After about 2 years of shopping, I picked up our new 2024 Grand Design 23LDE back in the last week of February!
I haven’t posted much about our new baby since I was waiting till I got most of “my” work done – upgrading the systems side of things – the inside is mostly up to the wife 😊
While we hope to eventually get around to staying at some campgrounds with full hookups, most of our camping will be boondocking at state parks and music festivals, so I really wanted to install an off-grid power system with the goal that we’d be able to run everything AC including the A/C overnight on battery if needed. While I did go ahead and invest in 1200 watts of solar, that is best case scenario with the most likely scenario running off the battery during quiet hours and running / charging off the generator during the day. If the solar can take the place of the generator, or let it run quieter, so much the better.
I’m posting my electrical upgrade journey so that if you’re planning on doing something similar you can see what I did – so far I’m pretty happy 😊
I went with a GroWatt 3000w off-grid all in one inverter paired with an EG4 48V 100ah LiFePO4 rack battery. I had seriously considered a Victron system, but I found this to be simpler and cheaper and it accomplished all of my goals. I also considered using individual batteries, but the connection between the EG4 and GroWatt was too convenient to pass up and there wasn’t much of a weight penalty so I went for it.
I started with a clean stock slate… I had seen a picture of the bulkhead from a ’23 22MLE before I got mine home and had pretty much planned everything out ahead of time, I was happy to see that the ’24 23LDE was essentially the same bulkhead design. The big difference and surprise was that I didn’t see the inverter prep waiting for me when I took down the wall – had to look inside under the bed for that. Not sure if it was good or bad that they had placed it under the bed, but I was very happy to see that they gave you a good amount of 10/2 so that you can pretty much get the wire wherever you need it. Not too thrilled about the hole they drilled in the floor – if it wasn’t for the under-carriage cover, that would be completely open to the elements. I plan on putting an electrical outlet under the bed, and I will fill that hole in when I do that…
The first job was to mount the inverter and battery. I used rivnuts to mount 2 1x2’s to the wall and then I mounted the inverter to those, leaving an air gap between the inverter and the wall for heat dissipation. I went ahead and wired up an AC outlet for the camp side of the passthrough before putting the wall back up. The battery is locked in place with a 2x4 mounted to the top studs with rivnuts and the framing screwed into the decking.
Next task was to get the wire where I wanted it. It wasn’t easy to fish it through from under the bed because 10/2 is a pain to work with since it’s so stiff, but with my wife’s help I was able to pull it through to the docking station. Once it was there I just cut a hole where I wanted my AC switch to be and pulled it out.
After the wire was there, I was able to wire up my AC selector switch. I wanted the ability to run off the line when available so I could just keep the battery and inverter off when not needed. It was a great moment when I was first able to switch on the inverter and everything worked perfectly 😊 When the switch is set to inverter, the line goes directly to the inverter, and the inverter feeds the entire fuse panel in the camper so I can run everything including the A/C and the microwave.
I then started installing all of my accessories… I’ve got a 30amp inlet plug for the PV Input. I only plan on using 10amps, but I figured I’d do it that way in case I ever need to start parallelling panels for more capacity. I can either use a standard extension cord to plug in my portable solar panels, or if I need to go a long way, I can go ahead and use my 30amp extension cords for better conductivity.
I had to replace the tank lights switch I had ripped out, and I put in a manual switch to engage the running lights so that I could power my Haloview cameras without having to keep the running lights on my tow vehicle… The third switch is to power my network box which provides internet under a variety of different modes, including powering Starlink via DC and automatically connecting to my home network. I put in an extra Anderson tap for future use, and the cigarette lighter plug is for my macerator pump, or anything else that needs that. I mounted a Ryobi battery charger on the camp side wall and put in an Echo Studio for outside sound which just reaches the front steps when plugged into the outlet I installed over there.
Some of the other things I’ve done:
4 400W portable solar panels
TireLinc TPMS system.
Haloview BT7 Rear and Side view cameras – these are fantastic!
Replaced the passthrough locks with combonation locks and replaced the door locks with wireless / NFC keypads – this is great because we don’t need any keys at all! Plus I was kind of freaked out because it seems that all passthrough locks share the same key and there are a lot of duplicates for door locks... I originally replaced only the rear door lock because I wasn’t planning on ever using the front door, but after our initial camping trip I ordered the front door keypad too so that I could open it from the outside for ventilation – still have no intention of ever using the front door as an actual entrance.
Reolink doorbell camera.
Had the dealer install JT Strongarms – jury is out on those…
B&W Continuum WDH
Was considering eliminating the house battery and using a 48v-12v converter, but decided to use a 12V LiFePO4 100ah and retain the existing solar system for that.
Lippert Solid Stance step reinforcements. This is fantastic, gives you the flexibility of the foldaway stairs with the solidness of the Solid Stairs.
I have a Harbor Freight flagpole which I plan on mounting to my rear ladder – the top is modified to hold my Starlink dish as well as mounting my WIFI antenna – but I probably won’t get around to mounting this till June…
Inside is mostly the wife’s job, but I have done a couple of things:
Security system on both doors and both passthrough doors with a motion sensor.
Automatic cabinet lights on all the cabinets – they were DARK…
Polk React Soundbar with Subwoofer for the TV. OMG this sounds fantastic and is fully Alexa enabled.
I’ve got an Oxygenics Fury showerhead ready to install, but haven’t gotten around to it yet.
Lastly I put rubber pads on the metal shade bars because they make a horrible racket when they’re down and the windows are open…
I am thinking about installing an auxiliary 500w inverter with a 48-12V converter so that I could run the small inverter off of either the house battery or the off-grid battery for times when I don’t need the A/C or microwave. The GroWatt has a significant idle draw and if I don’t need the high wattage items, the little inverter would probably run everything for many days without any charging required, especially with solar in the mix.
Happy Camping 😊
