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Messages - DavidM

#196
Open Discussion Area / Re: Camping starter info
March 04, 2017, 04:01:00 PM
We have owned our 16TBS for three camping seasons now, have camped probably 50 nights and have only had plug in power once. Here are some thoughts on how to boondock with ease:

The single battery that most of us have on our campers has about 70 amp hours of capacity. For best life you don't want to run it down below 50%, so you really have 35 amp hours of usable capacity, but an occasional dip to 80% discharged won't do too much damage.

We don't run the furnace, so with normal use of lights, water pump, fridge control electronics (more about this later), water heater start up, etc we use 10-15 amp hours each day. So we can usually go for three nights before running the battery too low.

If you need more capacity or recharging capability you have several choices:

1. Install two 6V golf cart batteries wired in series. That will up your capacity to 220 AH and let you go at least a week.

2. Install a solar panel. But we camp in shade. You can run long cables, maybe as much as 100' away from your trailer and mount a portable panel in the sun.

3. Tow the trailer someplace else. We never camp more that 3 nights in one place and 3 hours of towing will charge up the single battery so we can go another 3 nights.

4. If you want to stay in one place more than 3 nights then you can hook up your TV's battery to your trailer's battery with jumper cables and run the engine at idle for an hour. That will add enough for a day or two.

5. You can hook up a portable generator to your trailer's shore power cord and let the converter recharge the batteries. An hour of running should add a couple of days worth of power.

All of these were discussed in one place or the other on the old forum. Do a search on the aluminiumcamperforum.com which links to the old forum's archives to find a specific topic.

And finally back to the fridge. Some LL models have large fridges with two doors (one for fridge and one for the freezer) that are usually installed on the 21+' models and have a thermal element that keeps the freezer door frame from frosting up. This uses as much power in 24 hours as everything else (except the furnace). This can be disabled. See ACF or the old forum archives linked by ACF for details.

And really finally, the furnace draws a lot of power for its blower, maybe 5 amps. If you turn it on for 24 hours and it operates 1/4 of the time it will draw down your batteries in a day. We have used it for an hour before bed to take showers, etc and again in the morning for an hour to warm the unit up. That alone will draw 10 amps so we only do it if we are only staying a night or two before towing or returning home.

David
#197
This meetup discussion and announcement started on the old site, moved to the aluminiumcamperforum site where the continuing discussion is held, and I thought I would post here so it gets coverage on both LL oriented forums.

Go to http://aluminiumcamperforum.com/index.php?topic=189.0 for the continuing discussion of the meetup. Six Livin Lite owners have already reserved campsites for that weekend and another half dozen or so have expressed interest.

So check out the discussion and please join in. All LL campers are welcome. I will check back here periodically but if you are interested, please use the ACF forum for further information.

David