newbie with new Thor Four Winds Class C- questions?

[doubravsky]

Just bought a 2015 Thor Four Winds 31W.... out for our maiden voyage, which just happened to be a 3 week 3,000 mile trek. (not optimal but it was that or stick with the pop-up and we were too excited to wait).

I have a couple of questions....

BG- it has a residential fridge (18 cu ft,) and an inverter, and two batteries (I think 12 volt not 6? but not sure). It has an auto gen start feature that I haven't been able to figure out how to turn on.

1) how long should I run generator in evening before shutting it off? I ran it for one hour stopping at 8:00 pm, and the battery status light read full, and turned down the fridge to low, but by 3:00 the inverter read 11. something and was beeping, so I turned it off. Should the fridge draw that much that the batteries won't last through the night while dry camping?

2) the auto levelers are wonderful. But at one campsite it was I guess a little too off- level, and the level got it mostly level, and then said "unable to complete leveling". Should I worry about opening the slide under those conditions? Should I have wooden blocks to place under the leveler jacks to get it close enough to level?

3) under the water pump, both the outside and inside shower seem to have very little water coming out of them. Is that normal and I'm not use to RV showers?

Ok... those are my first most burning questions.... if anyone can help or direct me to a thread that helps... I would much appreciate it!

[pianotuna]

Hi,

The fridge probably uses at least 100 watts per hour. By the time inverter losses are considered that works out to 10 amps each hour.

To return the bank from 50% state of charge to 100% can take a very long time.

Here is a chart:



"The chart above shows the amount of time it took a PD9155 (55-amp) converter set to three different output voltages to recharge a 125 AH (Amp Hour) battery after it was fully discharged to 10.5-volts.

14.4-VOLTS (Boost Mode) – Returned the battery to 90% of full charge in approximately 3-hours. The battery reached full charge in approximately 11 hours.

13.6-VOLTS (Normal Mode) – Required 40-hours to return the battery to 90% of full charge and 78-hours to reach full charge.

13.2-VOLTS (Storage Mode) – Required 60-hours to return the battery to 90% of full charge and 100-hours to reach full charge."

[tenbear]

doubravsky wrote:
thanks tenbear... how do I determine what type of converter I have? The RV is a 2015....

The converter will probably be near the power distribution panel. It might be almost anywhere. Mine is under the bed.

[tenbear]

Yet another thought: Here is a link to some info about your RV's electrical system that you might like to read.

[doubravsky]

thanks tenbear... how do I determine what type of converter I have? The RV is a 2015....

[tenbear]

doubravsky wrote:
What's the best way to determine if the battery is full? I'm not well versed on electrical stuff and know I need to learn it. I looked at the number on the inverter switch, which starts to beep in the mid 11's. When I'm charging with generator the number goes up to 13.7, but then once I turn off gen it goes down to about 12.7 .... but seems to start lowering pretty quickly. I'm wondering if this is from the "surface charge" that you mentioned.

The 13.7v would be the voltage that the converter is putting out. That would seem to indicate that you have an older Parallax converter. The 12.7v is the battery voltage and may include some surface charge. If you have some lights on or using some battery current, the surface charge should dissipate within a short time and the battery voltage should stabilize at the voltage you could use to calculate what the state of charge (SOC) is.

If I am right about the Parallax converter, it will take many hours to recharge the battery from 50% SOC.

Another thought: A fully charged battery should have a no load voltage of 12.6+v and ~12.1v would indicate 50% SOC.

[doubravsky]

What's the best way to determine if the battery is full? I'm not well versed on electrical stuff and know I need to learn it. I looked at the number on the inverter switch, which starts to beep in the mid 11's. When I'm charging with generator the number goes up to 13.7, but then once I turn off gen it goes down to about 12.7 .... but seems to start lowering pretty quickly. I'm wondering if this is from the "surface charge" that you mentioned.

[doubravsky]

Thanks for the replies... unfortunately we're 1000 miles away from the dealer for the next 2 1/2 weeks....

We bought the RV with the residential fridge because we really liked all the other features... size/ storage/ size of slide/ levelers and auto gen start included. The salesperson indicated that by charging it up with generator early in the evening, we would have no problem going through the night and then running geerator in morning, and then explained that the auto gen feature would automatically take care of that par to fit and you could set evening hours for it to be off. I should have done a little more researc. Still, We're coming from 15 years of a pop-up trailer, and so I don't know that we'll be boondocking a tremendous amount.

[tenbear]

If the battery was discharged it takes much more than an hour to recharge it. Actual time depends on your converter, that's what converts your 120vac to 12vdc to run the 12v systems and charge the battery.

The idiot lights are not a good indicator of the state of charge. When a battery has just been charged there will be a surface charge which will dissipate in a few hours or faster if the battery is being used. This can fool the idiot lights.

[bikendan]

doubravsky wrote:
Just bought a 2015 Thor Four Winds 31W.... out for our maiden voyage, which just happened to be a 3 week 3,000 mile trek. (not optimal but it was that or stick with the pop-up and we were too excited to wait).

I have a couple of questions....

BG- it has a residential fridge (18 cu ft,) and an inverter, and two batteries (I think 12 volt not 6? but not sure). It has an auto gen start feature that I haven't been able to figure out how to turn on.

1) how long should I run generator in evening before shutting it off? I ran it for one hour stopping at 8:00 pm, and the battery status light read full, and turned down the fridge to low, but by 3:00 the inverter read 11. something and was beeping, so I turned it off. Should the fridge draw that much that the batteries won't last through the night while dry camping?

i'm wondering why you would've have chosen a residential fridge, if you plan on dry camping or boondocking a lot.:h if you only have 2 batteries, then yes, the fridge can suck the batteries down fast. and nearly all campgrounds have limited generator hours, so you can't usually run it after 8.

2) the auto levelers are wonderful. But at one campsite it was I guess a little too off- level, and the level got it mostly level, and then said "unable to complete leveling". Should I worry about opening the slide under those conditions? Should I have wooden blocks to place under the leveler jacks to get it close enough to level?

i have never had these so can't answer.

3) under the water pump, both the outside and inside shower seem to have very little water coming out of them. Is that normal and I'm not use to RV showers?

new RV's almost always have debris in the water lines that gets trapped at the outlet end. take off the shower heads and look for plastic debris.

Ok... those are my first most burning questions.... if anyone can help or direct me to a thread that helps... I would much appreciate
it!

i'm wondering why some of this was explained during your PDI.
an example of another poor PDI by a dealer!:S
i would've also recommended a couple of nites of Driveway Camping before you left on your trip.

[Jim-Linda]

I believe I would have the dealer go thru a walkthru, demonstration, explaination, etc. If there are issues, they should correct them.

Jim