Happy 2023!

January 7, 2023

Happy New Year to everyone (and since we are technically still in the Christmas season--Merry Christmas as well!)

The first half of December was busy and not particularly interesting to write about. We got settled into our new "home" for the next three months at an RV park in Ruskin, Florida (just south of Tampa). We are in a great location for everything we need for the next few months--plenty of shopping close by, excellent wifi, access to doctors, plenty of things to see and do (when we get around to it), convenient to the airport, and walking distance to a church and an Amazon locker (and the dentist too, but hopefully we won't need those services too frequently!)

Our RV park is very quiet and filled with mostly snowbirds and permanent residents who have all been quite friendly. Upon moving in on December 1, we (mostly Rick) managed to squeeze Phil the trailer into our tight-ish spot without hitting anyone else (yay!).  

Our home for three months

We put up some curtains on our back deck for a homey look (and a little extra privacy).

RV parks are generally not our favorite venue, on account of the close spacing and lack of nature, but the price and location are spot-on, and we could probably live almost anywhere for three months. And, we surely can't complain about the weather. Most of the days in the first half of December were sunny and in the low 80s. Now in January, it is cooler, but still pleasant in the low to mid 70s.

Sure did not feel like December here!

The first couple of weeks of December were mostly spent visiting doctors, shopping, getting started on some RV maintenance, and preparing for our trip Up North for Christmas. We don't have many exciting pictures to share of these activities, but our local laundromat (named "Soap Opera" 😉) is quite the interesting establishment. On the plus side, it has lots and lots of various sizes of washers and dryers (in good working condition), and it is conveniently located just down the street from us.

Soap Opera is quite the visual experience, complete with neon and mirrors. 

It even has a mini arcade.

We did manage to take one bike ride (so far) to a couple of local beaches around our immediate neighborhood.  We hope to return soon.

Have to chuckle at this "elevation" chart after being in the mountains much of the summer!

In mid December, we flew to Minneapolis to visit with our kids who all conveniently now live in St. Paul. We had a wonderful time and were able to experience a very, very white Christmas (and beyond). Our kids are putting together a "guest blogpost" to chronicle our visit. Check back soon (or later, depending on when they actually get it written 😉).

Sneak preview of our Christmas trip to St. Paul

Our flight back to Tampa on January 4 in the midst of a snowstorm was only delayed 2 hours, so we considered that a win. Since we didn't pony-up to pay extra for seats of our choosing, we ended up with the only seat on the plane with no window.

No window for us!

Tampa airport--look, no snow!

Looking ahead to the rest of 2023, Julie has finalized our schedule for the year, and has made a good many reservations so far.  Here is a map of our anticipated route:

March: Northern Florida, Coastal Alabama, Louisiana, Texas April: Arizona, Southern Nevada May: California June: Oregon July: Washington August: Northern Idaho, Montana, South Dakota, Minnesota September: Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan October: Michigan, Cincinnati, Tennessee November: Alabama, Florida December: Florida

If anyone would like to meet up with us anywhere we are traveling, please let us know!

Rick's technical corner:

At the RV park we have a regular electric meter and are billed monthly for what we use.  I always like to optimize my spending (as little as possible), and we have solar and batteries which I would like to use to reduce our electric bill.  Interestingly, the Victron equipment I have already has a mode for this!  I was able to tell the MultiPlus inverter/charger to prioritize using the solar and batteries over incoming electric to save a small amount of money.  I also calculated that heating our hot water with electric was cheaper than using propane so the water heater is on electric as well (so no real propane usage except the oven).

The MultiPlus setup is as follows:  

1. When more than 2600 watts of AC is required then it will connect to shore power for AC (our MultiPlus inverter maxes our at 2600 watts continuous - so if I didn't do this it would overload).

1. Shore power turns back off when the load is less than 200 watts for 20 minutes.

2. When the battery gets down to 50% empty then the MultiPlus will connect the shore power AC to charge the battery (and take over all the AC loads).

1. The battery charger float setting is set at 13.41 volts (quite low for lithium - normally set to 13.6 volts).

2. The battery charger maximum current is set to 20 amps (so it charges quite slowly and would keep up with all our standard DC loads if the solar system were to completely fail - normally set to 100 amps).

3. The AC will disconnect if the battery voltage is above 13.4 volts for 20 minutes (this has been working out to be about 65% full).

So far this appears to be working properly and we are currently filling half of our electric needs from solar.  Even though we have had full sun, we are at the shortest days of the year and are only harvesting about 3.3kWh per day from the solar system.  For reference - the maximum solar we have gotten in a day is 7.3kWh during the summer.  Also for reference - during the summer on full sun days we can run our water heater on electric and support all our AC needs from just solar with no electric hookups, so it makes sense that we would need to supplement half of our electricity because we are only getting half of our summer time solar charging.

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