No hook-ups

[Bad Boy]

LOL

[Herk7769]

Originally Posted by KyDan

A week on 1 battery is pushing it but if you use
no furnace, and almost no lights you can probably get by.
Read the discussion above starting at msg 1 and go all
the way thru.

My bank is two 75 AH batteries. My camper was fully charged when it went to the dealer for maintenance and I left the batteries connected since I did not know if they wee going to move it. Everything in the camper was turned off. They never plugged it in and they had it for a week.

The only things drawing power were: The Propane Detector, the Concertone - OFF, and the internal resistance of the two batteries.

When I picked it up after a week, the bank was down 50%. If it had only been one battery, it would have been as dead as Bin Laden.

[KyDan]

Lou, have you pulled fuses and checked what is drawing
all those amps??

I know my power center charger itself is a draw when
not plugged into shore power.
I forget how much it was but I used to pull the power
center fuses when I wanted the battery to stay up.
I -think- you can pull the 2 big fuses on the top row.
(these were the charger itself)
and still have 12v power to the bottom row which
is LP detector and refer and hw heater and lights.

There are folks who dry camp days at at time on battery
power. You just have to be an amp hour detective
and figure out what is pulling you down and see if you
can do without it.

If you have a volt/ohm/amp meter you can pull a fuse
and put the meter in AMPs scale across the fuse socket.
The meter takes the place of the fuse and reads the amp
draw of that circuit.
Of course the meter has to have a high enough range
to not blow the internal meter fuse!
I've done this in my previous trailer.

I'm not kidding when I say we've camped 5 full days
in summer on 2 little measly 12v batteries.
We watched some TV and used the maxxair fan some
and used minimal lights. Plus the normal battery
drag from the fridge and water heater on LP modes.
And we used most of our fresh tank of water via the
12v pump during that week.
I can't imagine why your TT sucks 2 big ole 6 volts down
to half in just a week!!

Does your refrigerator have an "environment switch".
This is a tiny 12v heater that warms the metal between
the freezer and fresh food doors to stop condensation.
When you are dry camping you want this switch OFF.

My fridge freezer door used to rub this switch and turn
it on by accident. I found the top trim on the door
wasn't snapped in place properly.
I got the trim in place and now that switch stays off.

[Herk7769]

Originally Posted by KyDan

Lou, have you pulled fuses and checked what is drawing
all those amps??

I know my power center charger itself is a draw when
not plugged into shore power.
I forget how much it was but I used to pull the power
center fuses when I wanted the battery to stay up.
I -think- you can pull the 2 big fuses on the top row.
(these were the charger itself)
and still have 12v power to the bottom row which
is LP detector and refer and hw heater and lights.

There are folks who dry camp days at at time on battery
power. You just have to be an amp hour detective
and figure out what is pulling you down and see if you
can do without it.

If you have a volt/ohm/amp meter you can pull a fuse
and put the meter in AMPs scale across the fuse socket.
The meter takes the place of the fuse and reads the amp
draw of that circuit.
Of course the meter has to have a high enough range
to not blow the internal meter fuse!
I've done this in my previous trailer.

I'm not kidding when I say we've camped 5 full days
in summer on 2 little measly 12v batteries.
We watched some TV and used the maxxair fan some
and used minimal lights. Plus the normal battery
drag from the fridge and water heater on LP modes.
And we used most of our fresh tank of water via the
12v pump during that week.
I can't imagine why your TT sucks 2 big ole 6 volts down
to half in just a week!!

Does your refrigerator have an "environment switch".
This is a tiny 12v heater that warms the metal between
the freezer and fresh food doors to stop condensation.
When you are dry camping you want this switch OFF.

My fridge freezer door used to rub this switch and turn
it on by accident. I found the top trim on the door
wasn't snapped in place properly.
I got the trim in place and now that switch stays off.

Dan,

First off,

They are 2 DeKa 12 volt Dual Purpose DC-24 batteries. Not the best.

The defroster in the fridge only works on AC.

and most important, I have a TM-2025RV battery monitoring system that shows amps to a tenth amp in or out regardless of shore power.

I know the parasite load on my camper is exactly .2 amps (200 ma) ALL THE TIME, not counting internal battery loss.

http://www.batteryweb.com/pdf/invert...sizing_faq.pdf

Most batteries' A.H. capacity is stated for the 20-hour rate of discharge. This means that a battery has a 100 A.H. capacity if it is discharged over 20 hours, or at about 5 Amps-per-hour (100 A.H. / 20 hours = 5 Amps DC). However, this same battery would
last only one hour if the discharge rate was 50 Amps-per-hour (50 Amps DC x 1 hour = 50 A.H.) because of the high rate of discharge.

A 75 AH battery will last about 375 hours at a constant 0.2 amp draw.
2 75 AH batteries will last 750 hours at 0.2 amp constant draw.
150 hours is about 31 days in an "ideal world"

This was a head scratcher until I went and looked at the calendar and discovered they actually had it 11 days and maybe they did play the radio when they worked on it.