Yes you can function pretty well just off of a good sized solar generator depending upon how many things that you need to keep powered up. When we first moved off grid, two of us only had solar generators for months and were fine. It really comes down to what your day-to-day needs are. For one or two people, it probably would not be a problem. For an entire family though, it might be a different story.
Ally here. At this point we do not have enough solar panel input nor battery storage to run our RV for days on end without sun. While there have been challenges, and powerless nights, to get to this point, we now have several back ups in place when we have consecutive cloudy or rainy days. Thankfully we live in the sunniest state :-). Our main power source is our solar battery / charger / inverter & solar panel setup.
Currently, on a sunny day with average use, our battery charges to 70-80%. We are working on improving that. When that runs out we have a backup EcoFlow portable power system that we are able to plug our RV into. Everything works as normal with that, but if we use too much it will drain quickly. If the EcoFlow runs out then our power will switch over to the RV battery. While it's great to have this built in backup, when using the RV battery we have to be extra careful of usage and cannot use any outlets.
This is best just to use overnight if all other power sources have failed. Our last resort, when all the above have failed after many days of no sun, is our Honda generator that we can plug the RV into – and can use the outlets again. We generally use this just to charge up the RV battery. As long as we have a supply of gas on hand, we can keep doing this for some time. But for our mental health we all pray that the sun doesn't stay gone too long!
Honestly, when we purchased the pex piping, we had no idea that there were two different types. Now that we understand the differences between the two, we'd probably still go with Pex B. There are trade-offs for both. For more information about those differences, see this short video.
Mina here. In my opinion, they are worth it especially as you are starting off and setting up a solar system for RV living on your property. I purchased a used 2012 Keystone Outback RV which was not solar ready. I'm using three used 230W Canadian solar panels, which I bought for $35 a piece, in parallel configuration; the specs on these came close to the expensive flexible solar panels that my solar generator needed which would have cost me about $450-$500 each, yikes!!. The used ones give me about 500-600W charging power for the solar generator and it's battery on a sunny day. It takes about 4-5 hours to charge to 100%.
Yes it can. One of the key things about Mittleider gardening though is feeding the plant the right amount of fertilizer. The Mittleider Gardening Manual gives the exact proportions so you would need to figure out the correct amount for the size of your container. That can be a bit tricky but its doable. The easiest way though (if you have the space) is to make your containers according to the dimensions given in the book. Then the math is all figured out for you.
Yes we have looked into that as we do get a fair amount of wind out here, but no we have not actually tried it yet. When we do though, we will be sure to document it in the blog.
Yolan here ... I'm doing the soil beds. My reason for going this route is that I'm doing a test-drive of this gardening method. I just wanted to do something simple that didn't require too large an outlay of means. With the soil beds, you don't need to purchase wood to create raised beds and you don't have to purchase sawdust or sand to fill them. You just use your native soil.
But I wound up putting more money into it anyway because our large population of rabbits and other critters presented the need to put up protectionary measures. But for the garden bed itself, it cost almost nothing to put together.