Weekend Warrior Solar Question
Hello this is my first post. We have a 14 Rockwood ultra lite. It is plumbed for the Zamp solar power. I have looked at it and found it to be very expensive. I would like an all up kit to keep my ...
Forum Discussion
sotaman wrote:
I mean how much power would a fridge draw from the battery once its cold?
red31 wrote:
The consensus seems to be ~20ah a day for fridge and propane/co detectors, ymmv.
To the OP ...
Do yourself a huge favour and learn what in your trailer is drawing down your battery reserve and of those which ones you can get along without. The biggest will be your fridge climate control heating element which is designed to minimize frost build up around the freezer. Nice when you have shore power available but something you can get along without when you don't, the problem being some fridges now offer no way to turn this 12 vdc heating element off. My own Dometic DM2652 is one of them so I added my own switch. If your fridge was installed with a thermostatically controlled cooling fan then that too will draw down the battery so if yours has one you'd want to determine if it's absolutely necessary or whether you could add a kill switch to it for those cooler times you may be camping and can get along without the fan running. Since you'll be using the camper at the time you wouldn't want to disconnect the propane/CO detector but be aware it too is constantly drawing down the battery, probably at least 50 ma per hour, 1.2 amps per 24 hrs, but that's surprisingly 8.4 amps over the course of a week. :E
I also added kill switches to the radio and my SensarPro television signal preamplifier. You likely have a conventional non-amplified television wall plate, in which case you'd want to make sure it's turned off, along with disconnecting the television from it's power source as well. It ALL counts - minimize your draw down on the battery by eliminating those items you can live without, conserve what battery reserve you do have to power only those items that must be powered, and your solar needs will obviously be lowered as well.
