Camper and Skiing
Last summer, after spending many nights traveling around, mainly for mountain biking with our TT (300+ nights in 5-6 years), we wanted a bit less luxury and more flexibility/options and moved over to ...
Forum Discussion
Great advice from bb-94401, I don't ski however I do alot of winter and spring fall boondocking. As bb-94401 pointed out keeping propane vaporizing at 10f and below at the rate my 30000 btu furnace uses can be a issue, I mostly solved this by getting rid of the auto change-over valve and just teeing the two tanks together, not a perfect solution if you run out of propane. I have played with the idea of warping the propane tanks in a battery warmer and powering them from the 1000 watt inverter installed in the camper. Safety issues are a concern, however I think back to when my Father would use a tiger torch to heat up propane tanks to keep the propane vaporizing in -40 weather in northern Saskatchewan, I'm such a wimp these days lol.
The other problem was cold batteries, so I installed AGM batteries and opened up the batery box to cabin air temps.. I don't remeber exact numbers but your batteries lose 25% of thier amp hr cap. going from 70f down to 10f or 0f, since you should only use the top 50% of your battery cap. you really lose half of your available amp hrs. to cold batteries. Also batteries recharge very very slowly when cold. Warm batteries will recharge in 1/4 of the time, which means much less generator run time.
The other problem was cold batteries, so I installed AGM batteries and opened up the batery box to cabin air temps.. I don't remeber exact numbers but your batteries lose 25% of thier amp hr cap. going from 70f down to 10f or 0f, since you should only use the top 50% of your battery cap. you really lose half of your available amp hrs. to cold batteries. Also batteries recharge very very slowly when cold. Warm batteries will recharge in 1/4 of the time, which means much less generator run time.
