Overland Power (5 Viewers)

[FrazzledHunter]

Getting ready for COTR. Driving the 200 as a daily this week until we leave have the EcoFlow flow all set up and just running it to see how goes. Well today didn’t go very well. It’s 90+ degrees here in Kansas City and today I let the fridge go with the Delta 2 hooked to it while the truck was parked in a parking lot at work all day. Black truck, hot sun on black asphalt. I probably should’ve realized this wasn’t gonna be a recipe for success essentially the delta 2 shuts itself down if it gets too hot and you can’t charge it or do anything with it until it cools down, which is hard to do when it’s 90°. The good news is the fridge kept running and is still running on its own battery, but if I was camping somewhere without access to Power, I’d be in trouble right now. The fridge is about done and my Delta 2 is at 7% with the temp light blinking. If I were camping, I’d have to hook the fridge to the cigarette lighter of the truck and just turn the truck on to keep the fridge going.

It’s 84° now with a low of like 73 tonight I’m trying to decide if I just let the battery sit in the closed up truck and see how it is in the morning as an experiment or if I should bring the thing inside and cool it down.

Edit: decided to take it into the house to cool it down. Took a while, but eventually the high temp and battery failure lights went out and it’s charging now. I’m very relieved. I was worried I fried it three days before I leave for Colorado.

Am I try to see if I can either borrow or buy 100 W solar panel or something just as a back up. I think the other thing I need to keep in mind is that in my normal Overlanding scenario I would be driving most of the day and I would have the AC running in the truck in which case I wouldn’t probably have overheated the battery. Letting it sit all day in the sun in a parking lot was not a great idea.

We recently ran into the heat problem in spades when we camped at Devil's Garden campground inside Arches National Park. We had daily 100F+ heat, 10-30 mph winds and DUST. We kept the Dometic fridge and the Yeti 1500X cool enough so they would cool and charge when we were driving with air conditioning but if we stopped for a 3 hour hike the interior was blisteting hot. So hot that the Dometic couldn't cool and the Yeti couldn't charge. Also, you couldn't crack the windows or sunroof to vent the heat due to the dust kicked up by the high winds. I was paeticularly worried about dust being sucked into the units by their cooling fans.

So out of desperation I opened 2 windows half way and used blue painters tape to attach and seal cloth hand towels over the openings. This actually worked as the high winds moved a bit of air through the cabin while the cloth towels filtered most of the dust.

I was able to keep the temperature in the cabin down at night simply by cracking the windows as nighttime temperatures went down to the upper 60's and the winds died down which eliminated dust worries.

What I need to get/design for Moab scenarios is a system that takes filtered air from the outside and blows it into the cabin. Bruder trailers of Australia has such a system although it's designed to pressurize the trailer to keep dust out, not cool. Enough air volume would do both.

 

[lx200inAR]

We recently ran into the heat problem in spades when we camped at Devil's Garden campground inside Arches National Park. We had daily 100F+ heat, 10-30 mph winds and DUST. We kept the Dometic fridge and the Yeti 1500X cool enough so they would cool and charge when we were driving with air conditioning but if we stopped for a 3 hour hike the interior was blisteting hot. So hot that the Dometic couldn't cool and the Yeti couldn't charge. Also, you couldn't crack the windows or sunroof to vent the heat due to the dust kicked up by the high winds. I was paeticularly worried about dust being sucked into the units by their cooling fans.

So out of desperation I opened 2 windows half way and used blue painters tape to attach and seal cloth hand towels over the openings. This actually worked as the high winds moved a bit of air through the cabin while the cloth towels filtered most of the dust.

I was able to keep the temperature in the cabin down at night simply by cracking the windows as nighttime temperatures went down to the upper 60's and the winds died down which eliminated dust worries.

What I need to get/design for Moab scenarios is a system that takes filtered air from the outside and blows it into the cabin. Bruder trailers of Australia has such a system although it's designed to pressurize the trailer to keep dust out, not cool. Enough air volume would do both.

Have you looked at the window socks they sell on Amazon fairly cheap? They'd probably be a good solution for this provided they filter the dust enough. I have a set, but have yet to have occasion to use them.

This is the one I have, there are tons by many different sellers, i'm sure they are all similar. Maybe a double layer would work with the dust, if one set isn't enough.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00Y9SM9M6

 

[FrazzledHunter]

Have you looked at the window socks they sell on Amazon fairly cheap? They'd probably be a good solution for this provided they filter the dust enough. I have a set, but have yet to have occasion to use them.

This is the one I have, there are tons by many different sellers, i'm sure they are all similar. Maybe a double layer would work with the dust, if one set isn't enough.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00Y9SM9M6

Never heard of these. The issue would be dust I think.

The solution just has to be more complicated LOL.

 

[FrazzledHunter]

Never heard of these. The issue would be dust I think.

The solution just has to be more complicated LOL.

Right now at Mammoth Campground getting 150W from my Merlin XP-170 to my Goal Zero 1500X when in full sun. Best part is the air is cool and unlike Moab, NO DUST so windows can remain open.