Battery recommendations

pnichols wrote:

ron.dittmer wrote:
I have a pair of 6V Duracell AGM golf car batteries from Sams Club supporting our house operations for over 4 years now. They are still awesome. I never deal with acid boil-overs or corroded terminals. I have not touched them in the 4 year period except to manually charge them when usage is high or when in storage. With easy access terminals, even that is a breeze.


I wonder how a 12V AGM battery would do in supporting the chassis.

I've had an AGM battery in my 4X4 pickup for engine starting about a couple of years now. No problems so far - but it's not a "deep cycle" AGM - it's an AGM intended for starting and chassis use.

I almost put an AGM starting battery under the hood in our Class C a few weeks ago, but opted instead to default to the Dark Side by installing a heavy duty liquid acid battery there - just to save a few bucks. :(

The 2 12-volt AGM house batteries we have are still doing well at 8 years. They were made by Odyssey for Sears and are identical to the Odyssey Extreme which is rated for 400 cycles at 80% discharge. Usually discharged them just 30% so they still have cycles left. I am getting a better sense of how many amp hours are needed to recharge to full using a solar suitcase with a charge controller.
May replace after this season if we decide to do some cold weather dry camping.

Also carry an extra X2 power AGM for misc use dry camping.
The chassis battery is also an X2Power AGM. It powers the electric steps as well as the chassis. I am finding I have to recharge periodically to keep it topped up. Running the previous flooded battery partly discharged killed it early before it’s rated 7 years.

Why all the AGM? The southern half of the Cascadia Subduction Zone is well overdue for a megaquake so each time we go out near the vulnerable areas we are prepared to be cut off.