Man, it's been a while since we updated this blog, our apologies, but now we actually have something to talk about.
In Jan '22 we decided we were going to move away from New Hampshire. A decision that did not come lightly. Because both of us were looking at full time retirement we wanted to look at what our income/spending levels/sustainable revenue would look like. We looked at the cost of New Hampshire and first started looking at properties in the north country. It didn't pan out for us. So, we made a decision to look elsewhere, this led to several months of searches through several states and finally landing in Tennessee. Many reasons for picking here, the biggest of which was the ability to purchase what was call "unrestricted land". No permits, no inspections, out of the town limits in the country. We found our property in August '22 and began the process of acquiring it. In September '22 we closed and became the proud owners of a small farm in Tennessee!
Over the next 9 months we made trips back and forth, deconstructing the Tennessee home while there and traveling back to New Hampshire to upgrade the home to ready it for sale. In July '23 we were ready to hit the road with our final load to Tennessee, our house in New Hampshire being on the market. Why tell you all of this? It will make sense in just moments.
Because we already owned "Fred" we thought, there's no better way to move all of our big items than with Fred. This was a decision that was made in the beginning of the process of acquiring the Tennessee home, and because of that we decided at that time to stop all work on the inside of Fred. We had already gutted him, sandblasted the floors, welded in some new 16g galvanized metal into a few spots on the floor where the rust had eaten thru. We applied POR15 to seal him up. Then, we installed ice and water shield to the floors front to back and even in the stairwell. On top of that was 1 inch foam board and then 3/4 inch plywood all the way thru. We did the same with the walls and added strapping front to back to catch our next level of work which is the internal build out. But, at this point Fred was the perfect moving vehicle so that's where we stopped.
In April of '23 we put Fred in the "Thomas" shop in Hooksett, NH. They did a great job preparing him for a 1300 mile trip. Replaced the air system for the rear, oil, other necessary items... But, he was ready to go. We got him back from the shop and began preparing how we would put everything inside. Our friends had given us a nice queen size fold out leather sofa, so we put the sofa in front behind the stairwell so it could fold out side to side and slowly began moving the final "big" items from the house to Fred.
Once we had everything in place we strapped each item to the wall strapping with screws and put stop blocks on the floor to keep everything from shifting around during the drive. We loaded up our EG4 3000W solar mppt/inverter and two 48v 100A EG4 batteries. BTW, this setup is freaking awesome, but I digress back to the conversation. Our fridge was inside, being powered by the batteries and we had about 3 1/2 days power. The pickup was loaded in the back, the trailer was loaded, tarped and strapped. We were ready to roll.
Finally it was moving day, we left our New Hampshire home about 5 a.m. We decided we were only going to drive during daylight hours because we were missing a few running lights and we wanted no part of traffic stops. We hit the road and in the first 15 miles we got an error code on Fred...
This is where the fun began and we'll catch you up on the next post...