Wild Camping at Black Knowl
Comments
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Given the apparent collapse of any facilities following the lack of electricity, I wonder if CAMC are investing in solar to provide resilience.
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Yes, solar to contribute towards water heating and solar charged batteries to power the water pumps which were out of action when the electric was turned off.
we see this sort of thing being done all over the warmer mainland but I was parked next to a guy at a non EHU THS in sunny Weymouth a fortnight back and he was heating his own water by just laying 5 x one litre bottles in a sort of homemade cloche, and by mid afternoon he had enough hot water to have a shower for him and his wife and for washing up.
a simple change of nozzle on the bottle allowed a hand held 'shower' inside the van.
this idea was originally carried out by this chap after he was full timing for 5 years and had a Truma failure from 'over use' (according to Truma).
he hadn't needed to turn the boiler on at all while on site, extending the life of the boiler and vastly reducing gas usage.
perhaps this simple idea could be extrapolated up to supplement site showers.
you'd have thought the club would at least be investigating this sort of improvement?
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I don't know if they have. My point is that the showers were out of action as the pump ran from the mains, or the substitute generator. Mains outage meant no showers.
in my van, the water pump would run unaffected even if there were a mains power cut.
similarly, that battery powered water pump gets its power replenished by the solar on the van roof.
these 'cloche' type installations (a larger version of my neighbours home made kit) sit on the roof of many, many houses in Spain, warming the water throughout the day.
a simple system for a van with 5 litres (or more if required) of water for a van, with solar charged, battery powered pumps means autonomy from mains.
All the folk on the THS site were without mains. my point was, can this simple process be extrapolated up and used across the Club network?
im not sure why but I felt Club site offices and buildings should be covered in solar panels helping to reduce the large electricity bills were were told about in one of the mail shots.
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Not one mention of loss of heating in my OP, so I don't know where you got that from, the same for any red herrings. What I did lose but didn't mention in my post was the use of the MH air conditioning, which was keeping my two dogs cool in the still high temperatures of the evening.
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To be perfectly frank, if it was so hot between 8pm and 1am that you found it necessary to run habitation aircon for your dogs, I consider it irresponsible to put the dogs at risk by having them there. If it wasn’t that hot, we have another red herring.
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Yes, that occurred to me too. I think, particularly if we'd been in that situation with dogs, with a MH I'd have been ringing round to see what alternative sites could cater for me, even for a day or two, and then return to BK on the assumption the problem had been sorted.
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It seems that quite a few dog owners do not consider the heat as we have noted many out on the park (two old English sheepdog not clipped)with their owners when we went to lunch at one of the cafes
When I spoke to a ranger about giving advice to dog owners it did not tick one of his boxes so common sense did not prevail as with the owners , spoke to a couple of owners and it seems it was not a problem for them
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You got me. How irresponsibe of me that when I made the booking at the beginning of May I didn't check the weather forecast for the evening of August 8th and then contact Mystic Meg for any unplanned power outages that evening. With that information I would have able to take precautions to responsibly care for my dogs.
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A bit sarcastic! Not sure what the club system is these days (it's getting on for 3 years since we used a club site) but didn't you get any forewarning of the likelihood of problems? I keep reading posts about "before you go" emails?
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Ridiculous? Why leave it till 8pm? Ever used CLs? There are loads of them in the New Forest. I just think, however inconvenient I might have thought the problem would last longer than 30 minutes and at least thought about alternatives. Never would rely on AC to keep ourselves comfortable, let alone the dogs.
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The post from Rowena which says
"On 13 July the Before You Travel webpage was updated with the following message - "Due to planned maintenance at a local substation, the site will be without mains electricity and will be operated off a large generator on 8th and 9th August. "
So it was clear there might have been a problem (sod's law and all that) and that should have been a signal that relying on AC for the dogs might be problematic. Each to his own, but, as said, I'd have been looking at alternatives back then.
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What still high temperatures?
According to the Met office weather data at 10pm onwards at the Black Knowl area on the date of 8th it was 18C then 15C at 2am on the 9th.
You needed AC for those temperatures?
Perhaps the inside of your MH was warmer but then you should have opened some windows and/or taken your dogs outside?
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An RV recreational vehicles is anything that you use it for , be it a motor caravan as described by the paper work you got as owner from the DVLA? through to caravans , trailer tent and fifth wheel caravans 👍
Fancy having mains AC on a motor caravan 🤔
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RV = Recreational Vehicle - usually American.
LV = Leisure Vehicle - any form of leisure vehicle.
AC is 240v on standard UK motorhomes. It would drain a 12v leisure battery very quickly.
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