Need advice on battery performance

We have a 2013 PW Plateau and to date have been fortunate to have hookups everywhere we have gone. That is about to change. Next month we will be going to Yellowstone NP for 3 days where we will be dry camping. We are very diligent in conserving battery power, hopefully only using power for the refrigerator, an occasional overhead light, and to run the heater at night - Yellowstone can get into the 20's at night that time of year. My understanding is that both the refrigerator and heater are big amp draws. I know we can run the generator for a spell to build up battery amps but are still concerned if battery will make it through the night. Would love to hear others experiences/tips in dry camping (especially in colder locations) and how your battery performs.

If you have some weak, typical rv stock battery bank, you will likely not be able to make it through the night on those appliances. In order to answer the question, we need to know the capacity of your battery bank, in amp hours, as well as the draw of your refrigerator and heater.

Assuming your refrigerator runs on propane, the battery drain is miniscule, just enough for the control board. On the other hand, if its a danfoss compressor style, it will use some energy. You're correct about the furnace blower though. It will create a significant draw when running. Bring a down comforter to put over the top of your bed, and sleep close. If you drive during the day for sight-seeing it will probably keep the batteries up.

I would recommend getting a volt meter to watch your coach batteries and learn how to use it.

Have a great trip!

Gary

Post you fridge specs. All load calcs must come from the loads, so without knowing the loads (both peak and thier duration) it is pretty hard to guess.

Typical RV fridge (compressor type) might use 3-500 watt/hours/day, or 25-50 ah from 12 vdc.
A propane fridge running n 12 vdc might draw ~300 watts, over the course of the day, assuming a duty cycle of 50% that is 3.6 kwh, or about 300 ah out of a 12 volt battery. Running a 3 way fridge strictly off the battery is a bd idea, for obvious reasons. The 12 volt option is simply for short time periods and for when you are driving.

Icarus

We have the standard out the door equipment that comes with PW.
- NORCOLD 3 WAY 6 CU FT DOUBLE DOOR FRIDGE (propane/AC/DC),
- 16,000 BTU FURNACE,
and a single group 27 Deep Cycle battery (would love to add a second battery but there is no place to install it - the standard coach battery is under the front hood and barely fits as it is)

The important spec on the fridge is how many amps does it draw...same with the furnace? The furnace draw is mostly the fan, as the ignitor only draws when it is lighting. A model number and current draw spec would be nice.

Since it is a 3 way, just run it on Propane when. You are parked, as it draws almost no currrent except for a few miliamps for the control board, and maybe a bit for the ignitors.

Icarus

PS. There are many here, including myself who have no idea wht comes out the door with a Pleasureway, so model numbers and specs help those answer questions that are not just unique to PWs.

Icarus

MaggieJoe said:

We have the standard out the door equipment that comes with PW.
- NORCOLD 3 WAY 6 CU FT DOUBLE DOOR FRIDGE (propane/AC/DC),
- 16,000 BTU FURNACE,
and a single group 27 Deep Cycle battery (would love to add a second battery but there is no place to install it - the standard coach battery is under the front hood and barely fits as it is)

Click to expand...

As Icarus & GaryJ said, run the fridge on propane for virtually no electrical power use.

At 16,000 BTU, I assume the furnace is also propane, so the only major electrical draw would be the fan. How often it runs & therefore the draw on your battery would depend on the current drawn by the fan & its duty cycle. The colder it is, the longer the furnace fan will run. It's hard to make an estimate without knowing the current drawn by the fan.

In cool/cold weather, my wife & I usually warm the van up a bit before going to sleep, then turn the furnace OFF until morning when someone (usually me ) has to jump out of bed to turn the furnace ON, if required. The fan cycling ON/OFF during the night disturbs our sleep.

Our van has 2 of Group 27 Deep Cycle batteries, which are showing their age. We have not run into any problems with discharging the batteries too low to run the lights or change the electrically powered bed between couch & bed, even after several days without shore power in cool/cold temperatures. Some driving & generator use to microwave some meals was enough to charge the batteries. In fact we were in & around Yellowstone in the 3rd week of June when there was still snow on the ground at higher altitude campgrounds.

If your battery is fairly new & in good condition, you will probably not have any problems.

I run mine all night with out trouble. The duty cycle, at about 10f is perhaps 50%. If memory serves, I think my furnace draws about 1-2 amps, so over night, is perhaps 12 15 ah.

Icarus

You are all set with the Norcold running on propane for a couple days....

The heater is another issue...the fan on most inefficient rv heaters will chew through the battery in less than a night. When i had a poorly designee road trek and was winter dry camping, the inefficient heater killed the group 27 in less than a night. But, ymmv depending on the heater. That's why, even with a 440ah bank, i chose this heater....

http://www.seaboundsupply.com/dicki...000-12v.html?gclid=CLya973g2bgCFYyd4AodoioADQ

Pulls tenths of an amp with the fan going, or 0 amps with the fan off.

You need a meter that shows you the "state of charge" of the house battery. With that information you are not in the dark about the condition of the battery. It is just like a fuel gage. If you know the SOC you can adjust how much you use power for optional uses where you have a choice. The refrigerator is not a choice but things like a microwave and TV/radio are items you do not need to use if battery is low. You can use the meter to learn about your systems capacity.

I don't have all the dimension/amp specs as they are in the van and the van is at storage. Here is what I think we will do. Make sure refrigerator is on propane and use a Mr Buddy portable heater to get van warm before going to bed. Hopefully this will reduce the amount of heating the van has to do on its own, or at least delay it.

Hi MaggieJoe,

A couple of points for you:
PW has been installing Interstate batteries and I doubt have switched to anything better. A group 27 Interstate has 85Ah total, 42.5Ah of which is usable. You should be able to to get a group 29 (the same as the standard group 49) battery in there, which, if an Interstate SRM29, would get you 105Ah, 52.5Ah usable.
I'm not familiar with the Norcold fridges that are now installed since mine is a Dometic, but unless you're running on DC directly, the DC current from the control board will be minimal.
As for lights, I believe all new units come standard with LED lighting. If not, and you still have halogens and incandescents, change them out to LEDs to save power. There are several sources for good LEDs on the Internet.
The propane solenoid valve will be Ah expensive. It takes 0.8A and since you'll be running the fridge on propane 24/7, you'll use 19.2Ah out of your battery per day.
So, you start out with 42.5Ah, and reduce it by 19.2 per day, for three if you do not charge the battery, you can go two days only. 42.5-19.2 leaves 23.3Ah remaining.
Now you say you want to run the furnace overnight. The furnace is a huge expense on power. It takes 3.1A when it's running. If you leave it on all night, it will cycle on and off all night and meanwhile you're trying to get some sleep. It's loud and noisy and so very not efficient.
Let's say you sleep for 8hours and the furnace cycles on and off for that duration, say half the time it's on and half the time it's off. You have approx. four hours of use for one night. That's 12.4Ah out of your battery.
So, you start with 42.5, then remove 19.2 and you have 23.3, now run the furnace and remove 12.4 more. Your battery is now down to 0. You've just fully discharged your battery in one 24hr cycle and you haven't used any lights, charged phones, laptops, no tv, no ceiling fan, nothing else.
All these numbers are optimistic numbers with a brand new fully charged battery. Real life experience and usage says they don't last and you don't have a fully charged battery to begin with. Every time your battery is fully discharged like that, it takes life out of it and your 42.5 usable Ah goes down and down and down each time and the battery will refuse to take a charge and get sulfated and die a horrible death.

So, the normal recommendation for this is to run just the fridge and use what lights and charge your phone and small electronics only. You will need to drive to charge the battery. It's faster than the generator and you can charge while sight-seeing.
Bring extra blankets for the bed at night. Run the furnace and let it cycle once or twice to warm the place up before bed and turn it off for the night. Someone will need to get up and let it run a couple times in the morning to warm the place up and get out of bed, then be sure to turn it off again. It's much better to have the right clothing for the weather.

There is room to add a second battery under the hood, but you need the battery mounting shelf. If this is a one-time deal, you can probably make do with your current setup. If you think you want to do this more frequently or for longer durations, you really need to get better equipped to be without hookups. More batteries and solar are definite options. I have two 12V batteries in parallel and 200W of solar on the roof of my Plateau. The only thing I'll change is my batteries to two 6V in series. Mine are inside under the couch and floor and are AGM. Yours are flooded wet cells and you can easily fit two Trojan T-105s in there under the hood with an additional shelf on the opposite side.

BTW, most PW owners are on the yahoo group system where there is an owners group. You do need a yahoo account to access yahoo groups, but there is much more activity, resources and other owners that know exactly what you have and how to make it work.
Have fun on your trip!

Enjoy!
B.L
06 Plateau TS
SF Bay Area, CA

We have slept in our Pleasure-way and now GWVan Legend in temps down to 20F. We use sleeping bags rated for that temperature and don't turn the heater on until the morning when we get up. It's that simple for us. We sleep better that way.