Earlier this year we returned to our boondocking roots for a month in the deserts of Arizona in our bus. It was oh so wonderful to be out in nature, on our own and feeling abundant in the systems we had long ago setup on Zephyr. From water management, tanks, solar and lithium – in […]
Lithium Ion Batteries
What Killed Our RV Lithium Batteries? 8.5 Years of LiFePo4
In what seems like another world now, last December we replaced our dead lithium batteries in our vintage bus, Zephyr. We originally installed our GBS lithium cells back in August 2011 – and as far as we can tell, we were amongst the first motorhomes to have a lithium house battery system, and we were […]
Tour of our Boat’s Electrical System – Solar, Lithium & Inverters! (Updated for 2025)
As technomads – our mobile electrical systems are the lifeblood of our various nomadic homes. After all – we need to keep all this technology powered up somehow. And while stock RV and boat electrical systems are often perfectly useable (if somewhat limited) – whenever we embrace a technomadic home we just can’t resist diving […]
Running an RV AC off Solar, Batteries, and a Hybrid Boosting Inverter
We’re currently driveway surfing with friends in coastal Georgia, where it’s pretty darn hot (and crazy humid!) as the summer fast approaches. They only have a 15A power outlet on a front porch available for us to plug a long extension cord into, which for many RVs would mean blowing breakers or limping along without […]
Tesla’s Lithium Powerwall – Awesome, But Not For RVs
Oct 31, 2016 Update: Telsa just recently announced the Powerwall 2, and we’ve started getting questions on it too. Here’s our take on it: From an RVers perspective, I don’t see any practical difference between the PowerWall 1 and PowerWall 2. The big change with the PowerWall 2 is that the inverter is integrated and not […]
Living the Lithium Lifestyle – 3.5 Year Lithium RV Battery Update
One of the most unusual frequently asked questions we get asked out on the road: “How’s your lithium batteries working out?” We’ve even had strangers come up to ask, occasionally without even saying hi first! But I get the curiosity. That we are using lithium batteries for our RV house battery bank is one of […]
Bus Projects: The Master Tech Marathon
2015 Note: After our awesome 2014 experience documented below, we returned to Master Tech RV in Summer 2015 for a new paint job, hydronics installation, generator swap out and other projects. This time, after a year of getting to know Tim better across the country, we’d be dropping our bus/RV off for 6-8 weeks while we […]
Lithium Dreams, Lined With Worry? (Response to Boeing Dreamliner Battery Fire)
A few people have asked if the Boeing Dreamliner being grounded over a lithium battery fire has given us any cause for alarm, considering our bus is also equipped with a lithium battery bank. Unfortunately, none of the media coverage of the Boeing Dreamliner issues have bothered to give much technical information on the batteries […]
A Year On Lithium
Has it been a year already? When we bought our bus last summer it had no house battery bank or inverter installed – critical features of utmost importance for two Technomads who depend on ample electricity for both our work and social lives. We knew this was an area we needed to immediately address if […]
Boosted Electrons = Better Views
We’ve had a lot of requests for updates on our lithium battery system, but the truth is that it hasn’t been getting much of a workout. We’ve spent the past several months focusing on being near family, and we haven’t had any opportunity to tackle the solar panel project or to do any boondocking. Instead […]
