Carl Isner's Vision: An Alaskan Unplugged

Carl Isner, Rick Bremgarner, and Bryan Wheat at Alaskan Camper	The full-sided Alaskan finished and ready to load	Loading the camper at Alaskan Camper
Under the flatbed storage boxes	Alaskan uses Thetford cassette toilet systems	The Alaskan features three solar fans
Solar monitoring system with solar charging at nine amps	Battery bank and Outback charger/inverter under driver's side settee	The 12-volt air conditioner is under the passenger side settee and runs off batteries
Carl's Alaskan arrives at Big Bend NP in Texas	Exploring Big Bend NP	Carl Isner and his Alaskan vision at White Sands, NM

Carl Isner had a vision to build a camper that never needed to be plugged in and never needed a dump station.  It would be completely off the grid and self-contained.  It took him years of research and planning to come up with the solution, but he did it.  Here in his own words he tells us about his unique truck camping lifestyle and an Alaskan for the ages.

TCM: Tell us what you do over the weekends.

Carl: I’m an emergency room nurse in Denver.  I do two twelve-hour night shifts on the weekends.  It’s very busy. I get to see a lot of different things and a lot of different personalities.  Everybody knows I camp out in the parking lot.  It has become part of my lifestyle.  There was a TV show way back that had a physician at a hospital that did the same thing.  That’s what people comment on.

TCM: What’s a typical weekend like?

Carl: I drive to work on Friday afternoon and set up the camper.  Then I work Friday night, sleep during the day Saturday, and work Saturday night.  Sunday morning I drop the camper top and head home.  We live in Canyon City, forty-five minutes south of Colorado Springs.  It’s a two-and-a-half-hour commute each way provided the weather is good.  Last year during the snowstorms it was a different story.

TCM: You live two-and-a-half hours from work?  Why don’t you move closer?

Carl: We have a home here and it’s paid for.  And starter homes in Denver, even with the way the market is now, are $300,000.  Canyon City is one of the best-kept secrets in Colorado.  We like the lifestyle and we only commute to work two days.  And the commuting is deductible.

TCM: Do you use the camper for work and play?

Carl: Yes.  During the summers we like to go fishing.  I just discovered fly fishing and I’m not very much into that.  We like to fish the Arkansas River.  In the winter we go snowshoeing and skiing with the camper.  And usually four to five times in the summer we go for a four-day camping trip.  When we have vacation time, we take two two-week trips a year.  The last trip was to Big Bend National Park.  We’ve been to Baja, Mexico three times.  It’s fantastic down there.  It’s like going back in time.  As long as you get away from the border tons and get further down.  The furthest south we’ve been is Loretta, but next trip we’re going to Cabo.

TCM: Why did you choose to have a custom 10’ full-sided flatbed Alaskan camper built?

Carl: I did lots of research sitting in our Hallmark.  After four years of contemplating, a custom Alaskan is what I came up with.

Folks showed me their Alaskan in British Columbia.  It was fifteen years old and in excellent condition.  Just by looking at it, you couldn’t tell how old it was.  It was also on its third truck.  Usually it’s the other way around.  They had nothing but good things to say about their Alaskan.

When my wife and I were driving back from British Columbia, we stopped by the Alaskan factory at 5:30 pm.  Bryan Wheat, Alaskan’s Owner, took the time to show us what they did.  The product is very high quality as far as we were concerned.  I’d say that’s when we decided that our next camper was going to be an Alaskan.

TCM: What was Bryan’s reaction when you had all of these custom requests?

Carl: Bryan said, “Great.  Let’s do it.”  He’s been extremely patient with me.  I’ve made dozens of phone calls and emails during the design and construction process.  Nothing inside the camper is standard.

TCM: How is your camper mounted?

Carl: The camper is bolted through the floor of the camper, through the flatbed, and into the truck frame.  We use neoprene sleeves and washers to give it a little give. 

TCM: Let’s talk about some of the many unique features of your camper. Tell us about your air conditioner.  It runs off batteries?

Carl: I knew I didn’t want an air conditioner on the roof.  The whole idea of a pop-up is to be lower in height and to reduce drag.  And there’s not a single roof air conditioner that’s low powered.  All of them require a generator. Truck campers are small and most air conditioners are designed for larger trailers and motorhomes.  For the amount of cubic feet inside a truck camper, it’s overkill. 

I had been looking at the semi truck air conditioners that have come out because of the new idling laws.  The air conditioner took forever to find.  My father found it through a marine shop.  Now we’ve used our air conditioner in 100-plus degree weather in Big Bend.  You have to turn it on early and let it run longer.  We could run it for five hours without killing our batteries.  It works very well.

TCM: Tell us about your solar system, charger, inverter, and solar monitoring system. 
 
Carl: We have two panels for 180 watts.  We went with an Outback charger inverter which works well with the solar system.  We also have a booster to get a little more power out of the panels.  The monitoring system allows us to know how much life is in the batteries.  There’s nothing worse than being in cold temperatures and not knowing if your furnace is going to make it through the night.

TCM: You told me that you don’t plug in your camper, ever.

Carl: That’s right.  The batteries are charged by the solar system during the day.  The refrigerator is 12-volt only.  It’s a closed system that regulates itself.  The camper doesn’t need to be plugged in at all.

TCM: Tell us about your 12-volt refrigerator.

Carl: When it’s 90 or 100 degrees out, a three-way refrigerator cannot keep your food cold enough with propane.  And running a three-way refrigerator with 12-volts pulls like twenty amps and kills your batteries in about an hour or two.  With a three-way refrigerator you have to be plugged in if it gets really hot. 

We have a 5.7 cubit foot refrigerator with a Danfoss compressor.  It’s very cool.  Our refrigerator draws less than two amp hours and it’s cold.  I had Bryan get it from a sailboat shop.  He said I’m costing him a lot of money because he put one in his boat now. 

The same thing happened with the batteries.  They’re called AGM batteries.  They can be discharged below fifty-percent about 500 times.  The average battery can be discharged seventy to seventy-five percent about 200 times.  The AGM batteries last longer and pay for themselves over and over.  And there’s no maintenance, they can be laid of their side, and kept in the camper where they’ll be warm and more effective.  Cold batteries don’t work well.  I paid $1,300 for the pair.  The refrigerator was $1,100.

TCM: And the solar vents?

Carl: They’re also manufactured for sailboats.  There’s a company in Colorado Springs that puts them on trailers for ventilation.  Bryan ordered them and put three on the roof.  There’s no wiring necessary because they’re completely self-contained.  They have little NiCad batteries so they can run in the dark and the solar runs them during the day.  They’re also very quiet.  Basically, they do the same thing as a Fantastic Fan but without the draw.  They’ve only been out about a couple of years but they’re becoming very popular.  I think they’ll become standard.  Why run wiring through the roof if you don’t have to? And the whole unit pulls down into itself from inside, like battening down the hatches. You can pour water on them and they don’t leak.

TCM: How do you like the Thetford cassette toilet?

Carl: There’s a little bit of a learning curve, but we’d never go back.  It’s just so convenient.  We don’t have to find a place to dump any longer.  It’s like freedom.  Every third day we find a place to dump the cassette.  It’s so simple.  There’s less odor than dumping at a dump station.  It’s just very well designed.  When you pull out the seals there’s a little odor when you’re pouring into the toilet.  If you use a good decomposer it’s not much.  It’s not like when you’ve got holding tanks sitting rancid after two weeks.  Our grey water drains into a five-gallon holding tank.  Two full suitcases, one grey water and one Thetford, and we’re done.

TCM: You’ve managed to get a lot of things under your flatbed.  Tell us about your propane tanks and storage boxes.

Carl: After looking at various beds, we went with an aluminum flatbed.  They’re lighter and a little more expensive.  I talked to people who build them but we bought ours from Randy Cryer at Ute Limited out of Seattle.  The flatbed we bought doesn’t have a headboard or side rails.  We didn’t need that stuff.  We had a local guy put the flatbed on the truck.  It’s amazingly light.  We probably saved at least 300 pounds just switching beds.

TCM: How did you decide to mount a propane tank under the flatbed?

Carl: We wanted the propane tank separate so it didn’t take any room inside the camper.  Originally we were going to go without propane and go with diesel only.  But the more we looked into it, the more money it would be and the diesel stoves don’t perform like we wanted them to.  So we ended up going with propane. 

The hot water tank, catalytic heater, barbecue and furnace all run off propane.  We have a sixteen-gallon tank mounted under the flatbed and can go many weeks without tapping it.  It also has a real gauge inside the camper showing the exact level at any time.  Larger propane tanks have a magnet inside them telling you the level.  Smaller barbecue-style tanks do not.  That was a cool bonus.

We’ve also got large aluminum boxes underneath the flatbed with tons of storage.  Everything that’s heavy sits low.

TCM: Was there a clear vision for your camper or did you make things up as you discovered new products?

Carl: I wanted a camper that was completely self-contained and not tied to electrical sources or sewers.  I wanted to travel for weeks without having to look for a dump or hook-ups.

TCM: Has the camper met your vision?

Carl: Oh yes.  The camper has definitely exceeded my expectations.