Wednesday, December 12, 2007

The New Ship


Okay, so the new ship is really an old ship, but you're not even going to recognize her when we're finished. I just purchased this 1994 Safari Trek diesel from a gentleman in Spokane, Washington, who also happens to be investing his wealth into creating a sustainable, earth-bermed home. In February, we will bring her to Portland to begin the green make-over.

Anyhow, this rig only has 7,500 miles on her (I know, that's the beauty of buying from seasonal RVers), and at 27-feet, she is seven feet shorter than the first biotrekker, about 10,000 pounds lighter and also about two feet shorter in vertical height. She gets between 12 and 17 mpg, although her top speed is only about 70mph. She's boxy, but cute.

For us, it's a more sustainable move that makes sense. It feels good to buy used and breathe new life into an RV that has tons of potential. We will be gutting most of the interior and either painting the exterior or wrapping it in graphics similar to bioTrekker1. The big changes will come when we add things like a large solar PV system, LED lighting, rainwater harvesting, solar thermal heating, better insulation, etc. Of course, the progress will be posted.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I presume you'll be converting it to run on waste vege oil also. (I considered the same vehicle but then bought a different Trek.) If/when you find a mechanic to do the work, I'd like to know (johnjzmail@yahoo.com). So far my experience with the conversion has involved handing a self-professed wvo mechanic $3000 two months ago with the vehicle left in his care. I have yet to see an oil change, let alone a conversion. - By the way, I've concluded the only place a diesel generator could fit in this unit is to replace the dinette table with it (so that it would then be in a compartment on the inside of the vehicle). The incentive of course is to run it on wvo also for an all electric coach.
(Seems cheaper/albeit noisier than solar, and oughta work rain or shine.)

Ty Adams and Michael Wolbach said...

Bummer to hear about your conversion blues, john. I do plan to add a two tank conversion system, and I'm still researching the market to see what's available. I hadn't thought about adding diesel generator, although I would prefer to have that over the propane just so I could run everything off of biodiesel or wvo. I'll let you know how the upgrades go. --Ty