Battery Life and Low Temps
I have been having a ball up at Iris Meadow off of Rock Creek Road, Close to Mammoth Lakes, CA. It's the steeper side of the Sierras just East of Yosemite. It's a little known area comparably, but v...
Forum Discussion
jrnymn7 wrote:
So, 10 hours of gen time plus running the coach engine... all to charge a couple of batts? I'd hate to have those gas bills, not to mention the wear and tear on both the gennie and coach engine.
And what if the OP stayed at a campground? He'd have no other choice but to pay for hook-ups... no 10 hour charge times there. So, two weeks camping at the extra cost for hook-ups, at say only $10/ day... that's $140, the same as a new charger. At an extra $1500 for a season, that's an entirely new 12v charging/ electrical system, including new batts, and solar.
To drycamp two weeks, I'd charge our twin AGM Group 29 batteries up to around 90% 6 times solely by running only the 650 watt Honda at 5 hours per run ... the big engine idling would NOT be used. The big engine idling for 45 minutes is for pre-charging so as to eventually get them up to 100% if desired. Each run of the Honda would consume 1/2 gallon of gas -> for a cost of about $1.75.
So ... I'd be camping for about 14 days in any kind of weather with a charging cost of 6 times $1.75 equals $10.50. Not bad.
The trick is using just the right AGM batteries plus finding a little tiny 4-stroke super quiet generator anymore that just sips the gas from only a 0.51 gal tank. Try eBay for an if-you're-lucky used Honda EX650, and try Interstate for true deep cycle 12 volt 100 amp hour AGM batteries intended for wheelchairs that just happen to make great RV batteries.
