Charging the camper battery while driving?
I've been wondering? I have a long trip planned soon & wonder after changing to a better battery in my Lance 900 camper if the factory wire that charges the battery as I drive is really all I nee...
Forum Discussion
Question on the Wave3 and cold nights: on my current Bigfoot, there is a forced air heat duct up in the cabover (though the run is long and the flow unimpressive). Even so, it gets pretty cool up there on cold nights. This is the 10.4E model, with forward bath and pantry, making the opening to the cabover bed much smaller than it was on my previous 9.6, which was more typical of camper layouts. In that one, even without an air duct up there, it stayed closer to the temperature of the dinette area which is where the thermostat is.
With the Wave and no air circulating, would it do much to keep the cabover area warm? This is going to depend on camper layout, maybe someone with a similar layout has installed a Wave and can comment. One could always run a small circulating fan, but that takes power too.
Second question: since it is manually ignited, no thermostat is possible - do you just leave it on all night?
Third question: the Wave is unvented, which means that the combustion byproducts end up in the camper. Chief among these are water - quite a lot of it. At 3000 BTU for 10 hours you will produce a little under 1/2 gallon of water. I have had serious moisture problems when heating buildings with unvented propane, and often moisture and condensation control are problems in winter RV camping. Do you see any problems from this? You would have to keep windows/vents open to vent the CO2, maybe that vents enough of the water vapor too.
There are vented catalytic heaters, which mitigate these problems but use some power (though not very much) and cost more.
With the Wave and no air circulating, would it do much to keep the cabover area warm? This is going to depend on camper layout, maybe someone with a similar layout has installed a Wave and can comment. One could always run a small circulating fan, but that takes power too.
Second question: since it is manually ignited, no thermostat is possible - do you just leave it on all night?
Third question: the Wave is unvented, which means that the combustion byproducts end up in the camper. Chief among these are water - quite a lot of it. At 3000 BTU for 10 hours you will produce a little under 1/2 gallon of water. I have had serious moisture problems when heating buildings with unvented propane, and often moisture and condensation control are problems in winter RV camping. Do you see any problems from this? You would have to keep windows/vents open to vent the CO2, maybe that vents enough of the water vapor too.
There are vented catalytic heaters, which mitigate these problems but use some power (though not very much) and cost more.
