Trailer Modifications

In an attempt to make our battery last longer on dry-camping expeditions, I measured all the electrical loads we have and found that the biggest appliance we have is the lighting system - and the Sunline has 15 interior light bulbs, not to mention outside lights all over the place. All the bulbs are 921 (spade type) and at 12-13v they consume at least 1.3A each. That's easily 18 watts. That's each! If we have, say, 4 of them turned on, that's over 5A - over 100Ah in a 24 hour period! How big is your battery?

So that was no good. There are two alternatives - compact fluorescents and LED's. I've tried LED's before, but the color temperature was horrible - very cold and white, bluish almost. They are very efficient though. As for CFL's, the idea of running something that will only glow at several hundred volts from a 12V system just doesn't sound efficient to me, so I looked into what's been happening with LED's these days. I was pleasantly surprised...

Problem: the water pump pulses on-and-off to maintain water pressure. It does a decent job, but it's noisy and the water flow varies every second or two.

Solution: install an expansion (accumulator) tank that will accumulate pressure and reduce the need for the pump to cycle or even turn on.

After some preliminary research, I ordered the parts and installed it in 2 hours (including some performance testing). Here is the how-to, largely for me to remember how I did it.