Battery life while dry camping

[Michael]

Way too many variables to answer that Jon. Number of batteries, battery type,
load type, etc... However, if you read through this ariticle (kind of a battery
bible) you will understand more than you ever wanted to know.

http://www.phrannie.org/battery.html

Basically, to give you and example, if you had a 100 ah lead-acid deep cycle
battery you'd first derate it 25% to 75 ah. A 75 amp hour battery means you can
draw 1 amp for 75 hours or 5 amps for 15 hours basically, but it is not that
simple as the ratings really are not linear. And you never want to discharge
beyound 50% of the battery's rating. So now your 75 ah is down to 37.5 ah. So
you could run a heater that draws 5 amps for about 6-7 hours continuously before
the battery needed to be recharged. But fortunately they usually don't run
continuously but just wanted to give some example of how to guestimate your
needs.

The best method is to work backwards. Figure out everything you'll be running,
get an amp draw, then caculate how many batteries you'll need for that
requirement. Read through the battery site and you'll learn a lot and have more
questions I'm sure...

Michael
78FC35
Mesa, Az


--- In WanderlodgeForum@yahoogroups.com, "Jon" wrote:
>
> I know this is a little oft the wall but does anyone have an idea how long a
set of new batterys should last while dry camping? I would just use the
electrical part of the coach very minimally. Jon
>