Battery
I have owned my travel trailer for about 6 years now and (gasp) have never camped off the grid… until now. I have a trip planned that does not have access to electricity and my battery is shot. ...
Forum Discussion
Probably your best bet for more DC power for $200 would be to install two each 6VDC GOLF CART Deep Cycle Batteries wired in series. COSTCO sells them for around $90 each plus core value.
This will give you around 220AHs of battery capacity.
The standard issue 12VDC Interstate Deep Cycle Battery that most trailers comes with only gives you 85AHs
A 105 to 110AH deep cycle 12VDC battery will cost you around $150 plus.
Running standard automotive type incandescent lamps and fan on your heater will eat up a single battery in one day of use. These need to be changed out to LED lights. It would be best to have a smart mode charging system as well.
If you run any deep cycle battery lower than 50% charge state and not re-charge right away it will do internal damage to your battery requiring replacement soon.
Its alittle more than just showing up at the off-road camp sites. You need to make a few changes to be able to survive it for a few days and do any harm to your battery setup.
My 255Ahs battery bank does us just fine camping off the power grid but I have to re-charge every morning using my 2KW Honda Generator (when allowed to run it) for three hours to re-charge my battery bank using smart mode charging back to its 90% charge state so that we can do the next day/night run off the batteries. We do this 50-90% charge states for about 14 days before we have to fully re-charge the battery banks to its 100$ charge state which takes around 12 hours or of running the generator.
Adding solar panels to the trailer would only reduce our generator run time down to around one hour verses the three hours required.
Its all second nature to us now camping off the power grid.
For us it much more enjoyment camping off the batteries verses just going somewhere and plugging into their 30A Power Pedestal.
Just some of my thoughts
Roy Ken
This will give you around 220AHs of battery capacity.
The standard issue 12VDC Interstate Deep Cycle Battery that most trailers comes with only gives you 85AHs
A 105 to 110AH deep cycle 12VDC battery will cost you around $150 plus.
Running standard automotive type incandescent lamps and fan on your heater will eat up a single battery in one day of use. These need to be changed out to LED lights. It would be best to have a smart mode charging system as well.
If you run any deep cycle battery lower than 50% charge state and not re-charge right away it will do internal damage to your battery requiring replacement soon.
Its alittle more than just showing up at the off-road camp sites. You need to make a few changes to be able to survive it for a few days and do any harm to your battery setup.
My 255Ahs battery bank does us just fine camping off the power grid but I have to re-charge every morning using my 2KW Honda Generator (when allowed to run it) for three hours to re-charge my battery bank using smart mode charging back to its 90% charge state so that we can do the next day/night run off the batteries. We do this 50-90% charge states for about 14 days before we have to fully re-charge the battery banks to its 100$ charge state which takes around 12 hours or of running the generator.
Adding solar panels to the trailer would only reduce our generator run time down to around one hour verses the three hours required.
Its all second nature to us now camping off the power grid.
For us it much more enjoyment camping off the batteries verses just going somewhere and plugging into their 30A Power Pedestal.
Just some of my thoughts
Roy Ken
