Dry Camping Battery Suggestions

Just a suggestion replace all your lighting with LED bulbs that will save you a lot of battery.

Used to run 4 6volt in the DPer. Now run 2 12volt in the C. Run Gen about 3-4 hours a day and never run out of power summer or winter. With the newer 12 volt I would just add a second in parallel like the one you have, one or two cables and the battery cost. By the time you get up in the high use winter or cooler time, Start the Gen,warm the place up, make coffee and breakfast and the same at dinner with watching a bit of TV you have the Gen time needed. Plus if you use electric heater and switch the HW heater to Electric you off set some of the fuel used by the Gen. With that much power 120 used we cycle two things at a time only having 4000 watts now.

LEN

LEN

Electricity usage is very different among RVers. We used to dry camp for two or three days in summer with no generator, no problem. But an early spring trip when the furnace got quite a bit of use killed the batteries. I didn't realize how tricky the voltage method is - a little driving with engine charging runs the voltage up so the battery appears fully charged. This surface charge voltage can last many hours before a good state of charge per cent can be obtained with a voltmeter.

The way to accurately know the per cent charge all the time is a battery monitor. I use a lower current model of this $25 battery monitor:
eBay battery monitor

Now, with 100 watts of solar the batteries never go below 80% charge.

Without knowing how you use power in the MH, a completely tailored advisement on how much battery you need is unanswerable.

Offhand, with your experience running down one 12V to death, I'd suggest to change to two 6V GC2 golf cart batteries. The conversion is typically a painless process with the addition of a small jumper cable between the two 6V batteries. Golf cart batteries are deep cycle batteries and will endure some abuse.

Charging depends on what you have and your use of the batteries. Solar and RV boondocking is like peanut butter and jelly, it makes a lot of sense. Generator use is certainly adequate and many RV'ers use that to recharge.

Good luck on your battery quest and charging. Having more is definitely better than having less.

Get 2 6volt crown GC 235.

First, what kind of loads are we talking about ? Lights and maybe a furnace ? Small inverter for TV and other electronic devices ? Or big inverter for a residential refrigerator.

Two 6V DEEP CYCLE batteries is adequate for everything except power a large inverter for big load. Golf cart batteries fit this bill well, at a reasonable price. For a bit more money, look at a Trojan T-105 or T-105RE.

Another key to successful dry camping is a top notch battery charger (which is usually built into you converter). I don't know what you have, but most people here would recommend a Progressive Dynamics converter/charger.

We have 2 type 34 AGMs from Sears, DieHard Platinum made by Odyssey.
Good batteries, no longer available. When these need to be replaced we plan to go with BatteriesPlus X2Power AGM which is a similar battery made by Northstar.

Our charger is 3 stage and we run the gen 1 hour during the day and 1/2 hour before 10pm to warm up with the furnace/charge batts and then set the overnight temp to 55. We have all LED lights so not much load there.

I've never seen the battery indicator drop below 2/3.

lc0338 wrote:

marcsbigfoot20b27 wrote:


If you have 2 six volt batteries in series and one takes a dump, then both are worthless. If 1 of the 12 volt takes a dump, you just remove that 1 battery.

If you do some research it is not the "best practice" to mate up an old and new battery. The best approach is to start off with both batteries new because when you mate a new and old battery the new battery never achieves it's maximum possible life.

Yup. That's why I ditched the 12 volt house battery and two 6 volts in favor of 3 brand new 12 volt AGMs, one is the house batt and the other two are portable and hooked up in parallel when I get to a dry camping spot.

How long it will take your generator to charge your battery depends on your converter. It converts the 120vac to 12vdc, actually somewhere between 14.8v and 13+ v depending on the converter and the battery state of charge. Modern converters are 3 or 4 stage, starting at the high level and reducing the voltage as the battery gets recharged. Usually the OEM converter is a cheap thing and does not do a very good job. The older converters are only single stage and take a long time to fully charge a battery.

If you measure the charging voltage while the battery is being charged you can get an idea if your converter is doing its job. Progressive Dynamics is one of the good modern converters.

Without knowing what your converter is, no one can tell you how long it will take to charge your battery.