Battery Life and Low Temps

Rmack1 wrote:

NinerBikes wrote:
For the first time, you used your 3 season TT in cold weather... says it all. I can tell you all about it, I was up in MT camped on the Madison River 7 miles inside MT on the Continental Divide. 17F in the morning 9-11-14... 26F inside the TT at 8 AM. Yeah... Brrrr cold.

You don't mention the amp capacity of your batteries. Or types of lights inside your travel trailer. Or voltage your charger puts out while recharging your batteries.

Suggestion... next pair of batteries, get a set of 6v Golf Cart batteries at Costco, and connect them in series for 12V and 210 Amp hours capacity.

Next, change out all your lights into LED's 48 SMD 1210 3624 mm versions from ebay. Warm White or cool white. Saves a ton of amps.

Third, you need something when running a generator that is a true battery battery charger that is a quick, high amp charger, if you run minimal time on a generator. Something that shoves the amps in there, in a short amount of time, to 90% charge or a bit more in 2 hours or slightly less. Something that bulk charges at at least 14.8V on those GC-2 batteries. Don't worry about boiling the batteries... ain't gonna happen dry camping, and they are industrial strength and tough as nails, they can handle it. Forget about your existing charge controller if it is a WFCO 8955... they sit at 13.6V trickle charge all day long on your generator, they are fine when hooked up to a pedestal, they are no good dry camping, Epic Fail.

That should do it. Get rid of the group 24 or 27 or 29 or 31 car batteries, next spring. Disconnect the batteries from the trailer circuit, and Top charge them to 15.0V when you get home. and then the following day, equalize charge them to either 1.285 Specific battery on each cell with a charger capable of 7.5 Amps and 16.0V and watch the voltage go up while baby sitting them, until it goes up to 16.0V, or SG reaches 1.285 and then shut it off. It might take 3 or 4 attempts at 16.0V over every other day applications to get all your cells to 1.285 or as high as possible, being fully disconnected from any electrical in your trailer.

Both my Yamaha gennies came with direct battery charging hardware. It tells you how to do it in the manual. I just hoped I'd never have to go to all that trouble with the TT. Oh, well.

I really want the series wired 6 volts. I have known about how much better they are for a while, but had always skated through. Till recently.

Your yamaha puts out 8 amps. Maybe, at 13.6V. How will you replace 50-70 amps/hrs you used overnight in cold weather running the heater all night? That heater fan SUCKS 5-6 amps/hour, and probably runs 30-50% of the time all night. Say goodbye to 25 to 35 amps, in addition to your regular lights, and what your water pump sucks taking a shower, running the sink, toilet, washing dishes, etc, etc.

REREAD what I said... 14.8V-15.0V is what you need, at the battery terminals, after voltage loss through all the wiring. And you need something capable of charging at 30 amps an hour, minimum... real amps, not some smart charger that is as dumb as dirt when you are out dry camping/boondocking and you want the charge job done quick and dirty, not wasting gas or generator time and noise.

Do yourself a favor, buy a DC current AMP/volt meter on ebay and do a power audit. Write it all down, figure out how many amps your rig uses during a 24 hour period. Once you do a power audit, come back and we'll look for areas of improvement. About $32 to $40.

Do a Search on Mean Well S-35-15, or Mega Watt S-35-15 here and read up on the threads on them, maybe find one used on Ebay. Manual charging when dry camping, is the only way to go when you need electricity made by an inverter generator running red or blue.

I've laid the path for you to get up to speed... I can lead a horse to water, but I can't make them drink.

Your Rockwood Mini Lite comes with the same marginal cheap items my 2012 Palomino Gazelle 21 came with. Crappy incandescent lights and an even more crappy WFCO 8955 charge/controller, that never goes in to "bulk" mode charging giving you a measly 14.4V. Instead, all it might give you is give you a float voltage of 13.5 to 13.6 V, even less at the battery. Even your car alternator, on a low battery, charges at in excess of 14.4V more like 14.6 -14.7. And a crappy Group 24 battery.

What have I done?

1. Real Trojan Deep cycle battery, a T -1275, 150 AH battery.

2. All the incandescent lights are gone, replaced with LEDS

3. I listened to the Pro's from Dover here and MexicoWanderer, and got a Mega Watt S- 35-15 power supply in tandem with a honda Eu1000i I already owned. I mounted it stand alone. I ran 2 or 3 feet of 8 gauge wire straight to the battery terminals.

4. I bought a portable 120W PWM controlled 6.6 Ah portable solar panel, OK for my usage, but yours sounds like you need a portable 160W to 200W worth, more like 9 amps/ hr to 12 amps /hr charge rate.