Does Furnace Run on DC Power??
A friend and I are planning a trip where we might have to stay overnight in a parking lot the first night in. We both have TTs. Can we run our furnaces off of DC Power?
Forum Discussion
SpeakEasy wrote:
Wow. I feel like I'm reading about a parallel universe here.
Last weekend I was boondocking. I have nothing special in terms of a battery. Outside temps overnight were in the low 40's or upper 30's. I had the TT furnace keeping me relatively warm (set at about 55 degrees) all night. Furnace was running as needed; no where near constant.
I had started out with my battery fully charged. In the morning, my charge was down to about 3/4 or 2/3 depending on which gauge I looked at. (I didn't measure with my voltmeter.)
After 2 hours of bright sunlight (7:00 AM to 9:00AM) my 100-watt solar panel had the battery back up to full charge.
It sounds like I used a lot less power than some of you are reporting.
This is in a 23-foot TT. Ducted.
-Speak
Yes. That is why those rules of thumb of one battery per night is just too general because of differing batteries and the furnace cycling times. Running my batteries from a full charge down to 50-percent is using about 110 amps. And with my furnace using about 7 amps it would take about 15 hours of constant use to get my batteries down to that 50-percent. And if the furnace cycled off half the time then it would take 30 hours.
But if you are trying to conserve battery power while dry camping, that 7 amps can be a large portion of overall battery usage.
