AROUND-OZ MOTORHOMES

Judy and Olwyns "Silver Fox" A Class

We came across "Silver Fox" in a wonderful little "overnight stopover" at Fingal in Tasmania - even had free power and water to each motorhome - wonderful stuff Tasmania! It was great to come across a very large coach not relying on a noisy generator at all. Instead Olwyn and Judy opted to install a monster solar system.

Layout is fairly conventional with the lounge dining areas up the front, followed by an extremely roomy bathroom and then a very nice bedroom. The unit was built on an Isuzu rear pusher chassis. Olwyn supervised the building of the motorhome and did all the design work. Wife Judy also had a lot of design input particularly in the TV cabinet area - would you believe a slide away flat screen - it disappears into a table. We have never come across this approach before.

You would go a long way to find a system such as this one on any motorhome regardless of cost. First up there are 12 Unisolar panels up on the roof - almost the total length of the coach. These are mounted in one continuous row with a 50 mm air gap. Olwyn and Judy from Adelaide have spared no expense in designing this system. It is based on 2 volt house type batteries running at 24 volts. These come in at 600 kgs and are located in a very well ventilated bin just behind the front wheels.

The solar controller is Trace and the combined inverter/charger is also a state of the art Trace. These are all mounted inboard in a wooden cupboard just inside the front entrance (minimal cable runs). All voltage indicators and computer controls are mounted in the left side of the dashboard. Again these are all Trace as well. The photo below left shows the slight "vee" in the two rows of six panels each. The only drawback with this coach was absolutely no room for roof vents in the kitchen and shower areas. This motorhome is still a work in progress and we will update these pages as new features are added.