Dry Camping Battery Suggestions
We recently exhausted our motor coach battery during a recent dry camping trip, and I wanted to ask about others experience with maintaining the battery during dry camping. We have a 2004 31' Dutchman...
Forum Discussion
Lot of assumptions here:
1) For best life of battery try not to discharge more than 50% of capacity
2) 6 vs 12 volt (people like to debate). I like 2 6's and hook together. Try and get deep cycle batteries with a high amount of AH (amp hours).
3) You mention you only have 1ea battery. Most motor home setup's have a "start" battery for the motor and then 1, 2 or more batteries for the living quarters.
4) When you say run the generator to charge a battery... I'm hoping you mean to run the generator and let the onboard converter charge the battery? Charging a battery with a generator takes a long time.
5) If you use the generator to power a converter to recharge... the converter hopefully has 3 stages: Bulk, Absorption, and Float. If you are using the generator to power a good 3 stage converter I would run it about 1 hour a day. The most regeneration occurs in the BULK stage. When the converter switches to the absorption phase the amount of recharge is reduced... kinda like airing up a tire. When it is flat and you start putting air in it goes in quickly.... as the battery becomes charged it gets harder to put energy into it so there is a trade off once the battery charge gets to absorption you will be spending a lot on generator gas and not getting a whole lot of return. Once you get home and hook up to shore power the battery will completely recharge and go on float mode where it should be maintained.
6) As others mention, solar is very good way to recharge batteries.
1) For best life of battery try not to discharge more than 50% of capacity
2) 6 vs 12 volt (people like to debate). I like 2 6's and hook together. Try and get deep cycle batteries with a high amount of AH (amp hours).
3) You mention you only have 1ea battery. Most motor home setup's have a "start" battery for the motor and then 1, 2 or more batteries for the living quarters.
4) When you say run the generator to charge a battery... I'm hoping you mean to run the generator and let the onboard converter charge the battery? Charging a battery with a generator takes a long time.
5) If you use the generator to power a converter to recharge... the converter hopefully has 3 stages: Bulk, Absorption, and Float. If you are using the generator to power a good 3 stage converter I would run it about 1 hour a day. The most regeneration occurs in the BULK stage. When the converter switches to the absorption phase the amount of recharge is reduced... kinda like airing up a tire. When it is flat and you start putting air in it goes in quickly.... as the battery becomes charged it gets harder to put energy into it so there is a trade off once the battery charge gets to absorption you will be spending a lot on generator gas and not getting a whole lot of return. Once you get home and hook up to shore power the battery will completely recharge and go on float mode where it should be maintained.
6) As others mention, solar is very good way to recharge batteries.
