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Old 04-27-2018, 09:03 AM   #1
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Four or Six House batteries and inverter recommendation

Hi,

I possibly will be purchasing a 2005 Fleetwood Pace Arrow tomorrow.
The two house batteries are five years old.

I am going to take the opportunity to install either four or six batteries. Normally do not dry camp for more than 3 nights but would like to do so for longer.

The storage next to the battery bank has room for 4 batteries. Current batteries are under the steps. Not sure if the coach has an inverter but if not would like to install one.

I already have a portable 400w pure sine wave one I can either hook up to the batteries and 12 volt receptacle.

I will be changing out the lights to LED. Fridge is propane.

The coach does have 2 furnaces.

Would four batteries be sufficient or is six overkill?

I will not be installing solar but do have a 200w portable I will use. I also will be taking the Trimetric and shut from old coach.

I do not know much about whole coach inverter, looking for recommendations for one and how is it installed?

Thanks,
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Old 04-27-2018, 05:26 PM   #2
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I am trying to decide between AGM and flooded cell.
Sams club have AGM for 180$ and flooded for 85$.
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Old 04-27-2018, 06:22 PM   #3
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The coach does have two furnaces.
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Old 04-28-2018, 09:52 AM   #4
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AGM for 180 or flooded for 85 seems a no brainer to me.
Advantages AGM....
Agm's are low gassing (very low) so you can mount them INSIDE teh dwelling space. they also do not leak of spill so you can mount them on their side, upside down, on end (no THIS SIDE UP sticker)
LIFELINE Agms (Specific to that brand) can be charged much faster than most lead acid batteries..

Disadvantage of AGM's.. I hsve yet to confirm the long life claims. in fact, the opposite I found they did nto last as long

And 2nd... THe COST

TO the subject line 4 or 6
Well 50 Percent more power is always nice. the added batteries actually give you MORE than 50 percent more run time beteen recharges, also longer recharges.. Also longer overall battery life.. Yup the slower recharge that will result (Unless you upgrade yoru converter) will make 'em last a bit longer and need water less often.

HOWEFER.. Xantrex recommends one pair GC-2 per Kilowatt (1,000 watts) of inverter. OF course this does not include lights and such. But .. I think you will like 2pair.. but If you have a place for them. Nothing wrong with 3 pair,
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Old 04-29-2018, 10:47 AM   #5
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As many as you can fit..........I am stuck with only 4 GC2's and its a bummer. I simply don't have room for any more....We typically burn through 20-25% of that capacity in an evening with some Computer/TV, and shower etc. Even with the inverter off overnight, your still pulling quite a bit of power for cell phone charging, running the control boards on the appliances etc, maybe a fan. We pull about ~3.2amps at rest in our coach, with no lights on - this includes wifi/internet.

In extreme cases (say a long rainy evening and nothing to do but watch TV or play computer games), We've been down to 55% SoC or so in the morning. About as low as you want to go.

Whole house inverters are dangerous from a battery usage perspective - they can use unbelievable amounts of power if your not careful with your lights etc. Sure makes everything a ton more comfortable though - Wouldn't go without it.
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Old 04-29-2018, 11:02 AM   #6
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There are two schools of thought on this. Some folks cannot live without more power. The rest of us use the system the way it was designed. If we need 120 VAC we use the generator. With all your appliances 12 VDC/propane why do you want a whole house inverter?

Inverter installation like that will essentially mean breaking out the circuits for the outlets, running a heavy 120 VAC feed to the Inverter then putting in a sub panel for the circuits you broke out and feeding the new panel from the Inverter. That is enough messing around to give me a reason to think about why I wanted to do that. YMMV.
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Old 04-29-2018, 12:52 PM   #7
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The rest of us use the system the way it was designed. If we need 120 VAC we use the generator.
Generator!? not all RV's have one those built in you know...
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Old 04-29-2018, 01:39 PM   #8
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I added two GC2's to my Daybreak for a total of four, two under the step and two in a vented rear bay. A 2000 watt inverter was also added and connected to the rear batteries. When we're dry camping and want the 120V outlets powered I go to my power center and turn off the converter and air conditioner breakers and then adapt my shore power cable down and plug it into the inverter. On a recent three day, two night trip to Quartzsite we had plenty of power to watch TV as desired, brew pots of coffee each morning, run the furnace to take off the morning chill and keep our coach adequately lit. When it was time to leave the batteries were down to 12.1 volts. I've recently changed all interior lights to LED's so I would expect even better performance on our next dry camping adventure in a few weeks at the beach. Coach does not have solar and I found no need to run the generator.
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Old 04-30-2018, 06:31 AM   #9
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Generator!? not all RV's have one those built in you know...
I know. I also know that if anyone plans on dry camping without a generator they better have a lot of solar, some big batteries and hang out in the southern parts of the country.
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Old 05-01-2018, 05:07 AM   #10
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Thanks all,

I am going with a different coach and it should fit 4 batteries as it had a dedicated battery bay.

It also has a generator but as its a UFO rear engine gasser its innthe front.
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Old 05-01-2018, 08:40 PM   #11
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I don't know enough about your situation to make any recommendations--people have such different habits and desires when it comes to the use of electricity as well as the ability to charge batteries--seasons, weather and lattitude factor in here as well as the effectivelness of battery chargers and charge controllers. Some are good, many of them are not.

Some sort of assessment or estimate of how much electricity you think you might use may prove helpful. You also need to consider how long you want to be off the grid running on batteries, how low you are willing to run them, as well as how you will recharge them and how long that will take. (You may find you need to stay put plugged into shore power for longer than you'd expect or would like in order to bring the batteries back up.) AGMs will recharge more quickly than flooded batteries and that may be a factor too.

Northernmark mentioned that a whole-house inverter may require a subpanel and it may. I installed a 2800 watt inverter in my 50 amp coach that powers all the AC outlets including those outside and the basement, the microwave and ceiling fan--pretty much everything AC except for the air-condtioning--and in our case no subpanel was required. (Oh, it can also power the fridge if I want but that's another matter since I have quite a bit of solar on the roof and can produce enought electricity to do so during the day.) Since 50 amp service is essentially two separate 50 amp legs (for a total of 100 amps) and since my main electrical panel has two bussbars, one for each leg, I put everything I wanted to power with the inverter on one bussbar of the main panel. Of course, an inverter has to capacity to handle that. Whole house wiring seems to me to be tricky business. I needed a lot of help to understand how all the "moving" parts fit together.

I don't have a lot of history in my rig yet, but so far, with 780 watts of solar on the roof I have had more than enough power and am full recharged before noon. You can get a lot of amps out of your 200 watt portable with good sun and a good charge controller especially if you reposition the panel every hour or two to face the sun. I would sometimes get over 50 amp hours per day out of my 120 watt portable which could deliver about 7 amps when there was demand for it and the sun was good.

I would suggest you also think about the weight you can carry. 6v golf car batteries are in the neighborhhod of 65-70#. I have 4 LifeLine AGM batteries, FWIW. My RV has a larger carrying capacity than many but I am having to find ways to eliminate weight by getting rid of some things and moving others into the truck. My batteries and solar equipment added 500# to the RV.

There are many considerations that go beyond how many batteries to get and some of them people sometimes overlook. I tried to point some of those out.

HTH.
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Old 05-01-2018, 11:08 PM   #12
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I just bought four 30 pound 100 Ah LiFEPO4 batteries to replace the pair of group 24 Interstate batteries included when I bought my Arctic Fox 22G. 120 pounds is great for 400 usable amp-hours. Battle Born Batteries are designed to fully discharge if needed without shortening battery life.

My Spartan 2200 watt low frequency inverter is heavy though. I will have 800 watts on roof top solar on my trailer and truck camper shell so I won't need to plug to a generator unless I am running air conditioning. All my camping is off the grid.
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Old 05-02-2018, 05:06 PM   #13
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4 flooded 6v batts in Series and Parallel should be fine, that’s what most diesel pushers have used for many years

you can also easily purchase an off-the-shelf Walmart(battery section)750w power inverter that uses alligator clips right to your batteries - very inexpensive - and it’ll give you some experience before u go making big changes
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Old 05-02-2018, 07:36 PM   #14
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Thanks all,

I do have a 400w Pure sine wave inverter which I use at times. The coach I just put a deposit on comes with a 600w one, I must presume its a modified sine wave.

I have not done an energy audit yet for this coach but on my older one it was about 120amp in 24 hours.
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