Community Forums

mikev63 · 04-02-2014, 11:54 AM

We just purchased our "new to us" Class C MH (Itasca Sundancer)
This winter we have a trip planned for two weeks in South Florida. The CG does not have any hookups and you may only run your generator during certain daytime hours. With all that said, we would like to know in "your" experience can we run a 12VDC or 120VAC Fan (average size 20") for 10 to 12 hours off the house battery? It is likely that we would also run a few LED lights for a couple hours at night as well. In the morning I assume we would run the generator to recharge the batteries. There are two Batteries under the steps , I'm not sure of their size.

Tony Lee · 04-02-2014, 12:08 PM

Hard to be specific because those batteries may be on their last legs and have little available capacity. Also depends on what charging setup you have. Some rigs have charging from the engine alternator but that is often not good enough to get the batteries more than 3/4 charged after a long drive. Some rigs have fixed voltage converters rather than decent chargers so that also may limit how much charge you can get back in by running the generator for a couple of hours.

Best bet is to sort it all out before you leave home. Run the generator for two hours and then switch the fans and lights on and monitor the battery voltage using a digital multimeter over the next 12 hours. Then repeat the process by running the generator for another 2 hours and then fans and lights.

This will give you a very good idea of what to expect and whether your system can cope and how many hours a day you need to run the generator bearing in mind that the less hours you run the generator, the more friendly your neighbours will be.

Running a 12V fan might be slightly kinder to the batteries because usual inverters drag from 1 to 2 amps when they are sitting there doing nothing but again, any comparison depends on the exact types of fans you use.

dons2346 · 04-04-2014, 09:46 PM

Inverters will draw 10 amps to make 1 amp of 12VAC. It make no sense to use 120VAC fans. You should be able to make it overnight with a 12VDC fan.

The number of batteries means nothing unless you know the amp/hour rating of them.