Budgeting

I was thinking about how frequently we are budgeting in the RV... not so much financially, but in many ways of living.

• Sometimes we have full hookups - like this week at Indian Lakes. We have 50A power, water, and sewer hookups - everything we need! We can run every electrical appliance in the motorhome, we can use as much water as we want, we can dump when we want. But... even with this, we keep the black tank closed, so we have to watch to make sure that it is not getting full. Carl will leave the gray tank open when we're hooked up to sewer so I can do laundry or we can take long showers without needing to be concerned about the grey tank filling up. Dwayne and I didn't do that -- we would keep both the grey and black tank closed and just be careful to check, knowing we could dump at any time. The thought process is that it is better to let the black tank (and some would also say, the grey tank) get pretty full before dumping so it is more likely to sweep everything out when you dump.
• Sometimes we have full hookups, but only 30A power. This was the case when we were at Lynchburg. Now, you might think that 30A would mean that we would have 3/5 of the power that we have at 50A, but... that isn't the case. I can't explain how it works, but when we have a 50A hookup, we actually have two lines that are 50A, or 100A of available power, but when we're on 30A, we only have 30A, so we have less than 1/3 of the available power that we would have at 50A (30 versus 100). I generally figure every major appliance (particularly every 'heating' type appliance) on the rig takes 10A, so, if the electric water heater is on, one air conditioner, and I'm warming something up in the microwave, then I'm using 30A. The air conditioners actually take a bit over 10A (certainly when the compressor turns on), so it is chancey whether we can run two air conditioners on 30A, and we certainly cannot run anything else if we are running two air conditioners on 30A. There are always additional loads that may pop up - like the refrigerator cuts on (and since it is a frost free, it also has a heating cycle that runs once a day and takes more power), and the water heater can come on at any time, momentarily sending us beyond 30A and causing the breaker at the post to trip.
• Sometimes we have electric/water or electric only hookups -- the first site we had at Indian Lakes was electric/water, and often at RV service centers, and some county or state parks, the sites are electric only.
  
• With electric/water or electric only, we need to watch how much we are putting into our grey and black tanks. I probably won't do laundry, or will only do it on the day that we're planning to dump. I did some calculations with our new SeeLevel monitor and I think that a normal load of laundry fills about 20% of the grey tank. So, if we're planning to dump tomorrow morning, I might feel confident to do two loads of laundry -- but I'd be watching the grey tank monitor carefully to make sure I don't have it overflow.
• Overflowing the grey tank usually comes up in the shower -- we actually don't know for sure what will happen in Gracie as we've never had a grey tank overflow, but I overflowed the grey tank in Miss Daisy and in Miss Doozie, and they both came up in the shower. You would think that the grey tank water -- just what goes down from the sinks, shower, and washing machine -- wouldn't be all that smelly, but... you'd be wrong! Ugh!
• I've never overflowed the black tank, but I think it backs up into the toilet. Let's just say that I want to avoid that happening!
• If we don't have sewer hookups, then we have to go to a dump station. Campgrounds that do not have full hookups (even campgrounds that do) generally have a dump station. The dump station can become very crowded on days when lots of folks are checking out (like Sunday) with lines of RVs waiting to dump.
  
• If we're on electric only (no water hookup), we also need to watch our fresh tank usage. Again, with the SeeLevel monitor, I was watching while I did laundry and it appeared to take about 10-13% of the fresh tank to do a normal load. The fresh tank holds 105 gallons, the grey tank 65 gallons, and the black tank 45 gallons.
• Carl has a RO (reverse osmosis) system that hooks up to the water from the campground and filters the water. We can get this filtered water through the refrigerator ice and water dispenser. If we are not hooked up to water, there is a reservoir of water - about 3-3.5 gallons - that we can draw from for drinking water and cooking - but we need to hook the RO system back up to a supply of water to refill the reservoir. Carl also has a 7 gallon container that he fills with RO water when we're leaving a campground and not positive about whether we will have fresh water hookups at our next location.
• If we don't have water hookups, there is usually somewhere in the campground that we can use to fill our fresh tank. Depending on how empty the fresh tank has gotten, it can take several minutes to fill the 105 gallon fresh tank. At some campgrounds, the fresh water fill is near the dump station - so you may be filling your fresh tank while you're dumping. Again, if there is a line due to a lot of people checking out, you kind of want to move along. A couple of campgrounds that we've been to don't have water spigots at the sites, but they are randomly available around the campground -- I remember one in Ohio where they were along the campground road every 10 sites or so... and you had to stop along the road and hook up to it to fill your fresh tank - pretty much blocking the road through the campground as you did!
• Note however, that getting RO water is really not possible when we just have temporary access to a water spigot (it takes a while to "make" RO water). In those cases, we can take our 7 gallon container to a water dispenser (like Primo or Glacier - often located at grocery stores or Walmart) and get drinking/cooking water. We can also purchase gallons of distilled water (that's what Dwayne and I did in Miss Doozie). You might wonder why we don't just use tap water but... the water quality varies greatly from one location to another, and we just are more comfortable with knowing that we've done what we can to get clean water.
• Finally, we may be boondocking, or staying with no hookups at all. We use fresh water from our fresh tank, and use our grey and black tanks -- we've figured that we can go 7-10 days without having to have hookups to dump and/or fill (but, of course, I don't do laundry in the rig when we're boondocking). We have house batteries that we use for electricity - many things in the rig run on 12V power off the batteries directly (lights, water pump, blowers for the diesel heating system, slide motors, exhaust/attic fans), and then we have an inverter that provides 120V power to many of the appliances (refrigerator, all appliances plugged into power outlets -- our computers, coffee maker, Instant Pot, blender) -- but anything pulling 120V power will use up our batteries more quickly than 12V items - both because they need more power, and because the conversion of 12V to 120V by the inverter is not "free". So, we need to be cognizant of our power usage, and watch our batteries to be sure that they are not pulled down to too low a value. We can recharge the batteries in several ways: when we are driving, the alternator for the engine also charges the house batteries; we have a generator that we can start that will not only charge the batteries but will also give us power for all the appliances on board (if we're boondocking and it is hot, we run the generator to be able to run the air conditioners); and we have solar panels (though they are not currently hooked up) that can charge the batteries. Obviously, when we're boondocking, we have to be the most aware of all of the systems we're using and make sure that we're doing good budgeting of our limited resources.
  

It is interesting to realize how our mind changes from day to day or week to week as *what* we need to budget varies. This week that we have been at Indian Lakes, with full hookups and 50A, has been like being on vacation - no need to economize when using water or electricity - Whoo-Hoo! How exciting! But, it is also "fun" to work together to figure out how we can stay longer by using less at times - using a dishpan in the kitchen sink to collect rinse water and then dumping it outside, taking "navy" showers (turning the water off as much as possible) -- and then it makes us appreciate full hookups so much more!