Ask Megawatt
A helper that answers from this site's manuals, guides, checklists, and calculators, with links to where it found each answer. It switches on once an AI service is connected.
Resources
Everything else you'll want handy
Where to camp, what to do at the dump station, Fleetwood's own owner pages, and a glossary that skips the jargon.
Where to camp
Campgrounds and open land
We don't keep our own campground list. These are the official sources the rest of the internet copies from.
Recreation.gov
Book federal campgrounds, from national forests to Army Corps lakes.
National Park Service
Park-by-park camping rules, RV length limits, and alerts.
USDA Forest Service
National forest campgrounds and dispersed camping, forest by forest.
BLM camping
Bureau of Land Management camping, including a lot of open boondocking land.
Dump stations
The two-valve rule
Most campgrounds and many travel centers have a dump station, and the park's own directions are the ones to follow. Ask at check-in if you can't spot one.
The 2019 Fleetwood manual keeps it simple: leave the black valve closed until you're ready to dump, and on a full hookup the grey valve can stay open. Black first, then grey, so the grey water rinses the hose.
The arrival checklist covers the rest of the hookup.
Megawatt tools
Run the numbers for your rig
Solar planner
Roof layout, daily budget, and three build tiers.
Calculators
Battery, solar, wire, fuel, wind, payload, and more.
Solar forecast
A week of real sky for your ZIP.
Problem fixer
Step-by-step checks for a dark coach, a quiet fridge, and more.
Manual hub
Every Fleetwood owner's manual we could find, 2000 on.
Checklists
Pre-trip through storage, saved on your phone.
On the way
Coming soon
Two add-ons are built and waiting on an outside service. They stay switched off until that service is connected, so nothing pretends to work.
Seasonal reminder emails
A nudge before winterizing, spring wake-up, and trip season for the rig you save in My Rig. It switches on once an email service is connected. Until then we don't collect addresses for it.
Glossary
RV power words, in plain English
- Shore power
- The 120-volt power you get by plugging into a campground pedestal. The 2019 Bounder gas manual describes a 30-amp cord.
- House batteries
- The bank that runs the lights, pump, and other 12-volt stuff inside. Separate from the chassis batteries that start the engine.
- Amp-hour (Ah)
- How much a battery holds at its voltage. Multiply by volts to get watt-hours. The calculator treats a 12 V 100Ah lithium pack as 1,280 Wh.
- Watt-hour (Wh)
- Watts times hours. A 100-watt load for 10 hours uses 1,000 Wh. The calculators plan a day in watt-hours.
- Inverter
- Turns battery power into 120-volt household power. Sized by the watts running at the same moment.
- Converter
- Does the opposite: turns shore or generator power into 12 volts to run the coach and charge the house bank.
- Boondocking
- Camping with no hookups at all. Also called dry camping. Your batteries, tanks, and solar do all the work.
- GVWR and GCWR
- Gross vehicle weight rating, and gross combined weight rating for a tow vehicle plus trailer. Both are on a sticker in your rig.
- Payload
- What's left before you hit GVWR once the coach, people, cargo, water, and propane are aboard. The payload calculator does that subtraction.
- Black and grey tanks
- Black holds toilet waste. Grey holds sink and shower water. The manual says keep the black valve closed until you dump.