an additional propane line, but enabled us to connect to shore power (campsite hook-up) and have both air conditioning and heating when we were not boondocking. If we were boondocking, we would run a generator- which we have not yet purchased.
Due to some awesome New Year’s sales, our air conditioner/heater cost us $820, with free delivery. Without this sale, it would have cost us around $1,200…. Yay!
Hot Water Heater
Our airstream contained a monster of a unit. The hot water heater held about 6 gallons at a time and was propane-powered. It was located under the kitchen sink and took a ton of storage space. Again, we thought we would be able to save the propane lines and be able to save the unit. However, we soon realized this was ill-fated logic and it all came out with the subfloor. This gave us the opportunity to relocate the hot water heater and use something more efficient. We decided to go with an instant hot water heater, mostly powered with propane. It only provides hot water when the hot water is turned on. There is no holding tank and because we will only be using the airstream during a few months of the year or because there may be long durations between uses, we figured this could work best. We plan to relocate this directly behind the shower wall to feed both the shower water and the sinks in the airstream. The instant hot water heater cost us $120!
Smaller Purchases
Brandon ordered some other important things this week, such as interior recessed LED lights ($28.99), automatic dual propane tank changer/exchanger (for switching from one to the other once one runs out- $43.66), exterior trailer lights ($32.85- bought a little too soon), roof vent fan (original had a mouse nest in it! $41.29), vent covers (exterior- $29.99, $32.99), and a new black tank ($119.73). More to come, I’m sure 🙂
Much love,
Lauren
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