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Hi there, my name is Mark. My spectacular wife Ellen and I have dreamed about a family overlanding adventure, well... since long before we even had a family. Now that our children are 8 and 10 years old we've decided that it's time to go for it. We've taken the kids out of school, rented-out our home in Mountain View Ca, temporarily stepped away from our careers (much thanks to our amazing business partners!), and we have hit the road!
I'll be using this blog to share information about our rig, trip logistics, navigation, etc. If you want to learn more about our family, daily activities, exploring, and homeschooling please feel free to visit Ellen's blog.
The buttons below will take you to pages that cover all sorts of technical info. I'll also be doing my best to keep the blog portion updated as our adventures progress.
Please feel free to leave comments or email me if you have questions.

Camper Electrical

Overlhander Truck Camper Electrical System


The electrical system is probably the place where I have expended the most energy (read: $$$) on upgrades. Solar, batteries, charger, inverter, monitoring, wiring... At this point there aren't many components I haven't touched. Today, I think it's pretty much perfect for a camper of this size. 
Here's a look at a system overview (click on images for larger view):


 The heart of the electrical system is the battery bank. When I purchased our Saratoga it came with a pair of Group24 marine ("deep-cycle/starting") batteries, which unfortunately failed us on our very first camping trip requiring starting the truck engine just to do enough charging bring in the slide-out. Realizing we needed more energy storage I upgraded the batteries to a pair of 6 Volt Trojan T-125 true deep-cycle batteries (aka: golf-cart batteries) 
This gave me 235 Amp-hours of battery capacity (@12V / 20-hr rate), which really is a lot of capacity for a truck camper! However these big flooded lead-acid (FLA) batteries had some drawbacks in my application; They charge slowly, they require maintenance, their performance is affectected by ambient temperature, and most importantly their voltage sags under heavy loads (e.g. running a microwave from an inverter).  
I needed a solution that was going to get past all of these drawbacks, so got out my measuring tape, researched batteries, and got to work. I ultimately settled on installing three Odyssey PC-2150 AGM batteries in camper's basement. This yields 300 Amp/hrs of capacity (@12V / 20-hr rate). It also moves the mass of the batteries down and closer to the front of the camper and provides nearly unlimited charge and discharge current. 
Improved battery placement
Configuration of batteries in TC basement
New "battery box" in basement with tie-downs and 1/0 Battery cable



- Inverter/Charger
- Solar panels
- Charge Controllers
- Battery monitor
- Control panel
- Truck to camper wiring
- Generator
- LED lighting
- Dinette light
- Water heater
- Tank heaters

1 comment:

  1. Scott WJanuary 3, 2016 at 7:24 AM

    Impressive work on the battery mod ! I have a 2005 Ram 3500 SRW Cummins Longbed Quadcabnsame color as yours & am considering a truck camper with a dry weight of 3100lb. What is your handling experience so far with your Alpenlite ? Looking for updates to your blog !

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