Tuesday Talk – Our Top Three Renovations for Boondocking
This week we are talking about our top 3 renovations we’ve made to our Airstream for boondocking or free camping in the wilderness. The first major renovation/upgrade we did was solar. Solar power while not necessarily cost-effective when compared to using a generator is much more convenient in our opinion and makes our power a passive process when we’re out in the wilderness. Our 2nd major renovation is our composting toilet. The composting toilet has eliminated the need for our black tank which allows us to double our gray water storage. It also means we don’t waste any of our fresh water on a toilet which allows us to stay out longer. The third renovation we’ve made for boondocking is installing the propane line and our catalytic heater. The catalytic heater allows us to keep the Airstream nice and toasty even in freezing temperatures without using ANY power and only a trickle of propane compared to a typical furnace. We even give you another gadget we love for boondocking, our Valterra shutoff valve which allows us to combine our gray and black tanks. So really it’s 3.5 things!
Links this week:
Our Solar Show & Tell
Installing Our Composting Toilet
Natures Head Composting Toilet (affiliate link)
Installing our Catalytic Heater
Olympian Catalytic Heater (affiliate link)
How to Combine Waste Tanks
Valterra Waste Valve (affiliate link)
On Tuesday’s we’d like to answer questions sent to us from viewer’s like you and share some of the details of our Airstream life. If you have a question for us please let us know in the comments below or at our website astreaminlife.com
You mentioned the catalytic heater. Just wondering if or how it protects tanks and plumbing from freezing. Or do you need to run the furnace for that? Thanks for all the great videos and sharing your life and experience with us. You have been a great resource. Looking forward to getting out there.
The underbelly of the Airstream is enclosed which helps keep our tanks from freezing. We usually run the catalytic heater inside when it drops below freezing and it does a good job of keeping us warm while warming the floors enough that we have never had problems with our tanks. If we were going to be below freezing for multiple days we would probably run the furnace during the coldest parts of the night to make sure the tanks don’t freeze though. Thanks so much!