Dry camping with furnace on
I was dry camping this weekend and had to put the furnace on for the first time. I was worried that I would kill the battery if I ran the furnace overnight. I was right :(. The house battery was ...
Forum Discussion
wrybread wrote:
Its a really big job to upgrade your batteries to accommodate that blower. I have 4 Trojan T-105 batteries (the big expensive 6 volt batteries) and 600 watts of solar panels, and I *still* don't have enough power to reliably power my furnace blower over night. The things pulls 80 watts, which is just crazy for an RV. I'm surprised these are used in RVs at all.
I just have to ask, what kind and size of rig, and what RV furnace, would possibly consume that kind of energy?
We have modest 2005 30' Winnebago Class-A with only two Interstate GC2-XHD 6V batteries wired in series. I have 330W of solar (165w x2) for recharging the coach batteries when boondocking (actually, we have more solar capacity than that but they are used to charge the batteries that power our astronomy equipment).
After a night of heavy furnace use at remote dark sky sites in the mountains or desert, with nighttime temperatures regularly dipping into the low 30's, 20's (F)or even high teens depending on season, I can easily run the furnace on 68* without making a dent in battery power. This is also done with frequent trips in and out of the door since our astronomy club tends to use our RV as the "warming hut" and snack and coffee stop at astronomy events.
Though I've never done it since I recharge them with solar during the day, I'm sure I could get multiple nights of furnace use on a charge. BTW, internal lighting has been replaces with LEDs with half of that red LEDs for preserving night adapted vision.
This same solar system, only with two Group 31 12v batteries wired in parallel, was used in our prior Coachman Class-C with similar results. We never got close to running out of 12 power overnight.
