This is part 2 of our remodel. If you’ve not read part 1, you can read it here.

Once we had landed on the new layout with the Grand Lounge and the Desk, we dove into the appliances and battery power. Fortunately the previous owners of our Airstream upgraded the oven to a new Furrion with a flat glass top, added 200ah of Lithium Ion batteries, and put 460watts of solar on the roof, so we had a solid starting point to work with.

Refrigerator

Having spent 10-days in a Globetrotter 23FB back in 2021 we knew the fridge needed to be upgraded. The old Dometic has the freezer built into the top taking up space and took hours to cool down. Additionally, the layout of it was awful and overall it was just a poor refrigerator.

After talking it over we decided to go with an Isotherm 195. While the refrigerator wasn’t much larger, it gave us a separate freezer and runs with two compressors rather than one trying to cool both the freezer and refrigerator. Additionally, it was built for marine use, so the latches and integrity of the fridge is just that much better.

We’ve been using it for about a month now and can fit a week’s worth of groceries for two hungry adults easily. We typically take everything out of the packaging it came in and either move it to Tupperware or reusable food bags. We also use the iDesign storage solutions from the container store to keep things better organized and limit shifting while on the road.

We’ve been asked how loud it is with two compressors and I’ll just say that in the first week I would sometimes check to ensure it was still on. It’s that quiet. You hear nothing.

Microwave

The downside to the larger fridge is the loss of the microwave. We decided we do need it to reheat leftovers so we purchased a lightweight one that we store in our bunk and just plug in when needed. We thought it was going to be a pain but it stores perfectly in the bunk which makes it rather effortless.

Boondocking

One of our goals when we’re out west is to camp a solid month boondocking (no hookups). To do that without it becoming a pain we decided we need to be relatively self-sufficient for a week, and then with minimal effort we can do a few things to give us another week.

There are three parts to this equation: water, waste, and electricity.

Water

Simple solution. We have a 39 gallon fresh water tank and when we run out we can fill our AquaTank Bladder and simply drive it back to the Airstream and fill the tank, extending our stay.

Waste

We’ll skip the details here but there are dump stations all over out west. The inverse of filling up the water, we can empty our tanks into a Camco Rhino and haul it off, emptying it at a nearby dump station.

Electricity

The toughest part to solve for was power. We wanted to go to 600ah of Lithium Ion batteries, which would give us power for 7-8 days w/o solar, but the weight and space was too much. Since we already have 460 watts on the roof we decided to upgrade to 400ah of batteries, which should give us 4-5 days, and maybe more depending on sun and what part of the country we’re in (lower latitudes give us a better charge).

We also had a 2000watt inverter installed and every outlet wired to run off of it, so no more figuring out what can and cannot be powered when not plugged in.

Our battery bank is under our Grand Lounge in the front of the camper and has 400ah of batteries.

We still didn’t want to fully rely on this though since we do work full-time. It’s one thing to get low on battery and decide to move, but when we’re in the middle of a workday it was a non-starter.

As mentioned in Tux, Ford gave us a great solution in the Powerboost F-150. We have a 7.2kw generator built in that we can run the entire camper off of if needed (more on cooling needs later), but more importantly, it can charge the batteries in a few hours.

We now have a complete solution to live relatively “self contained” for a month. We’re still not sure when or where we’ll do it, but will update the blog when we do.

The Remodel — Part 2