How long should a battery last?

JimK-NY wrote:
If you want to know how long your battery should last you need to provide information on the refrigerator, make and model and/or operating amperage.

Without that information, I can confirm your experience as being typical for even a small 12v refrigerator. I have a very efficient, small (4 cuft) refrigerator. It pulls a bit over 3 amps and runs about 1/3 of the time in low/moderate temperatures. In the summer and if the door is opened frequently or warm drinks/food is put into it, the refrigerator will run almost constantly. So it will pull about about 25-70 AH/day. For even my small unit and with no other use of electricity, I would need 2 or 3 of your batteries to make it through a long weekend.

You really don't have a lot of good options. The most obvious would be to camp exclusively with electric hookups. Without hookups even an extra battery or two would not buy you more than a short camping trip.

Your next cheapest option would be to buy a generator. Unfortunately you will need to run it several hours a day to keep your batteries charged and in good condition. If you want to avoid that daily generator use, you will need to consider solar. You will still need the generator when days are short, you are camped in the woods, it is cloudy, etc.

Regardless of your choices you might want to scrap your existing battery. If you have run it down to 11.5 volts several times its life expectancy is short. Buy at least 2 good sized replacement batteries.

Here is a tale that might help you understand the mistake you made:

https://www.exploroz.com/members/145028.75/1/2009/queensland_adventures_winter_2008.aspx?p=%2fblogs%2fdefault.aspx

A few things:

1) where would I get the information needed to know how much the fridge would draw?

2)I have 2 other deep cell batteries that are good. Would that likely get me through a weekend with the information I have already spoke of?

3) If I boondock more often, I will be getting a generator.This is more of a one off situation.