I have an old camper but I would rather just take care of it and fix/upgrade it as necessary as opposed to get rid of it and spend tens of thousands for another one. With that in mind, I'm at the point where I need to revamp the power. The converter crapped out on me halfway through the season last year and I couldn't afford or justify the repair then but things have changed and I'm ready to drop some serious cash.
Please give me your opinions on the planned system. This is a 1992 Dutchmen 26' bumper tow that I gave about $3000 for it in 2008 I think and it has been a really good camper for our family. We have used it maybe three times on "shore power" as we prefer to camp far from others if possible. I had a set of 6v deep cycle flooded batteries that I got brand new in 2009 but I wasn't really good about caring for them so they are all but worthless now. Last year I finally checked them and they were probably only half full of electrolyte so I filled them but the damage was already done.
So here is my plan. A pair of batteries made by Universal Power Group. I have a pair of 12v, AGM, 110ah UB121100s running my ham radio shack and I am happy with them so far but I've only had them about six months and haven't really given them a workout yet. I thought of getting the UB62000s but they would hold 20ah less and I can't think of any advantage in running s6v AGMs vs the 12v set. Am I missing something here?
On to the converter. The previous converter was the standard 30amp el-cheapo that came in almost every camper in the early 90s. Since this one let the magic smoke out, I figured why put the same el-cheapo back in there so I'm thinking of putting in the Progressive Dynamics (PD9245CV) 45 Amp Power Converter with Charge Wizard. I don't think I need a 45 amp converter but I have read all the rave reviews on the PD converters and I think that a 45 amp is the smallest they make.
Finally, the boon docking magic. I have a single 100w Renogy mono crystalline solar panel with PWM charge controller on my ham shack and it works great so far. I can run my 100w Kenwood at about 20% duty cycle, run a strip of about 100 LEDs, a standard 15w (?) camper bulb, a 50w Kenwood dual band radio on standby, all for about three hours at night and by the time I check the batteries the next day at noon, they are sitting at like 13.6v. The plan for the boon docking castle is to get the 300w Renogy kit that comes with the 40A MPPT charge controller so I can have my 16 day hunting trip in October and not worry about the heater running all night killing my batteries.
Does all of this sound like it will work well together or is there something else I need to consider?
