Boondocking First Time questions

[MarvinG]

Originally Posted by Fleetwood13

Okay I will check the fuse in the house battery compartment.

Just to confirm when I run the generator doesn’t it charge the house batteries?

Yes, assuming all works as it should

[mak1]

water would be your biggest question when boondocking.

[dtucker300]

Originally Posted by Fleetwood13

Okay I will check the fuse in the house battery compartment.

Just to confirm when I run the generator doesn’t it charge the house batteries?

Yes, it should.

How old are your batteries? Deep Cycle Marine and RV House batteries start to lose reserve capacity after two or three years. Make sure your battery cells are full. Use a battery tester to make sure you are getting full power from your battery (A simple voltmeter can do this between 12.6 and 13.2 volts for a 12-volt battery. When I need new house batteries I replace both even if one battery is still good.

Most generators will not run if the fuel level is below 1/4 tank but I have found it better to have at least a half tank of gas. Also, use a gas preservative like Sta-Bil (Less than $10 for 32oz. at Walmart, and it will treat 80 gallons of fuel) in your tank so that as the gas gets old it will not gum up your generator.

Here is something you might consider for your fridge to get it cold fast. If you have room, freeze several bottles of water the day before leaving and put them in the RV fridge when you stock it. I also get cold packs with medication mailed to me. These blue packs stay cold for a long time so I freeze them and put some interspersed throughout the fridge with all the food when I stock it. Finally, check the gasket seals around the door for leaks and make sure the latch clicks when closing your door. Kids are notorious for not shut the door completely.

[amosnandy]

Originally Posted by cep321

Your propane will last a long time running the refrigerator, but the refrigerator also used 12v so keep and eye on that. You will need to start the RV motor every few days or get solar.

A week is the longest I have run my fridge on propane, no shore power, just battery 12v. I do have 3 120ah 12v flooded deep cycle batteries. The fridge was the only thing running. When I plugged in and started charging, the charger went into bulk mode, charged at 14.6v for about an hour, then came back down to 13.7 and within 3 hours they were back at 100%. Charging profile is 14.6v for boost and bulk charge, with maintain at 13.7. So they were no where near dead.

Side note. Even if you are hooked to shore power, if your charger/maintainer fails the refrigerator will shut down if the 12v battery bank gets to low.

[oatmeal]

Originally Posted by tap4154

I DO consider a half gallon (or less) of propane a day to be efficient, and just "sipping".

That's good to know, and illustrates why it's important to use actual numbers.

Originally Posted by tap4154

By the way, I'm not sure where you're getting your numbers on how much electricity your Norcold uses, I I've seen lower numbers closer to 5 kilowatt hours. However the only time I use electricity for my Dometic is when I'm plugged into park power, and I frankly don't care how much electricity it's using then.

My Norcold has spent a lot of time on the Kill-a-Watt in the 18 years I've been fulltiming, because I'm a fan of data.

Some of my testing was because I was curious about how it would perform in varying circumstances. When it was really hot outside and not cooling down a lot at night, I could tell from the Kill-a-Watt that it was indeed running 24/7--the usage on the Kill-a-Watt comported with the theoretical maximum usage if it never cycled off (somewhere in the 10 kwh/day range (it has 450 watts of heaters)).

In much cooler weather where the highs were like in the 40s, it used a little less than "normal," but not a whole lot less, and certainly not in proportion to the difference between what it uses when it's 100 degrees outside and what it uses when it's more temperate. I found that enlightening.