Recommended Dry-Camping Mods to a Small TT

granlobo wrote:
Thanks for all of the great info!

Regarding the 6V batteries...a lot of people seem to like that.
The r-pod has an on-board battery monitoring system (not that you can't check it yourself with a multi-meter, but I don't want to start out by invalidating that system), which means I'd need to put two 6V in SERIES to get back to 12V. No biggie.

Yes, put the 2 6V in series to get back to 12V. The common standard size most people use for the 6V batteries is GC2 (gulf cart batteries). If you see people refer to T-105, that's the Trojan model number for the same thing.

Given that we have concerns with kids & wasted battery...I think I'd still want to go with a 2nd battery, which in this case, would mean a 2nd pair of 6V batteries.

2 "sixes" in series to make 12V. A second set of "sixes" in series to make 12V. Probably neatly arranged in readily-available battery trays/boxes. Instead of trying to put the 1st pair in parallel with the 2nd pair (getting into a lot of wires on the tongue of the vehicle at that point), I'd probably be inclined to leave the 2nd set off and swap out the batteries set-for-set when the first pair hit 50%. Sound OK?

Rather than carry another 2nd pair of 6V, you could just carry the original 12V that came with the trailer and switch to it if the two 6V go dead. I did that for a while, until I realized I was never actually needing to switch. :)

IMO, you definitely wouldn't want to put 4 6V on your tongue - they're quite heavy, which would likely add too much to the tongue weight.

Regarding your 115W panels...do you find that these functionally prolong your battery life while camping? I've heard it said that they DO...and also heard it said that they're more for maintenance and re-charging when not in use. Depends on the output wattage?

It prolongs my battery life significantly. How much depends on how big the panel is (output wattage) and how much you consume. For us, if we're not running the furnace and camping in the open the 115W panel is more than enough - before the end of the day the batteries are fully charged. If we're in trees (panel is shaded part of the day) it extends how long we can go without needing to recharge the batteries in some other way to around 8-10 days (about twice what we could do without solar). If we're running the furnace every night while camping in a somewhat shady site, 4-5 days (again, about twice as long).

At the time I bought my trailer smallish panels like mine were still quite expensive, so putting more wattage on was out of the picture. These days the cost has come down quite a lot so there's really no reason to not have 200 or so watts.

Things that (IMO) aren't practical while using solar: AC, any kind of electric powered cooker (including coffee pot - we use a pore-over filter for coffee and heat the water on the stove), electric powered refrigerator, cooler, or freezer (the RV fridge runs primarily off propane when not hooked to shore power, only using 12V for the control circuitry), electric powered heater, hair dryer or curling iron.

It's possible to still run 120V AC devices while using solar - with an inverter (device that converts DC to AC). For such things I have a small 300W pure sine wave inverter. How to very roughly figure the 12V DC amps used by something that runs off of 120V AC: Take the wattage of the device and divide by 12 (if using a true sine wave inverter) or 10 (if using a modified sine wave inverter - most things run less efficiently on them).

E.g. If a household fan says it consumes 60 Watts, it will pull roughly 5 amps using a pure sine wave inverter, or 6 amps using a modified sine wave inverter. (Over the course of 24 hours, it would need 120 - 144 amp hours.)

How that figures into solar: Assume a panel sitting in the open will produce 100% it's rated output for 5 hours a day (reality is that it will produce less than that for longer - it's a ballpark number). Take the rated wattage of the panel and divide by 12 to get amps: e.g. 115W panel will produce 9.6 amps. Multiply by 5 (5 hours) to get the total amp-hours produced: 48 amp hours. So, running the above example fan, the batteries would still go dead - the panel is producing less than the fan is consuming in a day (so don't leave the fan on :) ).

Also keep in mind if camping in the woods: I get roughly 1/4 the output when in partial shade, and about a tenth in dense tree cover. Cloudy days affect things too, but less so than heavy shade.