Battery life

[Rick Fredieu]

I am new to Rving. Just got a Forest River travel trailer. Came with 1 battery. How long will a fully charged battery run the refrigerator? Frig is electric only. Also, Will adding a second battery increase the use time?

[robo44]

Need some more info, what Model or trailer do you have? Others who have similar model can provide more details. You did not say if it was a residential style refrigerator, if yes, not very long.
But need more info before we can give you more details/information

[TitanMike]

Size of battery is going to matter. One small group 24 battery or one group 8d. Huge difference.

Best way is to do an inventory of items that will be using battery power and for how long.

Once that is a complished and you know how many amp hours are consumed per day then you can determine how large and how many batteries will be required.

To start I would consider a good battery monitor. That is one area where the more you pay the better they are.

A Victron Smart Shunt is a good happy medium of price, durability, features, and accuracy.

This will give you an accurate reading of current draw and battery state of charge. Good data to help size battery bank.

[Rick Fredieu]

Thanks for the reply. Not a residential fridge, but also does not run on LP. 12 cubic feet, electric only. TT is a 30 ft Rockwood Signature model #8324 MBR. Just need to know if 1 RV battery will keep the fridge running overnight. Probably 8 - 10 hours. Will adding a n extra battery give me twice the battery life?

[boondocking]

Your fridge will use 2.5 to 3 amp to maintain the temp. So it would use 25-30 amp hours in 10 hours after it got to set temp. One 100 amp hour battery would be good for about 15-16 hours.

[Rick Fredieu]

Thanks

[PhilFromMaine]

As Titan Mike said, do an inventory of your usage and compare it to your battery output. This is an approx. computation, but it will get you in the ballpark of what size battery bank you need. There are usage calculator sites all over the WEB.

I am curious as to what your 1 night refrig situation is. You said you are new to RVing. What are you planning?

Also, the batteries that the dealerships supply with new trailers are usually dual purpose Marine batteries that cost around 100 dollars. You need to get good (real) deep cycle batteries. I am guessing that your battery only has about 70 amp hours of storage of which you can only use about 50 percent of before damaging your battery. That probably puts you in the 35 amp hour range of useable power.

[chriscowles]

An important data point is the amount of time you expect to spend camping without shore power. If you'll usually be where you can plug in, the battery is moot with respect to the refrigerator. It would be good to have it while driving but it's not always required.

That doesn't even mean boondocking as in camping in the middle of the forest. My experience is primarily GA and FL SPs. Every park in FL (someone will cite an exception, I'm sure) has water and electricity at every site, as do most parks in GA. In planning my summer trip I've learned that many other state don't have electricity at every site, or even any site. Many don't have water at the site, either.

[bikendan]

Originally Posted by chriscowles

An important data point is the amount of time you expect to spend camping without shore power. If you'll usually be where you can plug in, the battery is moot with respect to the refrigerator. It would be good to have it while driving but it's not always required.

That doesn't even mean boondocking as in camping in the middle of the forest. My experience is primarily GA and FL SPs. Every park in FL (someone will cite an exception, I'm sure) has water and electricity at every site, as do most parks in GA. In planning my summer trip I've learned that many other state don't have electricity at every site, or even any site. Many don't have water at the site, either.

In California State park campsites, less than 1% have hookups of any kind. The ones that do are mostly W/E only. That's why we had to learn how to dry camp.