Frank Mehaffey wrote:
I promise that this is my last post on the topic I started. I just went to my RV dealer, to their chief electrical person, who has also owned several truck campers.
After telling him what we have all been talking about, and telling him that I am only running my furnace fan and LED lights when not plugged into shore power, he made several recommendations.( We don't run a 12v to 120v convertor for anything)
1. He said to get a 150-200 watt solar set up. He said the new systems and their controllers are far superior to the chargers of 10 years ago for maintaining a battery and helping while driving. I would look at 4 6V.
2. He also said, when I get to the end of my currently 3 year old batteries, to get 2, 6 volt batteries hooked up in series. The capacity would be greater.
3. The third thing was that the deep cycles we have, should not be on a too fast charging rate when depleted, but that they should charge fine with the truck charging system, but would take up to 24 hours to recharge. Slower, but would not harm the batteries.
Since I run our 3 way refrigerator on gas when parked with no shore power, and on DC only when traveling, coupled with our fairly austere use of 12 volt power, what we have is now is probably adequate, but to take the steps in 6v and solar when we have the chance ($). Pretty much, don't worry, be happy, spend money when you have it to upgrade.
A couple things, one he is right about a lot the only thing that would concern me on what he told you, and I mentioned in my first post, is that the solar in fall, winter and spring does not run very long with the shorter days. Your actual amount of power recharging from solar during the day will in no way fully charge your battery if it is really depleted especially on cloudy days. If you go with solar get extra batteries so you have more reserved to draw from and on sunny days you can top up more.
Second keep your fridge on propane when driving, running it on 12V will use a lot of power and that will take away from your charging power.
