What's your battery setup on your travel trailer?

I use two Trojan T125s at 240 total amp hours. My desired energy use survey determined I needed about 90 AHs per day, so I hardly ever dip below 40% DOD. The batteries are fully recharged almost every day by my solar system.

Since deep cycle batteries should be fully recharged daily for longest life, I don’t understand your “longer use” comment. Few 12 volt batteries are deep cycle. Trojan makes a couple. What make is your battery? What is it’s AH capacity? Does your solar watts equal your total battery amp hours? Why isn’t your solar fully recharging your battery daily?

If I was boon docking and wanted a low priced setup use 6V golf cart batteries.

Where would one buy low priced but quality 6 volt batteries that don’t need full recharging daily for longest life?

need to know a little more about what you want to power.

6V golf carts are good for low-medium draw applications, less than 30A or so max. Above that voltage drop from internal resistance comes into play and can limit use with large inverter draws. A solution for that is 4 GC to reduce draw/pair if you have room. Or if you constantly want high current draw, good 12V deep discharge are a better choice.

And how often and how many days do you want to boondock. If it's only a few times/year and a few days at a time, a couple of decent true Deep discharge 12V may be the best cost solution.

For my situation I have 4 GC batteries about 500AH. Of which about 350AH is useable. Good GC can be drawn down to 25% SOC (75% DOD) and still give hundreds of cycle of life.

And the GC are taller than a regular 12V so do you have room for them?

And finally, the weakest link in most trailers isn't the battery, it's the WFCO charger which almost never will go to bulk charging mode so (1) batteries never get fully charged and (2) charging current limits to around 10A which means you can run the generator all day and not get the batteries charged. Solution is a Iota or Progressive dynamics drop in replacement,

I have solar, yes it really helps when the sun shines and you can have either the trailer or the portable panels in the sun.

I have 2 x 6 volt golf cart batteries (250 Ah) which can be supplemented with 260 watts of solar power and/or a 2000 watt inverter generator when needed.

Works well for me when dry camping.

My battery setup is four group 31 AGM batteries. I retrofitted a dinette bench into a battery and inverter bay.

When they were new six years ago I could go for days and days. Now they're about spent, I can go for a day.

Ktmrfs said: And finally, the weakest link in most trailers isn't the battery, it's the WFCO charger which almost never will go to bulk charging mode so (1) batteries never get fully charged and (2) charging current limits to around 10A which means you can run the generator all day and not get the batteries charged. Solution is a Iota or Progressive dynamics converter.


I have found this to be true in my camper. I use an inexpensive manual battery charger to recharge my battery. Works faster than the WFCO OEM charger. But the reason for your battery discharging so quickly may be because of parasitic battery loads. If you have a Dometic fridge it may be that the door heater to control door condensation is always on. Some models have a switch to turn it off. But some models such as mine lack a switch. If yours is like mine you can install your own switch by cutting the heavier red wire inside the fridge interior light and installing a switch there. I did this and it extended the battery life by days.

OregonMan wrote:
Hey guys, I'm wondering what your battery setup is on your travel trailer. I have a 2018 Wolf Pup 16BHS travel trailer and am still using the original battery which I believe is a 12 volt deep cycle. However I've never been impressed with the battery... on a full charge it lasts maybe a day with moderate use. Do any of you have a multi-battery setup where you have 2 or 3 batteries for longer use? Are there bigger batteries? Could you install a Tesla power wall on your trailer? ;)

Basically I'm looking for solutions to boondock for longer. I've got solar and a power generator but a better battery setup would be great. Thanks for any tips!

A powerwall will cost you about 7000 and provide around 5.5 kWh of power. It will have a built in inverter/charger. Actually good bang for the buck. Some large class A integrators are now using them. But for a trailer it’s probably overkill, and space consuming.

Jmho.

This is on a FW but its the same with a TT or FW since the main issue is where to put the batteries. 6 GC2 from sams. 1000 watts of tilting solar and a Honda 3000. I also installed an Progressive 50 amp converter. I have also used an “Quick charger” brand 50 AMP. At times ive used an 30 amp power supply from Meanwell.

The FW originally had three GP24 batteries in a compartment at the right rear corner. I cut the original tray out and made it deeper. The GC2 is too tall to fit through the door so i put four of them in the tray and jack it up into the cavity and bolt it in The other two GC2 are in a rack under the FW about in the center and behind the rear axle.

Parasitic loads can be a big issue. I am not sure what all the possible loads are but in my TT I have the frig, LP detector and the antenna booster. The antenna booster can be turned off, if I remember to do it.

The single 12 volt battery will last the wife and I two days which is enough when we are traveling between campgrounds for a couple of days.

At home with shore power disconnected, the battery will last 5 to 7 days just sitting in the yard. So at home the TT is plugged into the 120 volt power or the negative battery lead disconnected.