Boondock Battery Charging

[Skyliner]

Originally Posted by wharfrat48

I always thought the onboard chargers were not very good. I have not had great success getting a charge out of mine.

Too general of a statement. Constant voltage converters are awful and will take days to recharge a moderately discharged battery. New ones with 3-4 charge rates are much better but location and wire thickness used can make them useless. For example, I was losing 0.5 volts on my converter which was mounted 30 feet form the batteries. That voltage loss almost doubled my charge times because it never got into the necessary 14.2 volts for a bulk charge rate. Now, with a triple rate converter and it mounted within several feet of the batteries, I can get my batteries up to 90% charge in about 2 hours of running the generator. The last 10%, the absorption charge, still takes a while

[Lawrosa]

That generator may not be able to power your onboard converter to charge the batterys..

Example. My wfco 8955 wants 750watts in per specifications...

Just a thought...

[Brother Les]

charging slow with solar and/or a Genny, never puts in a full deep charge in your battery.

we have boondocked for several days and thought that a solar panel and genny were not worth the trouble (we have both). I just took a pair of jumper cables and hooked from truck battery to RV battery and Idled the truck for a few minutes to keep the RV battery topped off. 14.5 voltage hard charge.

[NMWildcat]

Battery recharging when boondocking is incredibly simple. We boondock 80% of the time, and up to three weeks. We have 2 marine deep cell series 27 batteries by Interstate. We recharge every day by using our Honda EU2000i for about 5 hours. A few hours in the morning while making coffee and watching the news. A few hours after dark to watch TV. Never have a problem with running out of battery overnight. We have a stock converter which is 30' from the batteries with stock wire, and no solar.

So while having fancy converters right next to your batteries and using heavy gauge wire and supplementing all that with solar would be nice, it darn sure isn't necessary

[njfishing]

Originally Posted by NMWildcat

Battery recharging when boondocking is incredibly simple. We boondock 80% of the time, and up to three weeks. We have 2 marine deep cell series 27 batteries by Interstate. We recharge every day by using our Honda EU2000i for about 5 hours. A few hours in the morning while making coffee and watching the news. A few hours after dark to watch TV. Never have a problem with running out of battery overnight. We have a stock converter which is 30' from the batteries with stock wire, and no solar.

So while having fancy converters right next to your batteries and using heavy gauge wire and supplementing all that with solar would be nice, it darn sure isn't necessary

Looks like the run time on a tank of fuel is 5 hours on my little Harbor Freight Genny so I'll need to bring some extra fuel... Thinking it might be nice to have one of those duel fuel Gennys so you can run from the propane tanks and not have to carry gas around.

Maybe Santa will get it for me for XMAS if I'm extra good and drop her several subtle hints

[Hersbird]

Originally Posted by njfishing

Looks like the run time on a tank of fuel is 5 hours on my little Harbor Freight Genny so I'll need to bring some extra fuel... Thinking it might be nice to have one of those duel fuel Gennys so you can run from the propane tanks and not have to carry gas around.

Maybe Santa will get it for me for XMAS if I'm extra good and drop her several subtle hints

There are actually very inexpensive dual fuel carburetors you can put on any generator. They run $20 more or less on e-bay, maybe $37 on Amazon with free shipping. I am not going to try it on my Westinghouse as it runs over 10 hours on a tank, but if I had an inexpensive little Harbour Freight it might be cool.
Generator Propane Conversion - Fuel Economy, Hypermiling, EcoModding News and Forum - EcoModder.com

[doc73]

I converted our home generator to tri fuel a few years ago. It is nice since we have NG in our home. It is a 8500 Briggs and Stratton so power is not an issue. But keep in mind propane and NG do not make the same amount of bang as does gas so you'll loose some wattage on the output, I think around 200 or so.