Battery life

[coopedw]

Dry camping the other day and had my battery run down with just fridge going in less than 10 hours . Any thoughts or similar experience ? Thanks

[Dave and Monica]

What about lighting or the water pump, especially if the lighting is not LED. I think those items can easy run down the battery more so than the control board for the fridge when on propane.

Dave

[Cate&Rob]

Guessing that you might have a 120 amp hour battery . . . it would only take a 12 amp average combined draw to use up that battery in 10 hours. Lights, fridge control board, water heater control board?, slide operation?, awning?, etc.

10 hours seems a little low, but not too unreasonable. You should certainly check water level and connections at the battery, then the converter charging circuit and the charging circuit from the truck.

Rob

[Dave and Monica]

Aren't group 24 deep cycle batteries usually installed by the dealer more than likely around 80 amp hours and therefore much lower capacity? Regardless a check-up of the charging system is a good idea.

When you say run down, do you know what the battery voltage was?

Dave

Edit: Here's a chart on % charge vs voltage.

[Cate&Rob]

I stand corrected on my amp hour assumption. Dave is correct that even the best Group 24 batteries are less than 100 amp hours. (I did a little Google searching). From the chart that Dave posted, you can see that very small changes in battery voltage correspond to large changes in state of charge. To use this reference chart, the battery must be disconnected from everything and the voltage measured directly across the battery posts.

Rob

[james quinn]

If u look in the GD owners manual it gives you a pretty good list of current draw for the various trailer components

[coopedw]

Thanks for the response guys . I will look further into the details you gave me . Anyone install a second battery ?