Battery Questions
We bought a camper last year, mainly for winter, boondock camping at Mt Bachelor in Oregon. After a scary experience, where the batteries died at 3 am when it was 10 deg F outside, I wanted to get a ...
Forum Discussion
OK Andy,
Your approach is very good, but I have some problems here. You do not say if you have an installed APU (genset). If you do, you have now made things much easier.
I suggest that you do not "stress test" the system as that will not tell you anything that the Xantrex LinkLite does not already display. It will probably damage your house bank if you do. Any time any lead/acid battery (here after referred to as jars) is discharged below about 50% (~12.0V) it will be damaged and will not cover easily and may never recover completely.
Note 1- You do not have 300AH available. You do have closer to 150. Your good battery monitor will tell you that.
Note 2- If you added one more jar to the existing bank, expect problems. The jars in the bank will never balance charging and discharging. There is no cure. 12V jars just never play well when in parallel. I can actually tell you, but I do not have time for that much writing today. Be cautious, if things get at all strange please break up the bank. If (when) one cell in one jar goes bad, it can draw power off the others. Something bad can happen. Keep some baking soda handy.
The best answer is put up with what you have until the Xantrex starts to tell that the bank efficiency has started to drop. Then, if you find you need that capacity, the smart move would be to find two BIG golf cart batteries. These are 6Veach (put two in series) and 200+ to ~300AH. They really are truly deep cycle. When combined with your 4635, they will do real well for a very long time.
Me?? I'm a ship's engineer by trade and up until the depression, I did a lot of work on other people's expensive yachts. The advice is always free unless you don't listen, then I charge big time to clean things up.
Matt
Your approach is very good, but I have some problems here. You do not say if you have an installed APU (genset). If you do, you have now made things much easier.
I suggest that you do not "stress test" the system as that will not tell you anything that the Xantrex LinkLite does not already display. It will probably damage your house bank if you do. Any time any lead/acid battery (here after referred to as jars) is discharged below about 50% (~12.0V) it will be damaged and will not cover easily and may never recover completely.
Note 1- You do not have 300AH available. You do have closer to 150. Your good battery monitor will tell you that.
Note 2- If you added one more jar to the existing bank, expect problems. The jars in the bank will never balance charging and discharging. There is no cure. 12V jars just never play well when in parallel. I can actually tell you, but I do not have time for that much writing today. Be cautious, if things get at all strange please break up the bank. If (when) one cell in one jar goes bad, it can draw power off the others. Something bad can happen. Keep some baking soda handy.
The best answer is put up with what you have until the Xantrex starts to tell that the bank efficiency has started to drop. Then, if you find you need that capacity, the smart move would be to find two BIG golf cart batteries. These are 6Veach (put two in series) and 200+ to ~300AH. They really are truly deep cycle. When combined with your 4635, they will do real well for a very long time.
Me?? I'm a ship's engineer by trade and up until the depression, I did a lot of work on other people's expensive yachts. The advice is always free unless you don't listen, then I charge big time to clean things up.
Matt
