fulltiming, laptops and internet

Alistair

Guest
im considering fulltiming by myself (and son at weekends) im starting out on a modest budget of about 5 or 6 grand to buy a medium sized motorhome. im just researching all eventualities at this point and the biggest one i suppose is electricity, my laptop and the internet. all of which i will need a good deal of use from as i get a good chunk of my income from the internet.

a brief overview of how my life will be might help you to help me.

i'll be living alone except at weekends when i'll have my son. during the week i'll be mostly parked up close to where i work and not moving from there much. this will be on free land not a caravan park so no hookup.
on weekends i'll be doing the majority of my traveling with my son, showing him the countryside and generally having awesome adventures together.
i need the internet with if possible unlimited usage as well as a fairly unlimited power to run a laptop.
i dont plan on owning much else in the way of power guzzling gadgets, no telly etc.

what is the best solution here. i realise i may have to compromise a lot but i dont want to throw my money away on site fees. solar panels seem great but will i get enough power. i really don't know where to start and i want to get it right first time knowing exactly what i need to look for and how much it might set me back.

any help is appreciated.
 
Hi Alistair and welcome. Looks like you've got two options - solar panel(s) or a generator. I suspect if you're going to be exclusively in the UK and your budget allows only one or the other you maybe want to go down the generator route. Either way you've got an initial outlay but your generator is going to do the job on a dark dismal day whereas solar won't. If you were to drive a reasonable distance every day and you had a decent leisure battery, charged via your alternator,you wouldn't need either. One of the first things to do is change all your internal lights to LED 'cos they'll draw very little power. There are folk on here with more knowledge than me whom I'm sure will give you loads of (probably better :) )advice. Good luck,
Pat
 
Inverters will use power so power your laptop from 12v supply. Maplins do a few that you plug into 12v and they up the power to run laptops. Virgin do an everything mobile sim for about £20 a month and you can set up your phone as a hotspot and use your laptop. Most seem to run at about 5 amps so you are going to need about 70w of power. A 100w solar panel will do it on a good day if you follow the sun and get it at the right angle otherwise it will struggle and you will be using more power than you are putting in. A generator would work if you are not near anyone as people will get a bit fed up listening to it.

..

WE won't discuss filling up with water. Getting rid of grey waste and of course the other sort.

..
 
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Before purchasing a Maplin 12 volt adapter take your laptop into the shop and try first. Some power supplies are unique to the computer so a Maplin version may not work. Advantage of a small inverter as it does not matter.
 
We run all of our Acer laptops of their proprietary 12V car chargers, they work well if you're on the move.

Solar works well for us, but we also have largish chargers and the facility to run 240V in from a generator or EHU.

Peter
 
My 100 watt solar panel, cost £89 off eBay (well, actually it cost nothing but that's a campfire story) plus some wire, plus some brackets (home made), plus some wood for mounting, to fit to my roof rack and less than a days work for someone who knew what they were doing.... Its been worth its weight in gold.

Even in winter my leisure battery was recharged most days. I recharge my laptop via 150watt inverter and 12v cig socket during the day either by solar or by driving, use it at night. Its a tiny laptop, not much bigger than a netbook, battery lasts about 4 hours. I also have an external laptop battery as back up, gives a full recharge to the laptop whilst using it within a few hours which I keep fully charged, and that is recharged via invertor too. That came from Maplins a few years ago and is an excellent bit of kit as it will also recharge mobile / tablet / mifi, and is shockproof with a metal case. It can be recharged whenever driving or got solar charge.

During the day I mainly use a Hudl tablet as quicker to recharge. My leisure battery is at least 3+ years old and only 85mA so when I rep!ace it with a bigger one, I'll have even more power. I have to be organised and have a daily recharging routine to make best use of solar. Routine tends to go awry at meets and festivals...

I run LED strip lights, mobile / tablet / mifi charging (usually at least one of them is on charge most of the time), and 10 watt TV / media player for about 6 hours most days, mini fridge when driving or on hot days, plus occasionally but regularly things like USB lights, fan, AA battery recharger, 12v hoover etc. So not huge electricity use but more than I could expect to be able to use without solar recharge unless I drove considerable miles each day.

So I can't recommend a solar panel highly enough. I'd recommend a second battery too, if the budget allows.
 
PS. The solar panel is flat on my roof and got me through a winter in Cumbria with not much extra daily mileage required to get battery fully recharged. For around 2 weeks in mid December, I was having to run the engine for about 15 mins (or drive somewhere) most days to get battery full. Otherwise solar got it to three quarters full most days. Some sunny days it was recharged by lunchtime. It even charged in snowstorm in April in the Lake District, although I did have to go up and sweep snow off the panel...

But even by New Year, the difference in daylight was making a significant difference to solar charging. If you're down south, you can expect probably better results than me up here.

Have since been told that its not good to run a diesel on tick over for any length of time... But thats probably best as a discussion for a new thread....

I use a mifi with a 3 data sim, £15, 30 day contract for 10gb data, battery life of mifi only 4 hours so this time of year its permanently on charge, in the winter, I have a spare power bank for that too. I try to minimise use of mifi and laptop and be more frugal with elec, eg only switching it on to send / recieve emails as downloads using MS Outlook, then switch off whilst I read them. Compose my email replies offline, then just send en masse. Saves data as well as elec. The mifi is good if you have lots of different devices or need WiFi for tablet or IPad. I spend hours online, far more than I should do so my gadgets are a necessity for me. Although its nice to have the odd 24 hours without any signal occasionally.

Another tip is to have all gadgets on aircraft mode when not in use, this saves battery power used in constantly searching for signals.
 
Fultiming, laptops and internet.

Really good prior advice in this string.

Recommend you sit down and work out were all your energy including off grid 'electrical energy' (stored 12v), is going to go through your year and how much electrical energy your heating / lighting / fridge / ventilation, over the winter months will consume, whether also using LPG or diesel, or even solid fuel. Your choice of Motorhome will be critical in reducing energy requirements, .. heating, insulation and ventilation ..

You mention, 'parked up close to were I work', So can you save energy during the working day ? maybe only needing essential heating during winter months to stop stuff / water, freezing up and controlling condensation through ventilation.

LED lighting and laptops and 12v compressor fridges use very little electrical power. As someone has mentioned run and charge your laptop/s directly off your 12v system with a 12v to laptop specific, 19v ? solid state converter.

Portable generators 240v AC and 12v DC outputs are useful, ... initial purchase cost, then fuel and maintenance, some noise issues.

Solar voltaic panels, nominally bout 18v DC, panels charging your habitation batteries during daylight hours through a MPPT controller. In low angles of sun, and infrequent sun in winter, you will need what seems an over capacity of solar panels because their rated performance is quoted for ideal conditions facing the sun, you would need at least 2 x 100 watt output panels and a good quality 16 amp MPPT controller / regulator, System specification really depends on how many 12v 'amp hours' you use up each 24 hrs, and will include sufficient 12v battery capacity to collect the panels output on a 'good day' in high summer in UK latitudes and with sufficient storage capacity to carry you over a string of bad days in winter, (lead acid batteries are generally able to accept in 'amperes of charge, about 10% of their rated capacity, e.g. a 12v lead acid battery bank of 180aH can accept roughly 18aH of charge each hour, there are clever regulator systems that can improve on this, but they cost, .. Unless you invest in proper expensive 'deep cycle' / 'traction batteries', the generally available 'leisure batteries' you will come across (there is no industry 'trading standard' for 'leisure battery' performance, many are just relabelled automotive batteries) will last longer if subjected to relatively small daily discharge patterns.

Appreciate your enquiry is a cost based enquiry hope this gives you some points to consider when you research further.

Rob H.
 
some excellent answers, thanks guys.

my current useage would be evenings and weekends, i work mon to fri 9-5 but id also have the liberty to charge gadgets at work during the day.

i won't be driving much at all during the week. once or twice to empty/refill tanks, etc. during the weekends i'll be on the road much more so should be able to keep things charged up better then.

my other electrical needs are very few, fridge but i'll probably only run that during the weekend as i eat all my meals at work during the week, dont drink milk so probably won't have much to i need to keep cold. i plan on changing lights to LED's too so thats a further reduction in usage. no telly etc. very minimal other than the laptop.

i think i'll go the solar route but in future if my little internet side business picks up or i expand i'll need full time power for net access so i might have to invest in a generator for the winter months or as a backup when i need it.
 
The amount of available charging power MUST be more than the daily usage out of the batteries.

You can fit any number of batteries but unless you can recharge them properly, they will go flat and you'll destroy them.

Peter
 
i can get away with charging gadgets but couldn't pull a van up close enough to work and doubt they'd be cool with it if i could.
 
My leisure battery was full again when I woke up a couple of hours ago, currently showing about 15v solar input whilst powering my mifi and media player radio plus USB speakers. If I'd remembered to put my tablet / laptop on charge when I went to sleep last night, they would have been fully charged by now too. And its a dull grey sky day here today.

My solar panel has exceeded my expectations of it and my power source is only limited by my old small leisure battery. With a bigger battery bank I would have surplus power for probably 75% of the year, adequate power for 15% of the year, and nearly enough power but not quite for 10% of the year ( my rough estimates).

During the darkest winter weeks, tbh, its not easy being in van all day because of cold, condensation, wet clothes, wet dogs etc so I tend to make more use of places like libraries, Mac D's etc to get online where I can dry wet coat and boots at same time. If you can find a way of either reducing elec consumption or making use of a fixed elec source for a few weeks each year during the worst winter weeks, a 100+w solar panel should be sufficient. Like I said though, a recharging regime is essential most of the time, although not so important this time if year... I was still getting a charge at 9pm last night.

If i were you, I'd be tempted to invest in a spare leisure battery and quick charger to remain independent of your elec system in the van, which you can put on charge during the day at work and take into van at night simply to power laptop via croc clips and 12v to 19v transformer. I have a spare battery for powering craft tools, it is recharged by a 50w suitcase solar panel. Hardly ever use it as not needed but its there just in case.

The other big advantage of a solar panel is that you'll never have a flat starter battery ever again, or if you do, in the time it takes breakdown services to arrive with jump leads, there will probably be enough solar charge back in the battery to start it.

At a rough guess, my panel would have probably cost a max total of £150 (panel, wire, regulator, fittings) with free fitting ( my regulator was donated - its basic but it does the job, cuts out when input reaches 16.5v to protect battery from frying). You can now probably find a 120w panel for a similar price if you do research.
 
for all you are using a panel of 100/150w will do but fit a splitter like this so engine and van battery will be charged up if your sitting around. ebay £25.
 

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