Needing Help,Advice, Ideas on living in my car. This will be my first time

[Dwade81]

I don't think you would need that much power if all you are going to run is a fan.  You could get a DC fan which plugs into a cigarette lighter and then a 12-volt clamp connection between a 12-volt battery and a single cigarette plug.  That way you could avoid having to purchase an inverter.  If you are going to want to run other things which are going to require alternating current, then you would need to get an inverter.  I'd strongly suggest getting a pure sine inverter because a lot of electronic devices won't work with a modified sine wave inverter and fans will buzz. 

But like I said, you might be able to lower your costs by going with a DC fan and they can be found at most truck stops, a 12 volt battery, 12-volt to cigaratte adaptor, and a solar panel kit.  

But truth be told, you need to first get a list of the things that you really need to power when you are remote first.  And then you need to think of what the minimum that you need is with the idea of making it into something that can be expanded later once you've built up your financial reserves.  

https://www.amazon.com/Conntek-Batt...&sr=8-5&keywords=12-volt+to+cigarette+lighter

https://www.amazon.com/Schumacher-1...F8&qid=1494623669&sr=1-3&keywords=12-volt+fan

Right now all I have is my cell phone which drains pretty quickly a few hours of idling it is a cheap phone. I planned on getting an ipad or some type of tablet to watch netflix on, and of course a fan. I thought about just using the car battery but not too sure how much it would drain for 8 hours of running the fan 12v fan .

 

[mpruet]

I was thinking another battery like a deep cycle battery with a battery isolator for the fan and some electric items like phone maybe small tablet. And I won't be doing this until around sept or oct. this way it gives me time to get the car working right and set up and some extra money on hand first.  then planned on staying in the car through the texas winters which in this area doesn't get too bad or uncomfortable. It would also give me time to save money to buy a small van or a better car. 

I thought about a solar panel but like you said they would be too expensive. But I also plan on doing things for extra money which would keep me busy like certain hobbies.

One other quick comment.  If you want to minimize your power expenses, then you need to try to keep everything DC rather than AC.  You can charge most of the devices such as a phone or tablet without going through an inverter because most chargers are first converting AC into DC for a USB connection.  The wire between the charger is usually USB to the phone.  You can get a cigarette lighter plug which is a USB converter.  So you can charge you phone and tablet without going through an inverter.  That's how a normal car charger for a smart phone works.  The only thing that I have which really requires an AC connection is to charge up my laptop and I use a 150 watt pure sine inverter for that - that that plugs into my cigarette lighter. 

An inverter wastes a lot of power going from DC to AC so as soon as you put an inverter in the picture you need to have much larger batteries and also more power to charge those batteries. 

If you do decide to go DC as much as you can, then you would still need to use a second battery.  The last thing you want to do is to deplete your engine battery.  Starter batters don't last very long if they are depleted frequently.

 

[mdoverl]

Right now all I have is my cell phone which drains pretty quickly a few hours of idling it is a cheap phone. I planned on getting an ipad or some type of tablet to watch netflix on, and of course a fan. I thought about just using the car battery but not too sure how much it would drain for 8 hours of running the fan 12v fan .

Mpruet gives a great suggestion of getting a DC fan that plugs into your Cig lighter, then once you build up your finances, expand upon that by getting the battery you want

 

[Dwade81]

One other quick comment.  If you want to minimize your power expenses, then you need to try to keep everything DC rather than AC.  You can charge most of the devices such as a phone or tablet without going through an inverter because most chargers are first converting AC into DC for a USB connection.  The wire between the charger is usually USB to the phone.  You can get a cigarette lighter plug which is a USB converter.  So you can charge you phone and tablet without going through an inverter.  That's how a normal car charger for a smart phone works.  The only thing that I have which really requires an AC connection is to charge up my laptop and I use a 150 watt pure sine inverter for that - that that plugs into my cigarette lighter. 

An inverter wastes a lot of power going from DC to AC so as soon as you put an inverter in the picture you need to have much larger batteries and also more power to charge those batteries. 

If you do decide to go DC as much as you can, then you would still need to use a second battery.  The last thing you want to do is to deplete your engine battery.  Starter batters don't last very long if they are depleted frequently.

I planned on getting a small laptop for self employment business later down the road once I got money saved to buy a van. For now it would just be dc like you said usb with a cigarette charger for usb components.  And as of right now it would be just a small usb or cig lighter fan and my cell. Which after 3 hours of use is basically dead and then needs an hour charge to fully charge back up. And I am thinking of city stealth parking during the winter. so I would have the library to be inside of for a few hours a day or at a park or something. So I will spend maybe 12 hours in the car if that per day.

 

[mpruet]

I planned on getting a small laptop for self employment business later down the road once I got money saved to buy a van. For now it would just be dc like you said usb with a cigarette charger for usb components.  And as of right now it would be just a small usb or cig lighter fan and my cell. Which after 3 hours of use is basically dead and then needs an hour charge to fully charge back up. And I am thinking of city stealth parking during the winter. so I would have the library to be inside of for a few hours a day or at a park or something. So I will spend maybe 12 hours in the car if that per day.

Start small so you can build up your financial reserves.  Then expand on what you've got...

 

[Dwade81]

Start small so you can build up your financial reserves.  Then expand on what you've got...

Yeah I planned on it through the winter. This way the 300 for rent I can actually save each month. I thought about house sitting jobs you get paid to sit peoples houses but the sites ou got to pay for them and I don't have the money to pay for them right now. maybe something down the line.

 

[mdoverl]

Small fans average about 0.2 amps, your phone, maybe about 1.2 amps, and an ipad is about 2 amps. Which gives you a total of 3.4 amps per hour, roughly. Don't take this math as 100%, because I don't know the ratings of the electronics you have.

Now let's say you run all of that off the battery for 8 hours a day (which I don't you will, doesn't take a phone or tablet 8 hours to charge, but I could see you running the fan for that long), then we would multiply 3.4 amps x 8 hours and get 27.2 amps per hour. Now if you get a Deep Cycle Battery, it needs to be twice the amps that you need, because you will damage the battery if you run it under 50% capacity. So 27.2 x 2 is 54.4 amps per hour. That is roughly the size of battery that you need. Put prices for batteries are crazy, for the same price of a 60 amp battery, you could probably get a 200 amp battery for the same price.

 

[theinfamousj]

I thought about house sitting jobs you get paid to sit peoples houses but the sites ou got to pay for them and I don't have the money to pay for them right now. maybe something down the line.

I do that. Sort of. I overnight dog sit through Rover. They take a cut of your pay, but you don't have to front any money to be on the site.

I am on my final night of my current dog sitting stint tonight (which is why I don't 'full time' in my car), just to show how effective it is.

I have a link I can give you to sign up as a pet sitter. It is a referral link and helps boost both of our rankings in the search if that is something you would be interested in. Just let me know. I don't want to come across as spam, just as someone finally seeing an opportunity to share some tips from my lifestyle!

The caveat here, of course, is that you have to be pet friendly and not allergic.

Upside: Get to do free laundry. I know where my showers are coming from. Charge all the things! Download all my media to my tablet for the small stretch of time ahead between gigs, so I can use FreedomPop's free data plan because I can keep my mobile internet needs under a Gig per month. For repeat clients depending on feel, you can let them know you car dwell and if you have correctly identified a sympathetic person, they will give permission to park on their property so you get a safe parking place. And so on and so forth.

Downside: You don't get full timer cred. You are geographically anchored, for the most part. You generally get the 'problem' dogs because easy going ones go to kennels; this can mean dogs who get kennel stress and need to be in their own home all the way to dogs the are aggressive to other pets to homes with 3+ pets that would be expensive to pay 3+ kennel fees.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

[Dwade81]

I do that. Sort of. I overnight dog sit through Rover. They take a cut of your pay, but you don't have to front any money to be on the site.

I am on my final night of my current dog sitting stint tonight (which is why I don't 'full time' in my car), just to show how effective it is.

I have a link I can give you to sign up as a pet sitter. It is a referral link and helps boost both of our rankings in the search if that is something you would be interested in. Just let me know. I don't want to come across as spam, just as someone finally seeing an opportunity to share some tips from my lifestyle!

The caveat here, of course, is that you have to be pet friendly and not allergic.

Upside: Get to do free laundry. I know where my showers are coming from. Charge all the things! Download all my media to my tablet for the small stretch of time ahead between gigs, so I can use FreedomPop's free data plan because I can keep my internet needs under a Gig per month. For repeat clients depending on feel, you can let them know you car dwell and if you have correctly identified a sympathetic person, they will give permission to park on their property so you get a safe parking place. And so on and so forth.

Downside: You don't get full timer cred. You are geographically anchored, for the most part. You generally get the 'problem' dogs because easy going ones go to kennels; this can mean dogs who get kennel stress and need to be in their own home all the way to dogs the are aggressive to other pets to homes with 3+ pets that would be expensive to pay 3+ kennel fees.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

Yeah, go ahead shoot me a pm with all the info and how to get started and get clients. I love animals and aren't allergic to cats or dogs.

 

[Dwade81]

Small fans average about 0.2 amps, your phone, maybe about 1.2 amps, and an ipad is about 2 amps. Which gives you a total of 3.4 amps per hour, roughly. Don't take this math as 100%, because I don't know the ratings of the electronics you have.

Now let's say you run all of that off the battery for 8 hours a day (which I don't you will, doesn't take a phone or tablet 8 hours to charge, but I could see you running the fan for that long), then we would multiply 3.4 amps x 8 hours and get 27.2 amps per hour. Now if you get a Deep Cycle Battery, it needs to be twice the amps that you need, because you will damage the battery if you run it under 50% capacity. So 27.2 x 2 is 54.4 amps per hour. That is roughly the size of battery that you need. Put prices for batteries are crazy, for the same price of a 60 amp battery, you could probably get a 200 amp battery for the same price.

Yeah, I was thinking of something like that, the fan itself would take the main car battery supply down quickly running it 8 hours a night and a couple hours during the day sometimes with the car not even moving from a certain spot.

 

[mpruet]

Right now all I have is my cell phone which drains pretty quickly a few hours of idling it is a cheap phone. I planned on getting an ipad or some type of tablet to watch netflix on, and of course a fan. I thought about just using the car battery but not too sure how much it would drain for 8 hours of running the fan 12v fan .

You can significantly decrease the drain on your cell phone by modifying your configuration. For instance if this is a smart phone such as an iPhone or Android consider the following. 

1) turn off location services.  Location services are needed for GPS but is very expensive because it is constantly communicating with geo-stationary satellites.  You can instead turn location services on only when using the GPS services of the phone.

2) turn off bluetooth.  This is only needed when coupling the cell phone with an external device such as an earpiece.  Again you can turn it back on when you need to.

3) turn off wireless.  Both wireless and bluetooth cause the cell phone to broadcast signals to the surrounding looking for either a modem or a bluetooth device.  If you are either not using wireless or are not in a location where wireless is available, then you might as well turn those services off. 

4) lower the brightness. 

5) if in a location where you know that you won't have service, then switch to airline mode.  For instance when I'm driving in northern New Mexico I know that I have no service then I switch to airline mode.  Otherwise my cell will burn through power searching for a cell tower that it can connect to.

 

[Dwade81]

You can significantly decrease the drain on your cell phone by modifying your configuration. For instance if this is a smart phone such as an iPhone or Android consider the following. 

1) turn off location services.  Location services are needed for GPS but is very expensive because it is constantly communicating with geo-stationary satellites.  You can instead turn location services on only when using the GPS services of the phone.

2) turn off bluetooth.  This is only needed when coupling the cell phone with an external device such as an earpiece.  Again you can turn it back on when you need to.

3) turn off wireless.  Both wireless and bluetooth cause the cell phone to broadcast signals to the surrounding looking for either a modem or a bluetooth device.  If you are either not using wireless or are not in a location where wireless is available, then you might as well turn those services off. 

4) lower the brightness. 

5) if in a location where you know that you won't have service, then switch to airline mode.  For instance when I'm driving in northern New Mexico I know that I have no service then I switch to airline mode.  Otherwise my cell will burn through power searching for a cell tower that it can connect to.

I leave the wifi on when I am in the apt but when I leave the apt I turn it off. 
It is a cheap prepaid alcatel att phone. everything you mentioned is already off but it still drains if it is being used and drains pretty quickly. And I keep the brightness down when indoors when I go outside I have to turn the brightness up otherwise I can't see the screen. But that is a few times a week that happens.

 

[frater secessus]

You would have to go back to TX once a year to get you vehicle inspected and your registration renewed.

The current word on the Escapees forum (the Tx-based forwarder) is that you can register by internet and get the vehicle inspected when/if one returns to Texas.

Also, there is a bill in the Tx legislature to do away with the safety inspection.  It seems to be making good progress.  Smog inspections in urban areas would continue AFAIK.
I was thinking SD for domicile but if Texas kills the safety inspection I might just keep my Texan "citizenship" out of inertia.  

 

[RainDancer28]

Hi,
I'd love to know how things work out for you. I was considering living in my Chevy Cruze which is similar is size to your cavalier. But, I a "test run" about a month ago
and it wasn't a very pleasant experience..lol And, that was only for 2 nights! So, I'd really like to know how you're managing it. I live in a huge city and think parking
on residential streets around here wouldn't be too hard to get away with. Everyone around here parks on the street anyway so no one would really notice another small
car parked on the block. Don't know if that's any help or not. I wish you the best of luck and let me know how it's going. Take care of yourself!

 

[RamblinRogue]

I might actually do that. I been to Arizona once just drove through, I read about the monsoons they have and always wanted to see one.

I hate to be the one to share but our really great monsoons were about 15 or more years back. Now we get the haboobs occasionally but the wind, rain and lightning -- not so much. Damn shame, too.