12v Battery Bank in Parallel with 6v Bank

MEXICOWANDERER wrote:
Sulfur

Saltpeter

Charcoal

This topic has been beaten to death IMHO. If you want to throw The Hatfields, The McCoys, Norman Bates, and Hannibal Lecter into the same hotel room and throw away the key, better count on lots of money for repairs. The batteries are going to eat each other.

On Mex's initial advice last year I kept the two 12s separate from the four 6s and ran two banks. The two T-1275s ran the big inverter and the four 6s ran everything else.

In November I camped for four days with temps just above freezing and had to recharge the four 6s every day (ie three times, then again at home) while the two 12s didn't need a recharge till the third morning when I gave them enough to get by till next day and then went home

I thought this was not the best result, not getting enough work out of the 12s compared with the 6s, and that Peukert would help if I could bank them all as one big bank.

Mex relented by then, allowing that the 12s were good enough to work with while camping as long as I maintained them all separately at home for their regular runs to 100%.

So next trip, identical to Nov, but a month ago in January, another four days camping at around freezing. It was all six mixed bag as one bank. Result, no recharge needed until the second day and then on fourth day prior to the going home day when I did it at home. Since then all batts returned to baseline SG and floating till next chance to go camping.

So a recharge every second day instead of every day doing the same thing by banking them all instead of splitting up the workload.

All this relies on having proper charging routines to get all your batts to their individual 100% recharges often enough over time so they don't sulphate. That means separating them for their 100% times but you can camp with them all banked, since while camping you don't get to 100% anyway.