I just love my Hawk goose neck and am thinking I’d like to try to do some more camping out of it next year. Ideally i can set up a decent off grid system to provide me with good lighting at least.
I am clueless as to how they work and what is needed to set it up, so off grid for dummies version please!
For a start I would suggest having a battery box( that will hold two marine grade batteries) under your gooseneck. You will want the batteries wired up so they will trickle charge from your truck. Be smart and have the batteries charge while you are driving. Once you are parked and camping disconnect your trailer plug from your truck. With the trickle charge system if you deplete your batteries (example would be leaving a fan running for a week) your batteries will drain then the fan begins running off your truck battery. Do that long enough and you have a dead truck battery. When you have the marine batteries installed you can also switch your emergency break-away battery to a rechargeable system. Warning, many service people THINK they know how to wire this stuff when they really do not! I learn a lot of stuff the hard way…
Another nice thing to have installed into your gooseneck is a hooded fan in the roof right over the gooseneck. I have a Turbo-Max fan which is a 3 speed fan that can blow air into the trailer or blow (suck) it out. Trailer dressing rooms can get really hot! The hood is part of the installation so you can vent or run your fan during bad weather.
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What kind of camping are you talking about and what style of living do you want to maintain? That will determine your power requirements.
Once you set your baseline you can start thinking about a power setup.
Concur with the double marine/RV battery idea. That would likely be a bottom line in any event.
G.
What does it already have in place? Is it insulated? Do you have any LQ amenities, or are we talking bare metal large dressing room?
Do you have /want a generator?
<quote>I just love my Hawk goose neck and am thinking I’d like to try to do some more camping out of it next year. Ideally i can set up a decent off grid system to provide me with good lighting at least.
I am clueless as to how they work and what is needed to set it up, so off grid for dummies version please!</quote>
For an off-the-grid system all you will need is these three items:
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Have someone make you a battery box that will be bolted on the outside of your trailer’s kickwall under the gooseneck overhang. Have the box located at the top/side of the wall so that you can still see the tops of the batteries, but not have them riding below shoulder level. The box should be metal with a hinged door that will drop down so you can access the batteries, and close tightly so that outside weather (rain etc while driving) doesn’t affect the batteries. Make the box big enough to be able to store a battery reader as well.
Have two holes drilled into your trailer kickwall inside the battery box so that the positive and negative shielded wires from your batteries can be threaded through each hole into your trailer where you will have your inverter located.
Put the inverter at about eye level on an interior sidewall inside your trailer, well within reach of you being able to plug appliances into the inverter’s outlets. The closer you can mount your inverter to where the battery box location on the other side of the wall (and the two drilled holes), the better, as your +/- wires will be shorter.
Have your solar panels hooked to alligator clamps so that you can clamp onto the battery pillars to trickle charge the batteries while the sun is shining. Make sure to place your panels where they get the best sun - which is often on the roof of the trailer. Leave the battery box open while you do this - that way you won’t forget to unclamp the panels when you pack up to leave.
Frankly, the batteries/inverter/solar panels are pretty much all you need for your routine lights/computer charging/table or phone charging, etc.
Also, make sure your lights are either LED or energy efficient.
I had this same setup in my homemade LQ for years, and I even ran a TV off the batteries for hours without a problem. Now I have a custom LQ…and just recently found out (much to my extreme surprise and annoyance) that this setup does not have an inverter for the trailer at all. Thus, none of the outlets in the LQ work unless my generator is attached and running.
So you can be sure this spring I will make the modifications necessary to have a Marine battery AND an inverter installed in the trailer so that I can plug things into the inverter’s dual outlets and have AC power without needing my generator.
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If you’re using two batteries, it’s better to use two 6 volt batteries in series vs two 12 volt batteries in parallel. The batteries in parallel can discharge each other and be unequally charged/discharged. 6 volt Golf cart batteries are ideal for this. Large capacity and designed for deep cycles.
Thanks SO much for your detailed answers—I hope to get started on the modifications this spring, and this really helps.
The trailer has no gennie nor living quarters. Its an open stock style for the horses, with a rear and off side ramp and an escape door. I don’t camp out of the dressing room/gooseneck, preferring to clean out the horse space and set up my bed and tables on hay bales, and drape the entire interior with mosquito netting. Its quite roomy and comfortable when set up.
As for power use, i mostly just need led lighting for an hour before bed.
