New Skoolie - Houston help

[Freeduh the Bus]

Hey friends, we are Freeduh the Bus in Houston,TX and we recently moved out of our stationary rental house and into our skoolie, but we still have a few loose ends to tie up before being fully self-sufficient. Solar/battery is one of them. 😩 Does anyone know where we could park and plug in in Houston until we figure out the battery thing? We bought (1) 100 amp battery because that's what we could do financially at the time, and that basically only powers the inverter. We have another battery coming in a few days, but we grabbed a 200 amp hoping that would allow us to unplug from our friend's place but we are learning now that the 100 and the 200 will not play nice.

[Arelyjaguar]

Look up Awesome possum van works and recreation. They are closer to Dallas but you can rent space and build and live there while you finish

[Simplicity]

Don't quote me on this, but from what I understand you want to match up batteries in relation to power and age. The old saying "One bad Apple can spoil the whole bunch" is applicable in this situation.

I would say hands down the most expensive part of my conversion will turn out to be my starting batteries, house batteries (4 - 6v), my equipment panel and my solar panels (4 - 250A used).

The amount of performance in life you get out of your batteries really depends on the quality of the batteries to start with and how well you maintain them.

Do yourself a favor and research this subject matter well. I was extremely fortunate to add on to my research with input from other site members here.

Good luck!

[Kentucky Dreaming]

Rule number one with batteries: the weakest battery is all you have.

All batteries in a bank should be the same amp hour rating and same age.

A weak battery will draw power from the other batteries it is connected to until all are at the same state of charge.

[Kentucky Dreaming]

In other words, " Listen to Steve."

[Kentucky Dreaming]

The resident expert on batteries and electrical here is Kazetsukai. Check him out.

[Mr_Geenie]

I put an ad up on Craigslist looking for a place to live in my schoolie while I finished the conversion. I had a nice kooky lady offer me a spot the next morning. Slightly further out in the country than I would prefer, but as soon as I remove some windows and paint the bus white so it does not look like a school bus anymore I will be headed closer to civilization to an RV park closer to my job.
I stopped for a few days in between Houston and Galveston at a small rv park thay didnt care I looked like a school bus, but I cant for the life of me remember where it was. Texas City, I think? League City maybe? Found him on Craigslist too.