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Electricity for Boonie

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We have upgraded the van's electric power and I will go into a bit of a detail regarding some of the choices we made and why. Please keep in mind I'm not an electrical professional and this is based on research I have done and testing will need to happen (on the road, here's hoping!) - if you are interested to see how it worked out I will post a follow up to this to show what needed improvement, what worked and what didn't. If you want the short and curly version I have a link to the video at the bottom of the page. When we purchased the van it came with 2 solar panels on top - we didn't know what power they output and were not inclined to disconnect them entirely and see if it still had its label underneath (especially since they are 10 years old now). We purchased an OHMMeter and checked the Volts & OHMs coming in from the solar panels. Using this we could find out the Watts. So based on the below math each panel is about 60 watts of maximum input per ho...

The Renovation Part 2

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Now that we have our plan, its time to remove everything... There was quite a bit of dust and dirt under all these parts so now was a good time to give them a clean out before we start boarding over them with new timber. Lucky Kate's dad has a lot of timber on hand so this wasn't so difficult to get a hold of. We had Kate's brother Matus make us some new shelves to go under the seating area to separate things as well as remake the top of the seating area to handle our weight and adjust the hinges to the back of the seating area - where as before the hinges were in the middle which made putting larger items in there difficult. There was also a few cracks in the door panels and screw holes from everything we removed around the place which had to be filled with wood filler putty and sanded over to be smooth before painting. You don't need to be so worried about mess at this stage you can use what you need to fill in the gaps and sand it ...

The Adventure Begins

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Welcome to the Adventures of Boonie - a Kate and James European Adventure! After much deliberation and travelling all around Slovakia looking for a Mobile Home we finally decided to hire a car, drive to Germany and inspect some vehicles we researched there. After 2 long days of inspecting vans and testing we finally found Boonie :D Boonie (our 1998 Fiat Ducato Campervan) was owned by a nice German family in a beautiful area just on the southern end of Germany in a place called Friedrichshafen and used mainly for family trips and had a low 240,000km on the clock, solar panels, fridge, small kitchen, bathroom (no shower yet) and perfect layout for the back with a seating/bed arrangement for early morning views or lounging around enjoying the day. Kate being Kate said before we return to Slovakia we have to visit the Neuschwanstein Castle, and Im glad we did. If you have not seen it before I highly recommend it - I mean cmon its the Disney Castle - no photos allowed insi...