Dry camping, no inverter

[Koladog]

First day of dry camping and our inverter decides to go on vacation. Will still enjoy the rustic camping with king size bed, fridge, and solar power to charge up our iPhones. Life could be worse.

Back to the shop we go in a few weeks.

[Desert185]

I'm a two, 2K generator guy. Having a backup electrical power source with two 6V GC batts works well for us with no inverters or solar. Less stuff, less problems, but a second gen for redundancy (which we have already needed when one gen was running rough, rich and surging at a high elevation, high temp location).

A couple of my camping buddies had solar, but still had to run the gen. I'd rather camp in the trees than in the sun so the solar panels work sufficiently. A few hours of running a gen each day during coffee maker, microwave, ice maker duty during reasonable daylight hours for battery charging was acceptable by all nearby.

[Koladog]

We have a generator as well but can only run a couple hours a day according to park rules. I salute your camping fortitude of getting by without an inverter.

[Rick]

Me being me (not bashing anyone), and not to say that there's anything wrong with it, but I don't think I'd ever need an inverter. Maybe I'm wrong. We have a smaller TT and do a lot of dry camping and the items we use all run on 12vdc (have 2 batteries). The 19" TV I bought has an AC wall wart that drops and changes the output to 12vdc. I made a 12vdc adapter cord for it. Wife uses CPAP. Same thing...has a wall wart, made a12vdc adapter cord. A lot of things that have wall warts are actually 12vdc and maybe people don't realize it. I just don't see the need to power something with 120vac that actually runs on 12vdc and use extra battery power for the inverter. I understand the use of an inverter for items that are truly 120vac or higher than 12vdc. No need for a generator and it'll run/work. We're not coffee drinkers or big microwave users, so that's not an issue. We use the stove or oven to heat things. I do have 160w of solar, and a small 1300w generator as battery backup (haven't used it yet). The only thing is that I can't run the AC. Thinking of getting 1 large generator or 2 smaller ones and combine them to run it so we can do summertime camping. It can get hot here in So Cal.

[darrylwt]

I run the two 2K Honda also and solar and a 3K inverter I do a lot of off the grid camping

[GaryWT]

I have done my share of dry camping in a tent with the Boy Scouts so when I tow the trailer it is nothing but full hookups. 30 amp or 50 amp, either way it does not matter, lol.

[Koladog]

So here's an update to the situation. After a few hours of diagnosis at the shop (for which they only charged me 1 hour) they have determined that it is either the transfer switch or the GFCI switch that is tripping too fast. They still don't know which one without charging me $1000 in labor to switch out each part and testing it out.

The inverter itself is working but we have to make sure we don't accidentally connect to shore power with the inverter on. If shore power kicks in with the inverter on the transfer switch pops the GFCI instead of smoothly transferring power (which its name implies) to the shore power. We just have to simply unplug from shore power (or when unplugged), turn on the inverter switch to provide power from the battery to the inverter and reset the GFCI switch. A lot better then $1000 to figure out what the problem is and much better than $2200 for a new inverter system altogether.

[denverpilot]

$1000 in labor to bypass a GFCI or a transfer switch? I'm in the wrong biz!