About RV Calcs
A small, focused site of practical calculators for the RV and off-grid camping community.
What we are
RV Calcs is a free collection of calculators and guides for people who travel, camp, and live in RVs, vans, truck campers, and trailers. Whether you're spending a weekend at a state park or boondocking on BLM land for two weeks, the math behind power, water, propane, and tow weights affects every trip you take.
The site is built and maintained by long-time RVers and tinkerers based in northern Vermont. Between the founders we've put more than a decade of nights in everything from a 1972 Airstream to a converted box truck, plus careers in IT, electrical work, and small-scale solar.
Our principles
- Math first, marketing never. Every formula on the site comes from a real engineering standard or manufacturer spec, not a vendor's sales pitch.
- Free and open. No accounts, no email collection, no premium tier. The calculators run entirely in your browser — we don't even know you used them.
- Honest about uncertainty. RV systems live in the real world: temperature affects battery capacity, sun hours vary by weather, propane consumption depends on insulation. We tell you the assumptions and let you adjust them.
- Mobile-friendly because campsites don't have monitors. Every page works fine on a phone in airplane mode after the first load.
How we make money
We run a small number of Google AdSense ads on the site. That's it. We don't sell your data, we don't have affiliate links to "premium" gear nobody needs, and we don't take payments from solar installers, generator manufacturers, or anyone else whose products we discuss. If a calculator suggests you need 600 watts of solar, that's because the math says so — not because someone paid us to say it.
Corrections welcome
If you find a bug, a busted assumption, or just disagree with one of our defaults, please drop us a line. We'd rather fix things than be right.