Finally got a 10 gal freshwater tank put in for the little hand/dishwashing sink. Hooked up the pump, and watched my 3 gallon test fill run dry in no time flat.
Lazily, I bought a little GE switchable voltage power supply for $12 at home labyrinth. It converts 12v into 3, 6, and 9, and has one more setting that feeds the 12v straight through. At 3v, the pump wouldn’t run. At 6v, it took about two to two and half minutes to run a gallon of water, which seems about perfect. I’m just gonna wire that puppy in, so the sink can be on “water economy” setting most of the time but put out a fire when it’s needed.
For potable water, there’s a 5 gallon thermos, which in the boonies will be fed by a Katadyn Base Camp gravity feed water filter, which rocks.
Naturally, with so much going right, something had to go wrong. My accessory battery has run very low, and I’ve been driving much more than using the appliances, so I must have blown the fuse (easy) or the relay (annoyingly hidden under passenger seat)…or something somewhere is eating up a lot of juice despite being turned off. I’ll plug in the solar panels while I’m at work tomorrow to fill it back up and figure it out this weekend. I cheaped out a bit on the deep cycle battery (Energizer instead of Optima), home that’s not coming back to bite me. edit: The power sucker was the 12v–>16v adaptor I got for my laptop. I’ll have to remember to unplug it when not in use.