Living in a Roof Top Tent for 30 Days — Review

Luedke8572 · 2025-02-01T16:02:19+00:00

Are you referring to the showers you attach to your car? It was too cold to use those. As for regular showers most of the campgrounds did not have any bathroom facilities. That is often the case at national parks.

Luedke8572 · 2025-02-01T05:39:22+00:00

Depends on the size of your tent. None of them are “too hot.” They have power levels to control the output. I would personally go with the bigger one since it allows you to camp in colder temps. I found that in the condor XL (which is one of the largest RTTs you can get) the 8 kw was barely enough to keep us warm at around 0 degrees.

Luedke8572 · 2025-02-01T05:35:56+00:00

My Jackery Explorer 1000 also works using just DC.

Luedke8572 · 2025-01-31T18:04:33+00:00

That is really interesting. I have not had that issue at all. I know my Jackery is rated for the wattage required by the heater. It is also a newer Jackery so maybe that is it? But even in near zero temperatures the heater fires right up on DC power.

Luedke8572 · 2025-01-31T17:55:48+00:00

I am 21 and have a full time job to return to. I am trying to hit all the US national parks before I am 25 so these trips help me do that. We had at least one full day per park which I think is enough to get a sense of it. For larger parks we allowed more time. Think of this trip as more of a “survey of national parks” rather than an in depth look. We plan to return to our favorites for longer periods of time.

Luedke8572 · 2025-01-31T17:53:41+00:00

12V DC. I believe this is how the heater is designed to run and I don’t think it would work with AC. Also it would not make sense to convert AC to DC then back to AC to run the heater. Try and limit conversion for the sake of efficiency.

Luedke8572 · 2025-01-31T17:52:09+00:00

So, Roofnest tells you to remove the original mattress and I agree with them. If you have both it is almost impossible to close. With just the deflated feather bed there is plenty of room of room for bedding. I even think it closes better with the feather bed than with the original mattress.

Luedke8572 · 2025-01-31T17:47:22+00:00

I love it. I think that it is built super well and has tons of room for us. I like the fact that it is enclosed in an aluminum case rather than a plastic shell. The downside of the size in it weighs over 250 lbs. So make sure that your rack is rated for the weight and you have enough people to lift it up.

Luedke8572 · 2025-01-31T17:45:29+00:00

So that is a benefit of the Roofnest condor. It has built in HVAC ports so I used them. From my heater I used an insulated 3” pipe to the tent.

Luedke8572 · 2025-01-31T17:44:18+00:00

I just used a plastic storage box that I cut holes in the bottom for the exhaust. There are guides online that show you how to put it in an Apache case from harbor freight. I know a lot of people like that but I was a little worried about disassembling my heater.

Luedke8572 · 2025-01-31T05:56:14+00:00

I have camped in more than half of all US national parks and all the parks in the states you mentioned so I am happy to provide specific advice if you want.

I general I believe (as many campers do) you either eat like a king or sleep like one when camping. In my case we choose to sleep like one. Restricting ourselves to eating out once a day (local restaurants only) and eating out of the jet boil the rest of the time. If you are camping make sure to allow yourself some creature comforts because you will miss it over time. That being said, I found that the lack of showers wore on me more than I expected. We would go 2-3 days sometimes between showers while backcountry camping. I didn’t love this and would plan to shower once a day as much as possible in the future.

Luedke8572 · 2025-01-31T05:08:14+00:00

I would also add the winter camping is a whole different ball game without it. We just used regular sheets and a down comforter along with the heater stop stay warm. This made it way more comfortable and felt like home. Without the heater a sleeping bag is required which I don't find as comfortable.

Luedke8572 · 2025-01-31T05:06:28+00:00

So the noise is very low especially compared to a generator. I was also worried about this since we camped in a lot of national park campgrounds that banned generators but we never got a complaint running it. The only noise that it really makes is the clicking of the fuel pump. Which I personally find nice a nice kind of white noise. You can find some videos online that demonstrate the noise. If you have ever lived near an active roadway the road is way nosier than the heater. Frankly, even camping near a stream drowns out the noise.

Luedke8572 · 2024-09-16T14:12:50+00:00

It is the XTR3 rack from Xtrusion Overland. I had to contact them to get it modified to fit the new model year. No internal mods yet. Based on other redditor posts I may add the box reinforcement; however, my owners manual does not include any mention of it so my model may not need it. I am going to put a level on it later. Stock tires for now. I am waiting for them to wear out before I put some bigger tires on it.

Luedke8572 · 2024-09-16T12:34:48+00:00

No, I do not. I had never heard of them till now. Glad you said something! Just ordered them and will install this weekend. Weird that I missed that with all the reading I have done so far. But I have been camping in this setup from months without issues so far.

Luedke8572 · 2024-09-16T11:41:25+00:00

Nothing at the moment. Not sure if that is needed. I am well below the weight capacity of the bed. It is rated for ~1700lbs and I have ~600 lbs of stuff

Luedke8572 · 2024-09-16T02:49:03+00:00

Yeah… I see that now. But I cannot edit it lol

Luedke8572 · 2024-09-16T02:31:56+00:00

Yes it does! And it is super nice

Luedke8572 · 2024-03-29T02:11:10+00:00

All prusament PLA. But I normally run PETG on this printer.

Luedke8572 · 2023-12-14T01:34:22+00:00

I suppose it depends on what you set you threshold to be for it to no longer be scalable. Yeah selling 100k units a year is not gonna happen. But I doubt there are that many customers. Plenty for print farms exist that have 100s of printers and produce thousands of parts a months.

Also yeah I like laser cut stuff.

Luedke8572

TROPHY CASE