A Big Thanks To Everyone Who Helped With My “Boots On The Ground” Project
A couple weeks ago, I put out a call for donations for a special project. After taking several trips, I noticed that a lot of cool cleantech stories out there just weren’t being told, especially in rural areas. So, I decided to come up with ways to make travel a lot cheaper so that I could spend some time every year chasing them. After a couple years of gathering up my own gear, I was all set to buy the last of it and hit the road, but we had several family emergencies in a row that ate up the money.
Fortunately, dozens of readers and fans came through to help us out! I originally was asking for $8757 to get the best of everything. Buying cheap junk twice doesn’t save money, and I was also trying to completely remove the burning of fossil fuels from my camp setup. We didn’t meet that goal, ultimately reaching just shy of $3,000. This is OK, though, because I did have a number of “Plan B” items in place and I can get started without some of the things on the list. I’ll need to burn a small amount of propane for now, but given that the vehicle and HVAC will all be electric (and often solar), I think the minimal impact of a propane stove and water heater will be an acceptable tradeoff for now.
Some Key Supporters Who Deserve A Shout Out
Before I get to my revised plan, I want to share the names of a few supporter who really helped big. I’ll be mentioning them again in some future articles (because I promised to), but they really deserve the biggest thanks for shouldering most of the fundraising burden here.
I’d first like to thank my gorgeous friend Ash Martian (yes, that’s her real name) for her big donation. If you’re not already following her on Twitter, you’re missing out. She has a lot of really fun Tesla and SpaceX content, along with some cool DIY cleantech and AI projects she messes around with.
Another big backer was Auros Harman, who’s big on clean cities like we are. We had some great discussions about improving bike infrastructure, which isn’t our biggest focus at CleanTechnica, but something that’s still very important to us. One of the coolest things about this project is that we’re carrying along e-bikes to review, which should help with their adoption.
A third backer I’d like to mention is Robert Neal. I haven’t reached out to him personally as of this writing, but I’ll tell readers more about what he’s excited about soon.
These three donors covered about half of the funding, but that doesn’t mean the other half doesn’t matter. Most of the smaller donors signed up for a personal thank you or postcards. I’ll be doing the personal thanks to everybody soon, and sending postcards out from our first trip, which should happen in May.
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My Revised Lean Plan
One of the biggest expenses in the plan as described in the original article and fundraiser page was getting a trailer. The easiest thing to do would be to just buy an enclosed cargo trailer and load things into it, but little cargo trailers are pretty expensive these days. The one I wanted that had a third quick access door and slightly better aerodynamic lines was just over $4,000.
But, I already had a “Plan B” I have been working on for a while, and the funding we received will be more than enough to cover it.
Instead of buying a trailer, I’m going to start with a bare frame from Harbor Freight Tools. I’m going to beef that up a bit for safety (we have family who are welders and bolting on 3/4″ plywood will also help). Then, I’m going to upgrade to safer tires for highway driving. Finally, I’m going to build a “foamie” box for it, as described in this article. I’m going to (as much as possible) try to fit the trailer’s box behind the shape of the Bolt to minimize the additional drag it creates, and do other things to minimize drag (boat tail shape, side skirts, etc.).
The current plan (which will probably change as I draw it out more and talk to family) is to have a large rear access door for e-bikes, a galley mounted on one side with a door that serves as an awning, and an access door toward the front for the camping gear. I may also put a slide-out box on the tongue for my 12v refrigerator, but I can’t describe the fridge yet as it’s a review unit that hasn’t been released to the general public yet, so stay tuned!
I already had an EcoFlow Delta Pro power unit with 3.6 kW of energy storage that will ride in the front of the trailer. This will be charged either at RV parks on the 20-amp circuit or via an inverter drawing power from the Bolt’s 12v battery. By pulling in a continuous low charge from the Bolt (to take it easy on that system) and using the Delta Pro’s batteries as a buffer, we should have no problem running pretty much anything we want at the campsite. While I can’t reveal every product EcoFlow has sent us (they’re under embargo for the next couple of weeks), I will say that EcoFlow has been one of our biggest supporters in terms of useful gear for this project.
Eventually we’ll add some solar power to this setup that’s built into the trailer, but that’s going to need to wait. But, this doesn’t mean we won’t have some solar power available. If we’re going to camp for several days someplace without power, we’ll pack our Jackery Explorer 2000 Pro and 1200 watts of solar power to top the Bolt EUV up during the day. This is only good enough for Level 1 charging, but it’s better than you’ll get in many of the places I’d like to head out to and chase stories. Unfortunately, the voltage for these panels isn’t a great match for the Delta Pro.
I’ll definitely be updating readers on the progress once the funds get transferred to our account and we start trailer construction!
All images by Jennifer Sensiba.
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