Propane and 12 volt battery

Single 12V....fridge and parasitic drains.......ball park 4 days.

X2

closer to 3 days. For a single battery I'd look at 150 watts of solar. I would not go portable solar for you may come back to a dead battery and missing panels.

I have been four days so far leaving mine at a farm but iam on 2 batteries . added a little trickle charger solar panel to see if that would keep them up

I just left my fridge on Propane for 10 days with no charging back to the battery. I left it on while parked as we had to run up to Kansas City. It is on 2 6volt batteries in series, 208 amp hour/battery. When I left, the voltage was at 12.6, when we arrived back it was at 12.2 volts. Temps were 100 degrees or so most days here in Central Texas. Everything was still frozen and temps in the fridge were 38 and temp in the freezer was at 4 below 0. Using digital thermometers. I don't know if I would go much longer. I thought about it the whole time we were traveling. The propane detector and fridge were left on. As far as I could tell, nothing else was powered.

What is the Ah capacity (at 20 hour rate) of your battery.
What is the average electrical power consumption of your refrigerator?

pianotuna wrote:
closer to 3 days. For a single battery I'd look at 150 watts of solar. I would not go portable solar for you may come back to a dead battery and missing panels.

X 2 and we have used portable solar without problems since 2012 when we first got it. The portable set up is home made so saves about $200.

We're using 100watt portable solar. Even setup non-optimally (don't bother tracking sun for example) we can run our fantastic fan on high speed for 14 or so hours, moderate lights (all LED), water pump for bathroom/sink, parasitic draw and it'll charge up the battery by mid-day next day.

We generally boondock 100's of miles from anyone else, in the desert (rarely no sun) and I'm not worried about theft. Apparently our usage is lower than most (at least those that say 100watts isn't enough)..

I did a little test today. Starting at 6 a.m. I used my laptop for 7 hours using a small MSW inverter. I used the microwave for 3'33" on the Magnum 3000 watt inverter, and ran the fantastic roof fan on high for 5 hours. The fridge was on propane.

Then I drove for 25 minutes.

After ten minutes of driving the solar was sending 15 amps to the engine.

When I arrived at my brother's cottage and plugged in, 2 amps were going into the battery bank.

Gotta love what 256 watts of solar can do.

Thanks all, my 5er is prewired for solar or solar ready. Makes sense to put panels on the roof and not have to worry about a portable setup. Now the solar research begins.
Thanks again for the comments.