We picked up our 3160RL late August last year and got our for four 2-3 night weekend trips last year but last week we did our first "long trip" of 9 nights with the rig. I know that's a short trip for many of you
The trip was in 2 different state parks and a national forest park.
Overall we were very happy with the unit and being in it for a longer trip. It was a good test of being in the unit a lot as the weather was pretty rough a good part of the week. Other than 2 days in the high 60s, we dealt with 30-40 mph winds 2 days, a thunderstorm, sleet, lows in the 30s and 20s, etc. The unit worked well, we stayed warm and dry vs the old days of tent camping, and enjoyed the trip.
Items of interest was that considering the temps, we stayed warm and went through ~40-45 lbs of propane which seemed good considering the low temps and winds. During the real cold nights, low/mid 20s, I put the outdoor temp sensor from our weather station in the storage belly near the convenience center to see how well the belly kept warm. When we had the unit at 65 during the night, the belly was ~48-49 degrees so no worries about freezing.
This was our first trip to work try out the solar and inverter system I just installed. Though we never went fully off grid, I got a chance to try it out for all DC usage and several times running just on the batteries. Overall everything worked as planned. Even with the bad weather, we saw good power from the panels (saw ~450W one time and we weren't in the rig on the real sunny days) and it worked well to keep the batteries topped off. I did ID some lights that I need to switch to LEDs, over the island and the dinette table, as we use them a lot and they draw much more than the LED lights. A nice perk was when we got home and were cleaning out the rig, my wife went to use the vacuum and we hadn't hooked up to the AC at home and I just had to flip on the inverter vs having to dig out the 50 cord and adapters to just run the vac.
We also got a chance to see how long we can go on the fresh water tank and the black tank. We went 5 days on the fresh water and had a day or so left still without doing much conservation. We went 7 nights on the black tank before dumping with no worries. Of course the black tank sensors are now stuck reading 2/3rd full even after flushing it some. No surprise there - we'll try cleaning more each usage and see if they clean themselves off.
Only issues we found were during the cold nights it seems like the black tank heat pad doesn't work - no change in DC or AC current draw (need to check to ensure I didn't pull a wire from the panel when I did the solar) and when we were using the level up on the cold days we moved, the breaker is tripping - probably needs to be upgraded to the 80A breaker.
We definitely think we made the right choice on the unit, the solar system looks good, and are getting it closer to feeling like home. Found a few places we want to add some hooks, tweaks to where we store some items, etc - nothing major.
Time for more adventures!
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