[Archived]

Steve, do you plan to travel full time or park seasonlly and use the bus as a house ? Geo.

[Corey]

Steve, My wife & I are basically full timing. We sold our home and now our bus is our home. We will be in our bus 9-10 months a year, with the other time spent on my wife’s family’s farm for harvest in KS. Hope to meet you on the road or at a future rally.

[Chas]

Steven,

I dont think there is really any difference between a prevost conversion and any other high end coach when it comes to full timing. It’s not like prevost does anything different over other manufacturers. They all have the same types of systems, just slight differences in how they are implemented.

The main thing you want to think about is storage (inside and out) and how you optimize it as well as what you bring along. You can’t bring everything you had with you in your house, so you need to really think through what you will really need and only bring that. Of course again, this is the same types of limitations you will find in any coach.

One thing to remember is that slide outs or not, a coach is a tiny house. Living in it gets tight. make sure you spend time out doors and you should be okay. Spending all day everyday inside such a small area with someone else could cause issues 🙂

[Archived]

Did it for four years, get yourself a low voltage freezer chest for a bay.

Keep the fuel tank full and water full as you can and the black as empty.

Have a Verison air card and use the computer to verify where to go and stay.

Use printed books and maps as well as a computer map such as by Delorme as well as Google earth.

Carry basic and special tools and parts.

Always look ahead, never back.

Have fun, JIM

[Archived]

We’ve been full-timing for 16 months now. We put a small 120 volt freezer in the closet and wired it to the inverter. I believe it’s a 6 or 7 cubic foot chest type. My wife has been able to pack 1/2 a beef into the chest freezer and the freezer in the refrigerator. We like to eat good beef,and yes my wife can really pack.

[Peter]

Steve,

We full timed with three kids and a dog for 15 months in our H. My recomendation is to be organized in how you store things. I had one of my guys draw 3D cads of my bays and we purchased the sturdy Uline conatiners color coded to keep things organized. We traveled with everythign we need for everything from summer on a beach to sking in the winter. Having a place for everything and everything in it’s place was important especially with 5 of us on board. But more important than that was make sure your not over weight. We got all loaded up and weighed before we left with full fuel and 40% water we were right at the limit. I’m 46 and my kids are 15,13,and 10 and and with out a doubt it was the best 15 months of my life. Hardly a day goes by that I don’t wish I was still out there. Good luck and enjoy the adventure.

[John]

Hi Steve…

We’ve been “homeless by choice” and fulltiming in our bus for the last 3+ years. We travel with a rather grumpy 20 year old attack cat and a 4 year old high energy Jack Russell mix. We love the lifestyle and have no plans to come off the road anytime soon. As others have noted, onboard space is certainly a consideration, but not anything that cannot be overcome. It’s all about compromise, after all. Jeff has been a key for us, doing not only the routine engine & gen maintenance, but also installing new water heaters, air bags & norgrens, and an updated auto gen start module for us. As time goes on, we’ll have him do some other upgrades (new refer, floors, etc).

If you have any specific questions, drop me an email.

Travel safe…hope to meet you out there somewhere one of these days.

[John]

Mike,

I’m interested in the “updated auto gen start module”. Please explain. If this is not the place, my email is:

. Thanks.

John

[Robert]

John if you change the inverters to Magnums you can get a auto start from them , I think Mike has new Magnum inverters , but that is one way to do it, the auto start might work with other inverters also , Andre did his bus there is a article about it in the article section

[Peter]

I have auto start, but according to the book it auto starts at 10.8 volts. I was hoping for an upgrade that would raise that number a little.

[Will]

On the magnum inverters you can set the start voltage to what you want

[Gerald]

John…

Peter is correct. We have replaced our inverters with Magnums. We were having intermitent voltage drops with one of the original inverters when we got the coach, & since I wanted pure sine wave for my own peace of mind and future electrical upgrades, we went ahead & replaced them both with Magnum MS-2812’s. The original CC auto gen start system didn’t call for the gen to start until the battery voltage reached something south of 11.5 volts, as I recall, and had no provision to start based on coach inside temps. The Magnum AGS units allow settings based on battery voltage, as well as inside coach temps (with a temp probe install). The temp settings allows gen to start, warm up, & power the A/C units for the coach so we don’t come home to fur kids with heat related problems, or worse, if we were to loose shore power during our time away from the coach. It took some head scratching on Jeff’s part because of the way our CC/PowerTech interface was set up, and the fact that I wanted to retain the gen start/stop functions at the original switches, rather than having the inverter remote be the only way to control the genset. I can’t recommend the Magnums highly enough. They have been very steady, the remotes are relatively intuitive to understand & program for all functions, & any questions I have had were easily researched over the net or with a call to Jordan at the Inverter Service Center – a PC advertiser. (I do that right, Jon??😉) I think the cost of the AGS module w/temp probe was around $250-$300 with the PC discount ISC provides, and the install was in addition to that. Money well spent, IMO.

[John]

thanks to all that replied!………………Steve

[Corey]

Thanks Mike and Peter. I’m very glad to have that information. My inverters are working very well right now, so no real hurry but I’ll plan to change out for the magnums soon. Thanks for the info.