Full-Time Off Grid LIVING in a Big Rig! 6 Boondocking Must-Have’s

so the question is how do we take this big 44t toy hauler boondocking off grid and still work full-time and still have all the modern conveniences that we want we're going to show you how in this [Music] video [Music] our channel is called like there's no tomorrow so about 18 months ago we uh were faced with what a lot of people do kid going last kid had going to college and we knew we wanted something different so we decided to sell everything and try this full-time RV life now what's different about us is we both still work full-time digitally so we knew that that was going to be part of the challenge it's part of the reason why we have a big rig because we needed offices uh berries is in the back in the garage of the toy hauler and I'm where normally the kitchen dinette would be so this was a really important thing so when we first started we went to campgrounds just like everybody else and then slowly we were like some of these campgrounds are not great it's tight there's a lot of people and then we started to learn about boondocking so what is boondocking it's kind of like going off grid basically so you're you have no hookups uh you're typically going into a BLM land or known as Bureau of Land Management land um and it's just or dry camping is another word for it so you there's no electricity there's no uh water right yeah just you're on your own with whatever you have so you have to create your own energy you have to create be able to hold your own water and um do something with your waist on your own so there was a a lot of learning curve for us and we we're ready for the challenge but it was a little scary right but the biggest thing is could we take our 44t toy hauler into these areas safely and that's where our boondocking Journey started why would we even want to be off- grid I mean there's conveniences in a campground right well we started to realize the freedom of being able to go places whenever you want there's no checkin checkout times um and just being able to let the dog play and run to be able to walk out your back door and have a lot of space and uh you get to stay at some pretty amazing places where people are not on top of each other in fact there's sometimes you can't even see a camper close to you so there was a lot of appeal um and just that freedom and saving money I mean come on parks are like I mean in California our most expensive one was like $120 a night and that about killed me but you can find some lower but what if you could do nothing or very little and that was super appealing because we could be self-contained if we just made some little changes here and there to our rig and make it more convenient okay so the first thing that you you have to take into consideration is where are you going to park this big rig and that's where we're going to start with this video hey guys so we are at our boondocking destination in anab bgo and Barry just took the bikes off of the toy hauler or one of them and is going out to try to see if we're going to find a spot out there for us we see some people driving around but they're much smaller than us hopefully they're leaving but that's one of the things that we always try to do uh when we're going to boondocking spots is to have a couple of options and uh even though you look at it on Google Earth and stuff you don't know what's going to be available and with us being as heavy and as big as we are and a toy hauler um you just want to make sure that ground is solid that there's no gigantic ruts and uh that you can uh safely get in and get out so that's what he's doing right now and we'll find out in a second what he [Music] finds okay so the first spot I looked at whenever we came here to anab bgo um you saw me come in on the bike you'll notice or maybe you didn't notice but there's there was a lot of ruts and and pretty deep dips and when you've got a 44t toy hauler that weighs 30,000 plus pounds you don't want to be going over those if you can avoid it so I kind of knew right out of the gate that this probably wasn't a good path however as you look at this you might think well wow it's got a big open area but still this is not a great path for for one major reason is that this is way very much off level so you know I know you're thinking well I've got auto level right but you this I'm telling you you don't want to be in in a in a situation that's this off level it's just not worth it so and then another thing that you want to look at is that you know we're completely dependent upon solar so we want to be as much in an open space as much as possible and even though as cool as this background is it's really awesome to think wow we could camp right up here under the under the hill or whatever that's going to block the Sun a lot of the a lot of in the morning so it's going to really hurt your your solar so definitely want to be in big open areas it may seem a little extreme to actually take your bikes off of your RV and go scout out these areas but let me show you something if you look back here you see those big nasty ruts full of water there's no way to see that from the road so the truth is it's a it's absolutely worth it so if you don't have ebike I mean ebikes are fantastic there's still a little bit of a hassle to take off the RV but if you have just a regular bike that would work or very worst case you just walk it because the truth is if you have a really large rig you're probably not going to be able to go that far off the road anyway so you're not going to have to walk very far we ended up picking a spot that wasn't too far up the highway in fact you can see it the highway sign is right there but this place is so quiet I mean there are cars that go up and down but they're pretty rare so overall this place is like dead quiet most of the time I rode my bike down this road and it was clear that we weren't going to be able to go any further thankfully we found this spot was right close to the entrance but I was able to just pull up there and back it in it was definitely tight but we made it happen and as you can see it's pretty level and all in all it's turned out to be a great spot the next thing we need to talk about of course is water so one thing that we definitely recommend is fill up your water as much as possible before you go to a boondocking spot we have a 100g fresh tank we fill it all the way preferably at an RV park or there's lots of places that you can go to get fresh water sometimes you have to pay for it sometimes you don't but eventually you're going to run out we're going to be here for 2 weeks so I pretty much know that we're probably going to run out of fresh water after around 6 days so I have this this is a 60gal water bladder so what I have to do the reason it's in the back of the truck is cuz I put it in here like this and then I'll go to a place we'll look it up um there's plenty of places that you can look up these see where there's fresh water and I'll just go there and I'll fill it up and it gets big like a balloon and then I actually have to take a a little water pump bring it back to the RV and then make it go back into the freshwater tank in the same way that you would if you were at an RV park let's talk about everybody's favorite topic poop so we have a 60gal waste tank and you might be wondering Barry why is that in the back of your truck it's because that's how where you have to put it if you're going to get the waist out of the RV to a dump station which might be 10 miles down the road because where we're at right now there are no dump stations sometimes you're going to stay at places where they actually have a dump station just 100 yards away and that in that situation you can actually put it on the hitch but not when you're out rving in the middle of nowhere so we have an actual pump it's called a murator pump murator pump I don't know how to pronounce that obviously you take your choice May me comment below is it m serator or murator um so you have this pump that actually pumps it up the gravity pumps it up into this does it stink does it make a mess yes on both accounts um that's just part of it so you get it all the way full and when this thing Pop Goes the Weasel you better turn it off [Applause] so so what you do then is then you drive your happy waste tank all the way down to the dump station and you hook it up right here put it into the hole let it rip so when do we first decided to Boondock one of the first things that I started thinking about is oh no more long hot showers I wasn't really crazy about that but it's not that bad um you figure out ways to you utilize the water better so that you can conserve water but still be clean and do all the things you need to do so here's some tips uh for showering get one of these this is like one of those collapsible uh laundry bins we use this in the kitchen sink sometimes but when you're showering the hardest part is when you let the water heat up you lose all that water you can use that water so what we usually do is we have a shower um nozzle here that has a shut off valve and so that you can heat the water up Let it Blow into the bucket till it gets hot and then turn it off at the valve that way when you get in you immediately have hot water you can do the military shower which yes it's not as fun but uh it gets the job done and you have hot water when you need it you just flip that button instead of turning it off at the at the valve because then you lose all that good hot water and have to do it all over again so that's a little Time Saver and water saver and then with that water you can then use it I mean it's clean water you're not doing anything with it so you could use it to fill your toilets you could use it uh you know just water plants or just anything that you need water for that isn't just like drinking water so that's a good one um another thing is in between showering so you don't shower as much obviously or you're going to use up all your water really quickly in between you can use wipes I know it sounds crazy I thought it was crazy at the beginning too but it totally does the job there's little wipes there's big wipes just yeah just keep things clean in between the shower time I mean here's the thing about the West you don't get hot and sweaty like you do where we're from in Florida you know there's what we call swamp ass it's a thing we don't have that in the west you're dry it's dry even when I go out and work out outside you just don't get as sweaty as you do in other parts of the country so that's kind of like why we like boondocking in the west but wipes are a great way of doing that another thing is when you wash your teeth or brush your teeth don't let you never want the water to just run there's no sense in it so fill your cup brush your teeth use the water in the cup to swish and spit and don't just it's again you just want to avoid letting the water run okay now we're going to get controversial we did not do this at first we were filling our black tank way too quickly when we were boondocking and you know we were having some issues with you know it's just the Tank's getting all cruddy and having to be cleaned a lot so when we are Bo docking we will use and I know we're going to get the comments on this one bring them on let me hear from you we use doggy poo bags and we use this for the tissue number one or number two whatever you want to say um we don't throw the tissue down the toilet we will put in the dog poo bag wrap it up put it and then in the aligned trash can and there's no smell it's not that gross but it saves your tanks from to be emptied all the time like Barry said earlier we can go almost 2 weeks without dumping our tanks and that to me is totally worth it again don't knock it till you try it poo bags here we are in the kitchen there's a lot of opportunity to save on water and waste um when you're boondocking it's always on your mind so one of the things is uh you know again when you're doing dishes dishes are probably the kitchen sink fills up faster than anything else um you want to kind of keep a soapy bowl of water in the sink and just clean things sit it all down never don't let the water run until you're ready to rinse so you fill the bowl wash everything and then turn it on just to rinse and turn it off in between each thing when you're taking it to the side to to drain um it saves a lot of water if you do it that way another way you can um save on waste is paper everything um you we have bowls and plates for every size if I have uh something I need to mix up like uh dressing I'll put it in a paper bowl and mix it up I very rarely use our bowls and plates uh the regular ones when we're boondocking we just turn to paper for everything uh because again you don't have to wash it the only exception in that is wine glasses and coffee cups you have to have the real ones for those or it's just not enjoyable so we have boundaries boondocking uh another thing is like when you need to marinate or mix or anything that put it all in baggies I do that with my meat a lot I'll do put the marinade in there put the meat let it sit and then all I have to do is throw the bag away so it saves a lot on that and again saving if you have a cutting board or anything like that you can prevent having to clean the cutting board if you use like parchment sheets this is a huge one I use these all the time so when I'm prepping um it could be everything from Veg to meat or anything that I just don't want the board to get dirty I'll use the parchment sheets and it keeps me from having to clean it now if you were really on it like when you did anything with meat you would wear like rubber gloves so then you didn't have to wash your hands afterwards because you're going to use a lot of water washing meat off your hands so that's another one I always forget to do it I'll be honest with you but it's a great idea so you should you should do that uh another thing is we cannot run our wonderful curig uh in the mornings when we have no sun so we get up on Eastern time it's pitch dark so uh can't do the Cure because we usually don't want to use our batteries up so we have this really cool little Contraption and what we do is we heat up our water in the one whole Kettle just like this and then you put the little cone filters in the top set this in here put your coffee in and you just pour that whole pot into the little um what do you call that drip coffee maker like pour over pour over there you go so and it I'm telling you guys I like this coffee almost better than the cured coffee it's really really good good so the only thing is when you get up at 4:30 in the morning 4:30 in the morning like we do to work eastern time when we're in the Pacific Zone waiting for this thing to brew is a testament not only to your patience but your marriage like nobody wants to talk without their coffee in the morning so you're just waiting you're just pouring and waiting and pouring and waiting but it's totally worth it and you don't have to use up all your battery running your coffee maker let's talk about power when you're boondocking or you're living off grid obviously you got to have it if and you need it to be steady to where you don't have to worry about it so you're pretty much going to have to invest in solar so we have around 1,500 watts of solar panels on the roof and we have 800 amp hours of lithium batteries down here and we also have a 3,000 watt inverter it's a multi plus two made by victron so if you're wondering what does that allow us to do do well it pretty much allows us to do everything that we need to do except run the air conditioners so we can run our computers we've got big computer screens we can run our microwave obviously all the lights uh we have a big screen TV that we watch um pretty consistently and we get enough solar power during the day that it our batteries basically just keep us running but we do need to supplement at night pretty much around around the time we go to bed we'll we'll run the generator for maybe an hour or so just to bring the batteries from down around 60 so% up to hopefully around 100% okay we have our main generator this is an old Onin 5500 generator which is kind of considered the industry standard we got this really cheap at the end of the pandemic and frankly it's given us a lot of problems um if you're using it is gas it's not propane SO gas engines if you're putting ethanol into them a lot of times it's going to gum up the carburetor unless you consistently start it and it's really just hard to keep the carburetor clean and it it's really temperamental and I never know if it's going to start so I'd really like to get rid of it to be honest if you're looking at an owning 5500 generator we only paid $1,200 for this used so I feel like we've gotten a lot of good use out of it for that amount of money but be prepared to put a lot of work into it and again if you want something that's going to be reliable when you're out off in the wilderness you definitely would probably want to buy something a little bit newer the problem is the the new own and 5500s are between I think between 5 and $6,000 so it's a major investment because we were having so many issues with the Onin I thought it would be good to have a backup generator okay so this is a champion 2500 uh inverter generator the thing I like about it is it's dual fuel which means it runs on both uh gasoline and propane I really wanted to get get away from gasoline period because for the same reasons that I don't like the the gasoline in the our big generator but the problem that I've noticed with this is that propane you really it's got a crank start and you really got to crank on it a lot to get the propane in there and sometimes I've cranked on this thing probably 30 to 40 times before I can get it to start on propane so I learned a little trick in a Facebook group which is you put regular gas in there start it there for a while and then you switch over to propane and it tends to work again it's these kinds of things that are just sort of a pain but you learn them along the way here we are obviously on the roof so these two big solar panels actually came with the RV uh but they were nowhere near enough to power what we needed to so we went ahead and had these four installed at the same time that we did all the other stuff I was going to try to do this myself and then the more I studied it I thought there is no way that I'm going to be able to do this so we did hire professional solar installers and just to let you know it cost around $5,000 by the time in fact it was 5,000 on the nose but I ordered all the stuff and they just came over and installed it so I think that these solar panels are around 225 watts each and these are actually called bif facial so they'll they'll get power from from both sides but we don't have the the stands so we're actually going to get some stands and and make them prop up so um you can get better Sun like when the sun's over there right now if we could prop these up it would be facing the Sun and we might not even need the generator at all let's talk about internet so it's obviously it's key for us as digital marketers and just let's face it just as humans in general right now you need to pretty much have full-time Wi-Fi access all the time so we have them all we have starlink we have Verizon we have AT&T that we kind of forgot about and we also have this which is T-Mobile so after having all of those what's our favorite it's not starlink it's this it's T-Mobile T-Mobile has the family plan 50 bucks a month truly unlimited the thing I frankly can't stand about Verizon and some of those other plans is that they say that it's unlimited Wi-Fi but it's not basically what they do is that they give you a certain amount of data and then they throttle you after a certain amount of time and it's like going back to 1994 or whatever with dialup speeds that's that's just not going to work right so you need to either have something that's truly unlimited starlink is truly unlimited and so is T-Mobile T-Mobile is 50 bucks a month starlink is what 125 130 and so we actually have both so we knew that we were going to need you know being digital marketers this is what we do for a living we needed to have full-time pristine access no matter what it's condition critical to the way that we live so the pros and cons it are the T-Mobile you have to be in a place where there's T-Mobile reception obviously so if you're in a spot where there's just no T-Mobile it's not going to work the good thing about starlink is as long as You' got a clear shot to the sky and it can reach a satellite you're going to get it so usually in a boondocking spot starlink is going to win but we've been shocked at how much T-Mobile actually connects when you're out in the middle of nowhere so our vote T-Mobile and starlink and you're good to go so here are some extras that I think are boondocking mus haves well maybe not must haves but they sure do make my life a lot easier so I'm all about it um this shade so this is a Vista shade and it attaches to your awning and it just basically not only Shades the area so you can sit here I mean I I think it's nice when it's really hot you can when we work out it gives you a little extra shade but the number one thing is my office is right in the kitchen dinette slide spot and this really does help me uh when it comes to the sun beating in on me while I'm working so I really like it I think it's totally worth it and if you stake it down I mean unless it gets super windy um it's it's been great we've had it up the first 3 days we're here and it's it keeps everything in in place and um and again during the day that sun is so bright sometimes so this really does help a lot another thing I think is a must have when you're boondocking is there's sand everywhere here so these mats are so important to basically keep as much of the dirt coming into your house as possible I it's not possible but it does cut down between the dog's Paws and our shoes and things like that at least it gives you a place to kind of knock some of it off before you go in and speaking of knocking the dirt off this is a cool find this was actually Barry's idea I did not want it but now it's totally comes in handy so you can take basically your foot and get any of the sand and rocks and dirt off before you go inside which is much appreciated by the person who cleans the floors a lot although Barry just cleaned my floors so that's a big checkbox for the husband today well there you have it our successful boondocking in a big rig breakdown if there was any part that you'd like more information on please reach out in the comments we hope to expand on the how-to of some of these boondocking tips in the future let us know what interests you the most please support our Channel and help us make more helpful and inspiring RV videos by subscribing ring the bell to be informed every time we release a new video thanks and get out there and live like there's no tomorrow

Channel: Like There's No Tomorrow

Views: 54,871

Keywords: off grid, boondocking, rv, rv life, rvlife, RV Tip, RV Batteries, RV Water, RV Solar, Solar, RV Power, free camping, free rv

Id: 88h9mcsnugQ

Length: 25min 2sec (1502 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 02 2024