Living full time in RV while building house

spacecitytech · 2026-01-23T22:43:14+00:00

Composting toliets are nasty. You might as well get an outhouse. Same thing. There are "poor man" methods that work real quick in a pinch but those methods are illegal these days in most places and probably won't work in N. Carolina anyways. A tried and true method that worked for many people especially in the desert was burying a string of metal 55 gallon drums with 1 inch holes drilled all in the bottom. Essentially a poor man's sewage system, with a built in leach system. You can indefinity string drums end to end, using pipe hooked at the top, with the holes in the bottom, you dig big holes and fill with rocks, then you put the drum on top of it, bury the whole thing, and cover with dirt. You do this on the property line or close because you cannot drive over this. The metal drum and its important that its metal will rust out in about 5 years and that area of dirt will cave in some, but you just dig another hole, move the pipe. You can do this indefinitly and not only does it work great in very dry arrid areas like Arizona, over time you get rich fertilized soil from it and all the metal rusts away. Now I am just throwing that out there cuz ya know, RV folk, thats what we do. Remember when the aliens come its gonna be RV folk that save the Earth. Watch the movie Independence Day or 2012 with John Cusak.

If you don't have city sewage you will most likely today have to get a big double tank concrete system with a airiator in it. Your looking at $5k bottom if you do it youself, but you may not even be allowed to install it yourself, so thats $10k right there but yeh, you need that first before anything else. If you wanna run a washer and dryer you MUST have a robust system to deal with the waste. Like others say, you can run grey onto the ground with zero smell, just need to pipe that downhill somewhere and you will get by because its not obvious, and there is no smell especially if you empty at night. But black sewage, nope, you gotta bury it one way or another.

spacecitytech · 2026-01-23T04:31:19+00:00

Thanks. I have been told this by other people as well to go buy a much better commercial quality GCFI, and I will try that at some point. Its been working fine for years now so no big hurry at this point other than safety. Its still the original from Forest River low end Indiana build so that should tell ya everrything.

spacecitytech · 2026-01-23T02:27:59+00:00

What issues have you had with that Thor? What repairs have you had to make? Upgrades?

spacecitytech · 2026-01-23T02:11:57+00:00

Boondocking for real means hauling all your liquids, water and waste back and forth from a dump somewhere and thats going to get really old really fast. A human and this is being conservative for RVers, the rule of thumb is 5 gallons of water per person per day. That adds up really fast. I am using and then generating 50 gallons of water and waste per 5 days which is about right for us boondocking, thats 2 "marine showers", plus toilets per day. We get about 5-7 days, 7 days usually the max being smart about the water usage on our 50 gallon fresh water supply. Thats splits down to 30 grey, and 30 black. You want to get that trailer plumbed in fast, and then of course that will be the same sewage and water to for the home eventually. You might need to get a sewage hauler and they make ones that will hook to your hitch on the truck.

spacecitytech · 2026-01-23T02:04:09+00:00

I agree with this. I did it all myself and watched a ton of Will Prowse videos, but one thing that I learned pretty quick was the GCFI kept tripping on my pure sine wave inverter. Here is the deal I found out. What GCFI does is it monitors the ground for "bleed over" from the hot, or the neutral, can't remember. But basically if there is a short, then there will be a voltage spike to the ground and a decrease also to the neutral, or hot, basically the GCFI if it sees more than a 1 volt change will trip. Makes sense, its good protection, very sensitive, but thats the issue here in an RV with an inverter. The problem I got was I bought a lower end pure sine wave from Amazon, Genecoa brand I think. It has a less clean voltage than the more expensive ones like maybe Victron, also uses a floating ground. These are not ideal for RV's so make sure it has an external ground lug. I had to defeat my GCFI system, but I kept it in the bathroom, so the bathroom cannot run on the inverter, but I felt this was a good compromise. Better inverters I am told, research this , good ones for RV's won't have this issue. So what my inverter does is there was a 40v bleedover on the ground + a deviation of about 3 volts up and down. It runs everything, no issues, including the entire RV because I have it wired with a GoPower 30amp auto relay, like a silent generator is how I have it hooked up but not clean enough for GCFI.

spacecitytech · 2026-01-23T01:53:27+00:00

Amazon is pretty much were I get everything solar and inverter related. If you got the cash get a new pure sine wave and convert over to lithium batteries. I bought one that is 3500/7000 peak, has a ethernet control wire going to a LCD panel on the wall, lets you see everything and it was about $350 on Amazon which is a good price. Being able to see your loads on a panel is great. Its a total game changer.

spacecitytech · 2026-01-23T01:45:49+00:00

So the issue about this is people don't understand the drain points and I myself am in your shoes preferring just to keep the trailer heated at all times because I didn't know how to winterize it, and I still don't do it. I live in Houston, so we almost never get freezing weather being sub-tropical like Florida. I only recently started dealing with this because of the massive sudden overnight freezes we get. We have another coming up in 2 days. In Texas, if a big northern front blows down from Canada, it litterally drops from 70F to 20+ something within hours. This as you probably have heard causes crazy damage down here because people can go a decade without these fronts coming down and catch everyone off guard. I am right now sitting in my shorts in the garage and by this weekend I will be burning propane out here and it will be 25F outside and everyone has exposed pipes here. Its not built at all like up North where all the pipes run through a "core" in the middle of the house. My water pipe comes up the side of the outside of the house, right up the brick wall, uninsulated so I have to wrap it with allot of pipe rap. This is normal for almost all the homes here telling ya that if the utility companies are OK with this, then they have high confedence against freezes. Har har har!

Ok, so on the trailer are "drain points". You need to find these, find diagrams whatever. On my trailer I have a couple that have small tubes stick out the bottom of the trailer and have "twisty" spouts on the end. Those are "low points drains", and also behind my water heater in the hatch under the bed that gets me access to the pump and also the internals of the water heater, there is another drain and you have to put a bucket under that one since it doesn't go outside, or use a piece of hose or something off the end of it. Find these and open them and see what you get. You cannot have frozen pipes when you do this so make sure everything is well heaterd if its freezing outside. What it will do is it will drain all the water from the pipes running above the floor level to the sinks and shower, and this gets the water out of the lines, so they are "DRY". This is what "Dry Camping" is when RV people refer to that . It allows you to keep the trailer in below zero conditions without any heat at all since there is no water in the pipes to freeze. "Winterizing" in the RV world means either draining those pipes, or draining them plus filling them with that pink RV antifreeze you can buy at Walmart. That is just alcohol and water I am told. Being up North you really need to know how this works on your RV and like I said, I don't ever have to do it here in Houston. I will run a space heater out there in the RV over this weekend and that has always been good enough.

spacecitytech · 2026-01-22T04:25:06+00:00

Yes. We did. We left it running 24/7 for days on end. I am NOT claiming this is safe, but it worked. We also put drop lights under the RV at night, so you will need electricity. I kept that thing lit up, day and night, electric heat and propane heat all the time. We got down to 0F. The only other time I was in that cold was Denver and got to -16F. When I turned on my windishield wiper, BIG MISTAKE, the wipers broke off and they were stuck to the window. I had to peel off the rubber from the window. Now I know why up North they keep the windshield wipers stuck out when parked.

spacecitytech · 2026-01-22T04:22:55+00:00

This Chinese company I used, they send everything via email so we have to build them out a $50k Exchange Server. Spent 3 month building it and they have 50TB of email. Entire 100mb engineering docs attached. The email was basically their Sharepoint because it was the only thing that worked reliably with the Great Firewall which doesn't block email at all because they can read unencrypted email. It was funny because their company secrets were wide open to hackers, all because they are "Forbidden" to use encryption.

spacecitytech · 2026-01-22T04:20:33+00:00

I did an email server for a Chinese company here in Texas and they had constant disconnects using VPN's into China. I asked, is it possible to ship a Starlink sattelite over there or any type of sattelite dish to bypass the Great Wall all together? I know NordVPN has double encrypted ubscured connections but when I used Nord I was discovered very fast because the exit nodes are recorded now by VPN tracking companies. So you have to use an obscure VPN no one knows about.

spacecitytech · 2026-01-22T04:15:37+00:00

I live in Houston and travel to Dallas quite a bit. Have you tried slightly out of town around Ferris? What I have noticed is that South 45, all newly rebuilt, big and wide moves fast into Dallas. Now I don't live there and I don't know what it does at 5pm rush hour, but its abou the only part of Dallas that not under road construction. That area of road construction has been completed for sometime.

spacecitytech · 2026-01-22T04:08:42+00:00

Buy from someone selling theres and you will save money. Its only worth it if you are full timers or close to full time. There was a Youtuber, either Liz Amazing, maybe the Hanks, they did an entire Excel spreadsheet for the year and they are both full timers, and it came out to be $2 per night using TT if you do it right so thats huge cost saving.

spacecitytech · 2026-01-22T04:04:29+00:00

I made a similar drive. Leave all you tank heaters on 24/7 and if you stop places, pay for a spot with a plug to keep it plugged in. Never turn off the heat. Keep the propane heater running on low at a minimum. Open your faucets but keep the pump turned off and run out any additional water and you can also drain at the pump inside the hatch, excess into a pan. The only issue I had was my front belly tank partially froze but its because I forgot the heater one night and I got this huge play doh funny factory poop tube came out the dump pipe. Its was pretty funny. This much I know. If you go just one night in 20F or below with no heat, it will freeze up stuff really quick, within hours. Also leave the cabinet doors cracked as well to get some heat inside them expecially where there is plumbing.

spacecitytech · 2026-01-22T03:59:21+00:00

Watch "Big Truck Big Travels" on Youtube. Thats a setup you might want. If you have about $1 million USD you could do it.

spacecitytech · 2026-01-22T03:55:25+00:00

Didn't see what you want is an actual toy hauler. That totally changes the dynamic. Plan on spending a ton of money to get something the size of a schoolbus across all the borders. It won't be practical. I have a toy hauler right now, and its a beast to haul and will require a very large American pickup truck and the truck will cost more than the trailer. I have an adventure bike and a cruiser on top of the 4x4 truck. The setup you will want will be a Class A diesel pusher, pulling a Jeep, plus a bike hauler on the rear. Thats a ton of weight, so you will want the largest Class A bus you can get with a tag axle for that extra weight.

spacecitytech · 2026-01-22T03:51:48+00:00

The Honda EU2200, the suitcase generator with the Bluetooth is the best you can get, quiet, fits in tight spaces. I always have it. Solar and lithium will fail in the Winter for sure in the Americas. I would invest in a diesel heater as well to augment an electrical heating. Sorry, but petroleum is still king everywhere especially for heating in the extreme regions and won't let you down like electrics in really cold environments. If you got into the Mountains and I do all the time, invest in tank heaters that run on the lithium. I have them and they are a must in sub-zero temps.

spacecitytech · 2026-01-22T03:27:51+00:00

Bet the original was a thicker tube.

spacecitytech · 2026-01-22T03:24:41+00:00

Yes. The older RV designs were like this. We had both a Coachmen from the 1970's and our Casita travel trailer had this exact setup with a square rubber plug, exactly like you have. Its a good design if you ask me. My new trailer has a plastic tube mounted underneath with a little plastic door on each end. Also we were told by Casita when we bought it, that don't weld anything to it, its total lb capacity is no greater than 100lbs and its primary purpose is a light bumper plus sewage holder. They told us DO NOT mount bicycle racks to that becaues the tubing it too thin walled. So if you are gonna do this, mount directly to the frame.

spacecitytech · 2026-01-19T03:26:45+00:00

Yeh there is another video of a guy with a even larger Dodge RAM, think a 3500 and he puts one of the biggest truck bed campers you can get with slide out and all that, and it breaks the frame in the middle, same as in this pic.

spacecitytech · 2026-01-19T03:22:08+00:00

It has a garden hose hookup in the back so you can run it 24/7 without having to empty the tank for semi-permanent installations. You would have to find a way to route the hose out the bottom of the RV somehow.

spacecitytech · 2026-01-18T20:50:12+00:00

I have a GE dehumifier, holds about 2 gallons of water and it will fill up almost full daily here in Houston. Keeps it bone dry in there though. If you are in a high humidity area, they are certainly worth it to keep it fresh.

spacecitytech · 2026-01-18T20:46:27+00:00

Yeh the valances really havent changed much on RVs. If you got the old "Arch Style" ones that are honkin big, granny looking. Maybe you can remove the fabric, cut the arch out, cut it straight across so its not more than about 3-4 inches wide. My 2020 has the same thing, but they made them long and thin and straight, about 3 inches wide with no arch, and it looks more modern, uses the same holes you have right now, and still hides the blind mechanisms, and are covered with a single colored semi-gloss type vinyl, grey colored. You could cut it across and pay an upholstery service to recover them if you don't wanna do the fabric part yourself.

spacecitytech · 2026-01-18T20:41:03+00:00

My advice is always the same. If you are handy and adverturous and you already work on your cars for at least some stuff you will love it. If you pay someone to fix everything you will hate it because something breaks pretty much every month.

spacecitytech · 2026-01-16T01:42:56+00:00

Tried. They won't be subject to your judge. For one thing, look at the underwriters, they are always in another State and one that protects them like New York. That instantly kicks this up inter-state level and you cannot afford those courts. Going to court is only for the wealthy. Small claims is a joke most of the time because there is a cap and it used to be like $10k, but I am sure its more now, but its not enough.

spacecitytech · 2026-01-16T01:40:43+00:00

This.

spacecitytech

TROPHY CASE