# Camper battery life question



## collardncornbread (Nov 26, 2011)

My wife and I bought a 3 year old 5th wheel with a slide out. it has a nice surround sound system. no tv, but a place wired for one. (previous owner kept it) gas referigerator and hot water. I camped in a primitave camp last week. after one day the first battery was dead. I pulled all unnesesary fuses. next battery lasted 2 days. 
QUESTION. How long should a battery last. I even used a lantern, to save my battery life for the fridge, and water heater. AND they are gas.?????


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## HoCoLion91 (Nov 27, 2011)

I use a deep cycle marine battery on my camper and it will last a week.  Lights draw a lot of current.  Only use them at a minimum.The fridge should draw very little nor the hot water heater.  Is your battery old?  If you are going to be primitive camping for several days, you can put 2 batteries in parallel.  Connect the positives and negatives together to make a bigger battery.


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## GA DAWG (Nov 27, 2011)

Mine last a couple nights if I run the furnace.


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## the r.o.c. (Nov 27, 2011)

you should get a solar powered charging system.  camping world or any camping supply carry them.  a little solar panel will charge the batteries.  ive heard then work great.


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## collardncornbread (Nov 27, 2011)

OK. I was using three deep cycle batteries. one is brand new, and the biggest wally had, the othwer two about 1 year old. But not in series. i wasn't using the camper lites, or the camper furnace. only the refer, and the hot water. and about 5 gallons of water, or less every day to bath and cook.I know i had to use the 12 volt water pump. But that was all. Solar power is iffy at this time of year. it rained 4 out of ten days. I was south of Birmingham Al. last week. I also ran my truck for several hours to keep the batteries up. and I eventually lost. I  also have a coleman popup, we run it a full week several times on vacation. on one battery. lites only. so I figure It should last simuliar on a big camper if I only run the basic. But my refer wont stay running without power, even though I was on gas. Seems like something else is draining it. A generator is on my list.


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## Maggie Dog (Nov 29, 2011)

I swap out all batterys at one time, (If I got the cash),The old batterys will drain a new battery down. Then your new battery has whatever reserve capicity  the older, run down batterys have left in them.


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## cgn526 (Nov 29, 2011)

The 12V water pump uses a good bit of juice. Some fridges are 12V, make sure yours is not. Other than that, a single Group 27 on my camper lasts 5 days to a week with lights only. 2 days using lights and water, and a day to day and a 1/2 if I run the furnace blower. We only use lights when necessary and keep them off as much as possible.


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## Cricket Chunker (Dec 1, 2011)

cgn526 said:


> The 12V water pump uses a good bit of juice. Some fridges are 12V, make sure yours is not. Other than that, a single Group 27 on my camper lasts 5 days to a week with lights only. 2 days using lights and water, and a day to day and a 1/2 if I run the furnace blower. We only use lights when necessary and keep them off as much as possible.



X2 on check the fridge.....

1) If it's a 3 way fridge and you run it on 12v you are draining about 10amps per hour which is a lot.  (but I see in your later response you were on LP, so....)

2) If the control board is all that is running off 12v and the fridge is actually running on LP then it is not drawing much at all.

3) If it's running off 120v via a inverter it will drain a battery faster than straight off the 12v.  Same for any other 120v stuff like TV's, microwave, etc...

And like cgn526 said, the furnace blower can be a big drain as well, even though most are 12v motors.

Dry camping (no power or water other than what you bring with you) will teach you about conservation of resources real fast, but it is very doable once you figure out what you have and how fast the systems deplete your resources so you can figure out how to manage the usage.

Not sure if a primitive camping area will allow a generator, but generators are a boon to dry campers and worth every dime you pay for a good one!  When I had my travel trailer, I only dry camped and had a pair of EU2000 Honda generators with a parallel kit to combine their wattage output.  I had 32amps available to a trailer with a 30 amp master breaker on the 120v side so I could run anything I wanted to with that combo.  Honda EU series generators are super quiet and reliable.  I know Yamaha and a few other companies now make super quiet models that can have their power combined but I only have experience with my two Honda units.  

Some 5th wheels had a built in generator as an option and if yours has the compartment for it, but just needs the generator, I would think about finding one that fits.  I would stay away from LP powered generators. Especially if you dry/primitive camp.  Reason is a LP generator burns through LP real quick and it's a lot harder to find a LP station than it is a gasoline station.  Another argument for a stand alone generator (not installed but portable) would be you can keep it at the house even if you store your 5'er elsewhere and use the generator to power your fridge/freezer in your house during a power outage to keep from loosing all the food.  If you get snowed in and are running short on fuel, just siphon some from a car or truck or a boat (not mixed fuel though) in a pinch.  I ran out of gas in my lawn equipment tanks one winter and ended up siphoning 5 gallons from my truck.  Each of My Honda units will run about 11-13 hours on 1 gallon of gas which is pretty decent


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## Bob Shaw (Dec 2, 2011)

The slide-out will just about kill your battery on it's own. They take a huge amount of power. That's probably why your first battery died so soon.


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## rjseniorpro (Dec 8, 2011)

*honda gen.*

Hey cricket chunker, you want to sell one of your Hondas? I have one and need one more.....pm me.....


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## Kendallbearden (Dec 9, 2011)

The furnace drains ours more than anything. I suggest running portable propane heaters as long as you're awake, and just using the furnace when you're asleep at night. I use a big deep cycle marine battery too. Up until two years ago we were in a hunting club in talbot county without any water or electricity. We could manage to stay down there for a week at a time. We always carry a back up battery too though, just in case.


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## collardncornbread (Dec 14, 2011)

My Refrigerator just says AC and GAS. Yes I did run the slide out the first day. And the first night I played the CD and surround sound for about an hour. But after that night I pulled the fuses. I still plan to buy a generator. I had 3 deep cycle batteries.not hooked together I used the truck to recharge. I let it idle about 1/2 hour each night.


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## Showman (Dec 19, 2011)

Hook the Batteries in PARALLEL to increase Amperage.  Do not put them in Series (adds voltage together ex: 12+12=24 volts).  Parallel is + to + and - to -.  

A friend of mine has a 135 watt Solar Panel he charges his battery with.  He says that even on partly cloudy days, it puts out enough to charge the battery.  He bought his at Camping World and swears by it.

I have a 5000 watt Honda Genset that I take with me when we are going to camp in a place with no services (like WMA's).  I have had people ask if they can hook into my genset, I just say no, I need it all.  My genset shut down one afternoon, I went out and someone had snuck up and plugged their camper into it. causing an overload and popped the breakers.  I cut their extension cord and gave it back to them.  Yep, they were P.O.'ed.


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## Cricket Chunker (Dec 24, 2011)

collardncornbread said:


> My Refrigerator just says AC and GAS. Yes I did run the slide out the first day. And the first night I played the CD and surround sound for about an hour. But after that night I pulled the fuses. I still plan to buy a generator. I had 3 deep cycle batteries.not hooked together I used the truck to recharge. I let it idle about 1/2 hour each night.



If it's a 2 way and you run it on AC, do you have an inverter/charger for your power.  It's pretty common for a 5th wheel to have an inverter.

Easy way to tell is do you have any 120v power when you are on battery power with no street power hooked up?  If you do, this would be an inverter/charger as it inverts the 12v DC to 120v AC and also acts as a charger when you have 120v street power available.  If you do not have any 120v power when not hooked to a street or campground outlet, you have a converter/charger (converts 120v AC to 12v DC to power the 12v stuff and charge the batteries only, the 120v power for any outlets must come from the street/campground 120v connection).

A "Inverter" will eat a ton of DC power as watts are watts no matter the power source (a 3amp 120v AC circuit is 360 watts.  For a inverter to power this same load off of 12v DC it must draw 30amps per hour.  3amps x 120v = 360 watts or 30 amps x 12v = 360watts).


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## collardncornbread (Dec 25, 2011)

If you do not have any 120v power when not hooked to a street or campground outlet, you have a converter/charger (converts 120v AC to 12v DC to power the 12v stuff and charge the batteries only, the 120v power for any outlets must come from the street/campground 120v connection).

This is the closest line to what I seem to have. my electric alarm clock wont work on any of my outlets. neither will my air pump to the air bed in the couch. UNLESS I plug it to a street source. .Also since I started this thread--- I parked my dodge(two batteries) 3500 w/ cummings dsl. hooked to the camper, did not unplug the camper to truck cable. everything in the camper was off.eaven the Refer.. 3 days later I went to my truck after work, to move it to the camper shed. The truck batteries were so dead the dome lite wouldnt come on. It was after I charged the batteries and found out they wouldn't hold, went to O'Rileys parts, had the batteries tested, and found out both were bad. They were both about 5 years old, so It may have been time for them to both quit. Or one was already dead and the other had been toating the load. (Which I suspect). I will eventually find a reason for the load loss. Thanks for the inverter/converter info.


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