I’ve got a Grey Wolf 26DJSE and my family just dry camped at a state park campground for 6 nights and 7 days. We ran the fridge full time but left all the lights, the radio, the water pump, nothing plugged in to any outlets unless the generator (Predator 3500) was running (2 hours in the morning, 3 hours in the evening).
By the 3rd night, the battery died and I got a replacement on the 4th day and while that lasted the rest of the trip it did get concerningly low by the mornings. We never ran the AC the entire week.
I have an 81ah battery and there’s also a solar panel on the roof. Shouldn’t I be able to dry camp for a week with 5 hours of generator power each day? And shouldn’t I be able to use at least a couple of lights in the evening without fear of running out of battery?
Do I need to increase my battery capacity? Is there something wired wrong? Does the fridge draw more power than I expect it should?
(Pups and the camper for visibility ????????
The fridge will draw enough power to drain my 100Ah battery after a few days. Even if it’s set to use propane. A couple of decent solar panels will resolve that issue though.
I do plan to add another 200Ah of battery to my setup. Already have the battery, just need to connect it to my other battery.
For the time being, until I get solar panels, I generally run my generator for a bit each day to charge the battery.
Your 81ah battery is only good for 40ah. When you run the generator it’s only trickle charging the battery.
How much power does the solar panel put out? Even if you fully charge the battery it’s just not enough capacity.
Are the lights in your trailer LED or incandescent, which use an amp per hour.
Lithiums are your best choice. They can be fully discharged without damage. Unless you’re camping in below freezing weather they don’t require any special housing. Unless your trailer is very old the built in charger will maintain them. They’re also much lighter than traditional batteries.
A single 100ah lithium battery has the same capacity as two 6v golf cart batteries at less than half the weight.
It sounds like you have a way to see the battery voltage, does it increase while you’re running the generator? Also, is the fridge on propane, 12v or 120 with an inverter?
That sounds normal. A single 81 Ah battery is not a lot of juice for any length of time. We have a much bigger 180Ah battery (4D size) and I have to charge it daily with a 10A charger. Id like to even move up to a 15A charger. And thats with the fridge running on propane 100% of the time. But we use a lot of lights, water pump, and an inverter for 120v power for computers, phone charging, plus some fans in a big RV.
If youre charging only off your generator with DC output thats often only a 5A to 8A charger (doesn’t specify exactly on the Predator 3500 specs), so its going to take a lot longer to recharge a depleted battery.
Double your battery capacity with 2x6v deep cycle batteries (golf cart) from Costco and get a bigger, faster charger and you’ll be fine.
Pooped pups amongst the toys. Great photo. Don’t have an answer for you on the battery issue.
You might have a short somewhere.
Source: Newbie power usage confusion
