We’ve really enjoyed our Harvest Host membership especially to use as a tool for longer trips. It offers midway overnight stops in interesting places that we would normally pass by. We often set up camp on farms and breweries off the beaten path and have the place to ourselves. What those locations don’t provide however are hookups so we have to be prepared to be completely self contained. That’s generally pretty easy with the campers we’ve had but a sometimes critical (don’t judge) creature comfort is air conditioning. We learned that the hard way last year in Gardiner NY when we set up camp on a farm. It was as miserably hot as it was in Annapolis when we left, but it made it tough to get a restful sleep before a long drive.
That leads to a conversation about generators which would then supply AC power to the trailer. Generator choices consist of small (easy to manage and store but doesn’t supply enough power for everything) or medium (supplies power to everything but weighs in excess of 100lbs). Since dry camping (aka: boondocking) is still only a once in a while thing for us, we opted to go the smaller route and be selective with our electrical needs. We found a 2500 watt dual fuel (meaning it will run on gasoline or propane) generator which receives good reviews and is economically priced at around $650. But at the root of it was still the air conditioner. Air conditioners in and of themselves don’t draw an incredible amount of power constantly… but when they are starting up it requires a huge burst of current to get the compressor running (called in-rush current). It’s that burst that is the deal breaker for small generators and it will trip the breaker on the generator or worse shut it off completely. This is where a Softstart comes in.
A Softstart is a set of capacitors that spread out that big burst of power over a longer but smaller duration and allow the generator to keep up with the AC’s demand. There are some that are made specifically for RV air conditioners and we had actually purchased one in the spring before we traded the Wildwood in for Grand Talley so I still had it sitting in a box. Now that we’re only a few weeks away from our trip to NY/VT where we knew we would be boondocking again, it was time to get this thing involved.
Thankfully the company that makes them has done their research and provided exceptional installation instructions making the process easy. I was on the roof for about 45 minutes and the hardest part was tracing the wires from various locations under the cover since the wires were really well bundled. Once a few clips and crimps were made, I installed the box in a nice spot and ran a few tests… sure enough, the air conditioner turned on and ran under the generator’s power. So now we can charge our batteries and run the air conditioner for a few hours to give ourselves a little sanity before another travel day from where ever we land.
