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Jack Olsen Jack Olsen is offline
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Join Date: Feb 2000
Location: Los Angeles
Posts: 13,334


I put in a foot pump for getting water from a (new) tank I put in down under the camper. The arm had to be modified to work with a Boler, but it works great.



Here's the whole kitchen. Since I was also adding 12v electric to the camper, there's under-cabinet lighting and a bluetooth speaker and also a variable-speed fan in the ceiling vent.



The stove and sink are real, but the plant is fake and the tiles for the backsplash are actually made of vinyl.



Still, it's a calm, relaxing place now. You can see one of the sconce lights I added at the end of the row of upper cabinets. It's a small camper. This picture makes it look like you could throw a football across it. In reality, you could probably shake hands with someone sitting at the other end.



The cool thing about an absorption refrigerator is that it makes no sound at all. But the thing it needs is venting and air circulation, both of which are tricky with a Boler's layout. It was pretty easy to get the refrigerator in there, but I had to add vents to the outside shell of the camper and also some under-counter ducting to help extract heat and combustion fumes away. Using the camper's new 12v power system, I rigged a thermo-switch to automatically switch on an extracting 5" computer-cooling fan when the refrigerator is in operation. It works really well, but if you put your ear to the counter you can hear it.



The previous owners made the upholstery, and I like it a lot. But the stuffing was thin memory foam that was not good for sleeping on. So I got new foam and batting for the old covers. This picture might do a better job of showing how compact this little camper is. But in real-world use, it works very well. It's got everything you need, none of what you don't.



More fake plants? Yep. But they add a homey touch to the top of the dining table, and they won't die when the camper is spending months in its dark, covered storage spot.



I added shelves to the main cabinet, and put the two deep cycle batteries down below. The little screen shows me my state of charge and also how much power is being used by the LED lights, fans, and charging ports. I learned that chargers and dimmer switches consume electricity even when they're turned off, so I added inline switches upstream of each to be able to shut everything down to 0.00 consumption.



But I have to say, there's something about having onboard power that takes this little camper from being a hard-shelled tent and turns it into something just a little bit more accommodating. More civilized. I'm not an RV guy, at all. But this camper strikes the right balance for me between comfort and go-anywhere possibility. My hope is to never camp where I can plug it into shore power in a row with a bunch of land yachts. But still, to be able to get up and make coffee on a stove with milk from a refrigerator -- for me, that's hard to beat.
Old 03-26-2019, 02:26 PM
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