Our camping set-up is fairly straight forward. We camp with a slightly modified Venter Botswana Special trailer and we use a Howling Moon dome tent for the kids to stay in. The luxury levels will depend on where we’re camping… If we’re over-landing in one of the neighboring countries we try to keep it as simple and easy as possible. There’s nothing worse than having to pack up all sorts of small things when you’re trying to get on the road before sunrise. But of course, if we’re camping in a caravan resort, we’ll bring a bit more items along, especially electrical appliances like kettles and toasters.
Whilst we were still using the trailer as a pack donkey only, there weren’t any need to do modifications but since we fitted the Howling Moon tent top trailer, we found that we wanted to start using the trailer a bit more for camp site storage and food prep. Thus the need arose to fit it with LED lights and a battery system, as we wanted to fit our National Luna fridge inside the trailer. The battery system has a dual charge system – we can either charge it via a battery charger that is plugged into a 220v outlet or we can use our solar panels to charge it during the day.
We fitted two E-Nex deep cycle batteries inside a ammo box and we added an 800w inverter, for when you might have the need for 220v in the bush. The regulator for the solar panels were also installed and it also functions as the battery monitor so we didn’t see the need to buy a separate monitor for our set-up. The complete system was fitted inside the nose cone. From there we ran cabling to the back of the trailer, specifically to where the fridge would have to draw power from as well as to a little utility box on the outside of the trailer. Both these power points can be run from either 12v or 220v supply, depending on where we’re camping and we also added a inlet point for use with a caravan power plug, for when we’re camping in a resort. Lastly we fitted a LED light inside the nose cone.
These power points were fitted to supply power towards the back of the trailer
Happy Campers SA 
Hi Linda
What did you use to mount your LED light on your nosecone? I have the Lumeno light fitting with magnetic back , I doubt that would hold if traveling on gravel road. Would double sided tape do the job?
Regards
Mawonga
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Hi Mawonga, we used silicone to fit the light to the inside of the nosecone
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Dankie
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I really prize your work, Great post.
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Thanks for sharing Linda, as you will see on our site reiskampusse.wordpress.com we are developing sites for fulltimers. These will be as green as possible so the need for solar power is a certainty.
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great post cheers
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Thanks so much! And thank you for the feedback 🙂
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