herb

Am in the process of building small sleeping quarters onto my new gooseneck trailer. just 42" wide 96" long and 51" high. bed ---dvd player---laptop.
Am wasting way too much money on the road in hotel rooms , this way i can shower and sleep at truck stops and save a buck or two, plus a lot easier to park in truck stops than hotels.
any advise about electrifing---heating---air conditioning? i have a 12 volt battery mounted on the front wall of it for the winch. thinking would like to charge battery from truck and use inverter ?

Not completly finished but getting close'

CTD NUT

A couple big RV style batteries and a good inverter should take care of all your household power needs but AC is out of the question.......even if you did have a large enough converter, you would need a large bank of batteries to run the AC for any length of time. Even a small window unit will require 1600 - 1800 watts of power......if AC is important to you, I would suggest a small generator.

herb

air is about a must planned on getting one of those coleman air/heater combos that mount on top of rv's . with as small an area as it is going to service it should not have to do much. i have a 5000 watt generator but it is awfully big to be toteing around and awfully loud.

CODODGE2500MAN

Please post the pics when you get her finished!

crobtex

AC is a necessity! Find a place to mount and enclose the generator on the trailer. Or, even in the back of the truck and use a short extension cord.

CODODGE2500MAN

also keep in mind you could enclose the generator except the exhaust in a sound proof box

herb

should proably provide outside intake air too ? most of the roof top air conditioners /heater combos ,13500btu seems to be the smallest, require 19 amps , still looking for wattage requirements

herb

can you charge a battery thru the 7 pin coupler/trailer plug ?

herb

found a 7700 btu that only uses 9 amps

crobtex

I would think you could wire it to charge, just like a travel trailer. I would put a battery isolater, or at least a breakover switch on the ground wire at the trailer battery to keep from running the truck batteries down.

Also, by enclosing, I was talking about the mesh steel like on landscape trailers. Plenty of air and still locked up.

CTD NUT

Watts = Volts x Amps

9 x 120 = 1080 watts

19 x 120 = 2280 watts

I agree a 5000 watt gen. would be a bit much to tote around (loud too).... a gen. half that size would be just fine......the Hondas in that size range are extremely quiet. You would need an aweful lot of battery capacity to sustain an AC unit of either size for any length of time. I don't see a way around using a gen. if you require AC?

crobtex

Make a "sound barrier" by hinging two pieses of plywood together in a "V". Cover the side facing the generator with rubber backed indoor/outdoor carpet and you will be surprised how quiet it will be from just a few feet way.

herb

so where is the best place to get a generator ? (electric start). Don't know that it needs to be "top of the line" for the amount of use it will get.

crobtex

Home Depot, Northern Tools, Pep Boys, Tractor Supply.......

Prices for the size you need will range from about $400 to $1,000 or more. There is another thread going on generators as we speak.

https://www.dieseltruckresource.com/...ight=generator

Jim Lane

The trick setup would be to use a APU (auxillary power unit) for all of your needs. The AC and heat in addition to electrical power are all integrated into one package.
This one has a built in 12,000 BTU AC.
By the time you have bought a RV roof air/ heat and generator and built an enclosure, you can have one of these.
For a mobile installation I would use a RV type genset, because they are made to run in an enclosed enviroment. plus they run at 1800 RPM which means they are quiet.
Also I don't think I would feel good about trying to sleep while a little single cylinder engine is screaming at 3600 RPM unattended. It is diffrent when you are awake and are able to watch it.
I have 2 Onan 1800 RPM gensets I use for standby service If I don't need to fire up the beast. (check my genset in my gallery)
Check the ones they have mounted on the telco trucks and cable splice vans, they have a nice setup. Some of the Onan's have a hydraulic pump on the drive end that you can use to run a hydraulic winch, compressor or ?
You can find them is surplus equipment auctions or sometimes on E-Bay.


http://www.coloradostandby.com/catal...ource=overture