winter projects

Nice, the plan was to upgrade my camper this year so I was just going to do exactly that, seal off the battery compartment from the outside and cut a vent hole to the inside so the camper heat can get into it, but do it in a manor that I can reverse it if I ever go to sell it.  but I had to buy a new car for work last fall so now the new camper is on hold for a year or two until the wife's car is paid off.  

I quite often camp in the winter where the temps are getting well below freezing, may not be snow all the time but I have tested the limits of my furnace haha, its not hard with 1" of fiberglass pink for insulation and no air barrier.  If we are keeping it for a few more years, I may try to get it  into the shop one winter and pull the skin off and change the insulation to block foam and seal it up real nice.  wont help the bathroom any though.....

so what I have now is a 1991 slumber queen and for the battery compartment it is a tiny one outside as no one back then used anything more than a single car battery I guess.  so the small hatch on the top of the back is the battery compartment, but originally when I got it I converted the bottom hatch into a compartment for two 6V batteries, then I had my 280 watt lifepo4 in the top compartment and that's all I could put there.  as for insulating it it wasn't deep enough to add insulation after the battery was in it and behind that is the fiberglass for the shower stall and it isn't a heated bathroom or anything.  and by putting the battery in side in the bottom foot of the closet we gain back both outside compartments as storage.  the top one holds my jack handles a small water hose and my pack of leveling blocks and that is all you can stuff in it.  the bottom one will let me take my outdoor stove and griddle out of the closet and put it in there.  plus it is open to air from the rv, so I don't have to take any other measure to heat the battery and greatly simplifies the wiring. 

oh and by placing it where I am it also allows me to borrow a second battery from the 5th wheel if I am going on a especially long trip or I want to put an inverter in that is going to see some use for some reason.  

I've got a 2019 AF990 -- I think I could fit my 310AH LiFePo4 in there but I don't have two of them...I could have but I can't lift them suckers much anymore anyway.  Two 100AH batteries should be more than enough for us since we lived on 2 84ah Marine batteries for the first 6 years ;) -- which means we really had 84AH of useable power (or if you were careful, 42AH) so today with considerably more useable power we're golden -- heck, I may run the fridge on DC!

thats one option if you have a newer camper, for me it isn't an option at all.  

if you see the smaller door on the back by the jack head that is the factory battery compartment.  it is big enough to hold a package of the leveling lego's  so 12x12 and about 14" tall so it won't even hold a real battery and that is just a thing fiberglass door skin.  I could insulate that if it was big enough, but then I would have to figure out how to insulate all around it, as it is right up to the wet bath shower wall and the bathroom isn't heated.  when I first got it I put two 6V into the compartment below it. 

so this worked until I built my first battery, and now that I have a new battery built i want to set it up properly inside the conditioned space then I never have to worry about it.  

 I am building my own out of 304AH cells, so that is equivalent to 3 of the batteries average people buy and takes up about 1/3rd the space, but I see your familiar with that using 280 cells like my old one.  I only used 150amp BMS, but in reality I am building four of these 304AH batteries, one to power the camper (that gives me about 10 days capacity winter camping if the solar fails) and three of them for the 5th wheel.  I am moving the battery location from the front storage of the 5th wheel to inside under the stairs where there is space and it is in the return air path to the furnace so it will keep them heated also in the winter.  so I will have the ability to put all 4 on the 5th if I figure I need it for a big trip, or take one of the 3 out of the 5th and add it to the camper for over 600AH in there.  I am thinking of buying a different BMS for them all, just waiting for it to be released so I can see the final specs on it.   

the other reason for the location is because of where it is.  it is right beside the power center and because everything is only going to be 8" tall I will lose only the bottom foot of the closet, which is just used for spare propane canisters, paper towel, and such anyways so by incorporating a shelving setup into the battery holder I will probably end up with more organized storage instead of everything just thrown in there. also I use the useless factory battery space for storing my leveling bricks and a 15 foot water hose.  and by moving the battery inside I can take the platforms out of the bigger outside storage I made for the original 6V batteries and use that as storage again.  Well I don't know if either spot was really made for storage but rather for maintenance access.  It is  not like the newer campers that have actual storage, but for its time it was a luxury model.  Also, when I add an inverter the home will already be there for it and it will be about 6" from the batteries so the cables will be 1 foot long 18" at most, so I can go bigger than I need and minimize voltage drop.  all in all it is a win win.  

now when we upgrade the camper, if we get the one we are looking at I will do exactly what you say, well I won't buy two batteries, but I will move my battery into the factory battery location after I seal off and insulate the outer door some more and put a vent into the inside of the cabin and depending on the power usage of the camper we upgrade to, I may build a second battery to add and fill up that space.