The camper is wrapped and ready for the road!  The wrap is one of the few things that we did exactly according to our plan from the very beginning.  We decided early on that we wanted to take a bit of Belize with us wherever we go, so we picked out four photos from our extensive Belize photo collection that would fit well on the two sides, and the front and the back.  We worked with Pentagram in Belmopan, and while there are a few things we would do differently if we had to do it again, we got exactly what we wanted.

The plan all along has been to use every square millimeter of space, and we are well on our way to doing that.  The latest addition is our “attic,” which is a shelf over the moto garage.  It’s high enough that we can still walk under it to load and unload the motos, but the right height so we can store action packers and a few other stuffable things.

Actually, we have fully working plumbing, electric, and gas!  It’s not perfect, and we’re still working out some bugs, but we’re really close.  We pulled the camper out of the garage so the solar panels could charge the batteries, and everything seemed to be working fine until the middle of the night when our charging devices started beeping because the power was going off and on repeatedly.  Tom unplugged the full time inverter which was running the refrigerator and the charging outlets, and when we tested it in the morning we found that something is wrong with the inverter.  That’s sort of a relief because we’re glad we didn’t blow up the brand new refrigerator, and it’s sort of okay because we have two inverters which were intended for full time stuff and part time stuff but also redundancy in case this happened…but it’s sort of not okay because we don’t want to have to replace an inverter before we’ve even driven out of the driveway.  But, Jon from Sun’s Electric is going to come and take a look at it tomorrow, so there’s still hope for an easy fix.  

We also filled the water tanks and mostly finished the water system.  We had a few minor glitches, like one of the supply tubes was bulging and needed to be replaced with reinforced tubing, and there’s a minor leak going into the pressure tank which isn’t fixed yet, but the system is working through the pump and we have hot and cold running water at both sinks inside the camper.  Tom still has to run the water lines for the outside hot and cold hose bibs, but at this point he’ll get that done when he has a few spare minutes.

Having hot water means that the gas system is working.  We tested the stove, and everything seems to work, although I haven’t tried to cook on it yet.  What’s really cool (to us, at least) about the water heater is that it has electronic ignition, so I have a switch over the kitchen sink, and when I want to heat water in the water heater, I just flick the switch and it automatically fires up and heats the water.  After two older campers with the old style water heaters, it’s really nice to not have to stand outside holding lit sparkies, pushing buttons, and trying to shield the pilot from the wind in order to light the water heating tank.  It’s like magic!  And I know I posted a photo of this in our last post, but we have now tested it and it works as advertised, despite the fact that I wasn’t going to believe it until I saw it work.

It’s been a long time coming, and things the past few weeks have seemed to move very slowly with very little steps, but last Monday night we moved into the camper!

Our conditions for moving in were that Tom was done with the electric in the cabover so that we wouldn’t have to move everything out so he could do more wiring.  That was done.  

The next condition was that the DC wiring be done, or at least almost done, so we could plug in the toilet and have the exhaust fans working.  We also wanted the AC wiring to be done so we could charge our devices at night.

The final condition was that plumbing be done enough that we could brush our teeth and wash our hands, at least in the kitchen sink.

​All of these things were done, so on Monday we moved our clothes into the closets and made the bed!

Our resource list for almost everything that went into building the camper is now published on the Moonracer Farm OTRA Home page.  We've tried to include everything that went into the build, but we had to draw the line somewhere so things like plumbing fittings, gas fittings, and other random nuts and bolts aren't listed.  If you are looking for something that you think might have gone into our camper build and you can't find it on the list, contact us and we'll tell you what we know.