live free, or die...

Van Living Forum

Help Support Van Living Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

Gypsy Freedom

Well-known member
Joined
Jun 30, 2019
Messages
329
Reaction score
0
Hi, i am Gypsy Freedom. i've been around the block a time or two...

i guess ya'll want to know a little about me. i am not a great writer so this will be kinda dry. middle aged graduate of the school of hard knocks. learned a thing or 2 along the way and picked up more than my share of battle scars, the last big one, a few years ago when a meth head hit me head on at 55mph. long story short i walked away, he didnt. i was able to keep him alive till ems got there and cut him out. he made it with no lasting effects but i tore a rotator cuff and jacked up my neck bad. that was the straw so they say and i have not been able to rehab enough to go back to any gainful work, so finances have been a struggle. fortunately i have always lived frugally and close to the land. i started van camping in the late 70's and never really looked back. i homesteaded in the rockies for almost 20 years at 8000' living in things ranging from a tee pee to a school bus, a dome tent or my van. some where in there i also spent some years on boats, trawlers and sailboats. i have been working with low voltage systems battery/charger/inverter deals since the late 80s, got into solar in the mid 90's and have been living purely off grid since 97. back then new solar panels were running $12 a watt, now i dont spend more than $0.50 a watt. watt a nice change... lol

since the accident i have lived full time in my rig of the day, 2 years in a geo metro, then a ford taurus for a bit then the last 2 years in a minivan i converted with almost 500 watts of solar, 3+ cf fridge freeze unit, 375w pure sine inverter and a propane cook stove in a chuck wagon configuration that i am selling and moving into my new short bus i am converting. the short bus has about 2000 watts of solar depending on what panels i have mounted at the moment lol. 4 old j185 trojans going to a 24 volt system but that is still in progress. i do some consulting on solar and other off grid power solutions. my current project is on a 25' transit cutaway where we put 1740 watts of solar, 675 amp hour of the firefly agm batteries mounted on a slide out drawer under the door, separate 4.3 cu ft fridge and 40 quart freezer 12,000 BTU air conditioner frenched in with ducted supplemental fresh air to cool the condenser along with all the wiring, controllers, LVD's, battery monitor, and dual inverters for redundancy. we relocated the 50gal water tank under the rig and mounted a 29 gal propane tank under as well. the owner had some interesting ideas for toiletries and we set it up with a cassette type and then a custom pump out so he doesnt have to take it anywhere to dump. i started a youtube channel and hope to start uploading videos of projects and instruction stuff.

i've been to a couple RTR's and PNW gatherings, i have traveled east to west and north to south but still have several states i have not hit yet. i have been cruising these forums and others for some time and finally decided i would join up and see where i can help. i am happy to help here on the forum and one on one via the phone or PM's solar and low voltage systems can be hard to wrap your head around when you are first starting. especially when you have 10 people telling you how to do it. even though each of them may be "right" they can all be different... lol and for the newbi, that can just make things worse till you have the core concepts and vernacular to understand what everyone is posting about. so feel free to contact me if your lost and would like a little help understanding.
 
Welcome!!! Glad to make your acquaintance Gypsy...yes, live free or die, although it's take me a few decades to embrace that as more than a cliche.
Appreciate you making your experience available to us newbs, I just may be taking you up on that offer sooner rather than later. Right now I'm keeping the solar system small and basic but, like a lot of us, 'have plans'.
 
thanks for the welcome.

big or small solar, it is always good to understand how it all works.
 
You sound like a generous person. Your knowledge has probably helped many over the years. I know you will be a good addition to this forum.
 
Welcome Gypsy Freedom to the CRVL forums! To help you learn the ins and outs of these forums, this "Tips, Tricks and Rules" post lists some helpful information to get you started.

Most of our rules boil down to two simple over-riding principles: 1) What you post should provide good information (like your introductory post), and 2) Any response to someone else's post should make them feel glad they are part of this forum community.

We look forward to hearing more from you.

highdesertranger
 
Hi GypsyFreedom - welcome to the forum! I'm hoping to subscribe to your YouTube channel. Is GypsyFreedom the channel name?
 
Top