Date: Sun, 3 May 1998 20:56:56 -1000
Reply-To: Brenda Zendzian <brendaz@GTE.NET>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <Vanagon@vanagon.com>
From: Brenda Zendzian <brendaz@GTE.NET>
Subject: Re: Aux Battery: Life span of charged battery
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
Ok, some battery basics. I am not an expert, but these are some of the
things that I have learned while converting my van to a camper. I have 4
batteries in my van in 2 banks. one bank is the stock batteries under the
driver and passanger seat. and the other batteries are 6 volt 180 amp hour
sealed jell cell deep cycle batteries seperated from the starting bank by a
relay. One thing to make sure of when setting up batteries is to make sure
that all batteries in the same bank are of the same type, ah rating,
condition, etc. If they are not the same, the weaker battery may draw power
from the stronger battery. I am not too sure what the ah draw from the
westy refrigerators is, so I cannot determine how long your batteries shoud
last. But my refrigerator draws 8 amps, which is high because it is not a
12 volt, it is a 110 v ac powered by an inverter. Since my aux bank has 180
amp hours, they should last about 22 hours if the refrigerator runs non
stop, but it only runs about 40% of the time making the battery need almost
2 1/2 days before recharging. Now that is if I don't use the tv, vcr or
radio. By guessing from your information you have the wheelchair battery
and your aux battery connected together so you can get more amps from them,
if I am correct, then this is a bad thing as I have already mentioned
earlier. The batteries that I have are not cheap, about $200 ea. and you
need 2 of them, but they are well worth the price. You can get cheaper ones
with flooded cell batteries, but they do not last as long. I hope this
helps.
Pete
peterz@gte.net
83.5 Vanagon
2.
>Last fall I installed a deep cycle 32amp/hr wheelchair battery as an
>auaillary for my '84 westy. I have it wired through the relay under the
>driver's seat. Everything in the sink/stove/fridge area will run off this
>aux battery while camping, etc. I understood that if you ran the fridge
>off the aux, you would get a max of 3hrs out of the battery.So, instead of
>using the fridge i used an Igloo plug-in cooler which I plugged into an
>accessory outlet I have wired in off the aux batt. This
>also killed the battery within 3hrs. Should this have died this quickly? I
>would think the cooler would draw much less power than the fridge would. I
>mean, this is the same type of battery that goes into a wheelchair and
>those can go for a whole day. Both of my batteries charge off the stock
>alternator with no modifications made except tapping into the existing
>relay under the driver's seat.
>
> I think I'll try to fix the propane on the
>fridge.
>
>-steve-
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