Adding Batteries Separate From House Battery?
Hey RVers, My family and I have a 1990 Coachmen Leprechaun, and we are planning to go fulltime later this year. In the meantime, I am attempting to work out some of the major systems and hopefully ge...
Forum Discussion
Have you looked under the steps leading up into the Class C. I hear alot of folks being able to have a couple of extra batteries mounted here.
You could be able to charge these batteries through your converter/charger setup...
You are aware that your current converter/charger has to be a single mode 13.6VDC Charger basis on the age of your Class C. When you start upgrading the batteries etc you really should look into upgrading your whole battery setup to a more modern multi-voltage converter/charger unit.
Just buying two new batteries and installing them as stand-alone batteries will in a short time make those batteries unusable and harmed beyond bringing them back alive to their original performance.
I can run down my 255AH battery bank to their 50% charge state over night just drawing DC amps for a very few list of things we want to run. This is mainly just pulling around 20AMPS Dc Current for 4 hours or so... I have to bring this battery bank back up to its 90% charge state the next morning if I want to use them again for the next day/night run. I can do this with my 2KW generator connected to my on-board mulit-mode smart mode charger PD-9260C Converter/charger unit in a three hour generator run time. If all I had was the 13.6 single mode charger it would take over 12 hours or of generator run time to bring them back.
If I was to just charge them for a couple of hours here and there they will not get their performance back enough to make the next nights run and would probably only last maybe just a few hour into the night. Once they get down to the the 50% charge lever (around 12.0VDC) then you need to stop using them otherwise you will start doing harm to the batteries.
So the best plan is install a modern battery system first then you can start doing camping off the battery bank and not destroy things...
If your running off the batteries is just running a led light then what you are implying would work great...
Back in the day we did just fine running off of a bag of D-CELL batteries and candles haha...
I got to have my basics HDTV, charging of my computer/tablets batteries, keeping my WX Radio going, a light or two on, and maybe a fan. The rest can be run off of propane...
my two cents worth haha...
Roy Ken
You could be able to charge these batteries through your converter/charger setup...
You are aware that your current converter/charger has to be a single mode 13.6VDC Charger basis on the age of your Class C. When you start upgrading the batteries etc you really should look into upgrading your whole battery setup to a more modern multi-voltage converter/charger unit.
Just buying two new batteries and installing them as stand-alone batteries will in a short time make those batteries unusable and harmed beyond bringing them back alive to their original performance.
I can run down my 255AH battery bank to their 50% charge state over night just drawing DC amps for a very few list of things we want to run. This is mainly just pulling around 20AMPS Dc Current for 4 hours or so... I have to bring this battery bank back up to its 90% charge state the next morning if I want to use them again for the next day/night run. I can do this with my 2KW generator connected to my on-board mulit-mode smart mode charger PD-9260C Converter/charger unit in a three hour generator run time. If all I had was the 13.6 single mode charger it would take over 12 hours or of generator run time to bring them back.
If I was to just charge them for a couple of hours here and there they will not get their performance back enough to make the next nights run and would probably only last maybe just a few hour into the night. Once they get down to the the 50% charge lever (around 12.0VDC) then you need to stop using them otherwise you will start doing harm to the batteries.
So the best plan is install a modern battery system first then you can start doing camping off the battery bank and not destroy things...
If your running off the batteries is just running a led light then what you are implying would work great...
Back in the day we did just fine running off of a bag of D-CELL batteries and candles haha...
I got to have my basics HDTV, charging of my computer/tablets batteries, keeping my WX Radio going, a light or two on, and maybe a fan. The rest can be run off of propane...
my two cents worth haha...
Roy Ken
