new airstream owner - questions on boondocking

[JK3500]

greetings from colorado,

the wife and i recently traded our pop-up of several years on a 2005 22' international ccd. we have been looking at and wanting an airstream for some time now and the 22' ccd seemed to perfectly fit our needs (style and balance of comfort, living space and versatility - ie ability to fit in short national park campsites) we are both avid outdoorsmen (people?) and enjoy mountain biking, hiking, trail running and endurance sports. TV is a 2007 silverado 3500 classic with D-Max/ally, which tows the 22' like it is not even there. we both love the AS and are looking forward to many miles and destinations in it.

have read hundreds of posts on this forum and am amazed at the wealth of knowledge and cameraderie found here. i do have some questions though.

planning to set up the trailer for long term boondocking. we may even live in it someday; for now work and kids keep that from happening. in the short term though, i am looking at a 10 month work trip to TX this fall where i will be living in the AS in a campground with no hookups.

while i am definitely no expert on 12 volt electrical systems and requirements, from what i have read so far i think i have a pretty good idea what i need to do. just looking for some advice from the boondocking experts on this site.

first, while i do not have an electrical needs survey, i will say (i believe) the wife and i are both pretty frugal power users. from years in the pop-up, often not anywhere near a campground we have learned to conserve battery power (and heat). the furnace does not run when we are asleep (unless needed to keep the pipes from freezing), we use headlamps at night and morning coffee is cowboy coffee on the stove.

while i would like to set up a good solar system in the future, right now one that would meet my short term needs is not cost effective, so i will be going the generator route. am looking at a propane converted yamaha 2400 and may even mount and run it right out of the truck bed. i know it will likely not run the a/c but that is not an issue. neither the wife or i are big on a/c (don't need it here in CO) and i will only have 3-4 weeks of warm (hot) wx to deal with in TX this fall.

think the single battery setup on the 22' ccd is probably the weakest link in my current setup. ideally i would like a 4 battery setup but there doesn't appear to be a cost effectivel way to do that on our trailer. what i plan to do is have a custom, 2 battery tray built on top of the trailer tongue, just above the current single battery tray to mount two 6 volt golf cart batteries. by my measurements, it should fit without interfering with the tongue jack or WD hitch bar mounts and the additional 60# tongue weight should not be an issue. i think this will meet our electrical needs but welcome advice from anyone who has added batteries to this trailer (how did you do it?) or from other boondockers as to whether 2 batteries is sufficient power. i would like to get away with running the generator no more that 2-3 hours a night to top off batteries and run the computer (i will be up and out too early in the morning to run the gen), maybe more if needed on the weekends to fully charge up the batteries.

which brings me to the converter/charger. planning to upgrade my parallax 7355 power center with the 55 amp 3 stage conversion kit sold by bestconverter.com, problably adding a trimetric monitor to give me better ability to monitor and control my usage/charging. any input on this system is appreciated, as well as how it compares to, for example, the intelli-power 60 amp converter with charge wizard.

this is my planned setup for now. future upgrades likely will include changing the halogen lights to LEDs, adding a catalytic heater (i am aware of the potential hazards and required precautions) and, as stated above, eventually solar to supplement or even replace the gen as primary power.

any input advise from the experts is much appreciated. is this a sound setup or am i missing something? should this provide enough power for my needs(assuming conservative electricity usage)? due to funding restraints, i will likely not have the complete setup done until shortly before i travel to TX. would like to have fairly good idea it will work and not get down there only to find i grossly underestimated my requirements (though not major tragedy as i will have a few months before it colder WX begins to set in).

i realize this is a long first post. thanks in advance for any input; any additional tips on long term boondocking are also much appreciated. happy trails, jk