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Old 08-23-2013, 06:10 PM   #1
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Next up a battery.

T9he battery was missing when i bought my scamp. Apparently the tv battery supplies the circuit in that case and I didn't discover it until I got home, when I went looking. Anyway I am waffling about whether to go the extra mile with dual 6v golf cart batteries.one concern i have is that the wires feeding the battery from inside the trailer are pretty darned small. They look like perhaps 12 gauge and possibly even 14 gauge. I would have expected 8 gauge or better. Not sure what to make of that. I do know that the charger module is under the seat back by the table at the rear of the trailer.

My other concern is whether the stock charger module will handle a pair of 230 amp hour golf cart batteries. In fact can they even be charged with such wimpy cables?
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Old 08-23-2013, 06:12 PM   #2
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Are you sure you need that much battery capacity? If you use LED lights, a single 100 amp hour battery may be adequate. How about one battery and a solar panel?
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Old 08-23-2013, 06:31 PM   #3
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Tom I'm not sure I need that much however if I want to do it now would be the time since I don't have any battery that I need to match.

I am a heavy computer user and in fact I just purchased a 30 inch TV to use as a monitor. It is an LED TV and fairly low power requirements but still. I expect to run all of that on occasion off of an inverter. Plus my laptop, phones, fridge.

At the moment I am a Camp Host with free electricity but solar is definitely in my future.:-)
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Old 08-23-2013, 06:36 PM   #4
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In that case, you may want to appropriately size the wires and maybe get a better converter. Solar is no longer expensive - I'd consider doing it all at one. Also consider the effect of the weight of those batteries on your trailer balance.
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Old 08-23-2013, 06:39 PM   #5
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Everything but the fridge draws very little power. An RV firdge on batteries is a true current hog, when boondocking we use propane for the fridge.

Presently we have a Type 24 battery and it is more than adequate to run our TV, Sat receiver, phones and computers. We charge from an 80 watt solar panel, tow vehicle or converter depending on the camping, weather, driving situation.
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Old 08-23-2013, 07:17 PM   #6
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Tom,

Individually the batteries are around the same weight as the group 24 12v. Of course there are two of them.

Duracell® Golf Car Battery - Group Size EGC2 - Sam's Club

RV.Net Open Roads Forum: Sams Club GC2 vs EGC2 Golf Car Battery

The point of 6v is that the plate size is radically thicker and thus take true deep discharge better. But ya gotta have two!

So there will be perhaps 60 lbs more on the tongue, which is a sizable difference given the trailer. Really though the bigger issue is the electrical rework required to effectively use them. Converters CLOSE to the battery, probably under the front seat. HUGE (and short) cables to minimize drop. And enough solar capacity to keep them charged if boon docking.

BTW boon docking to me includes spending the night in the church parking lot with no utilities, or taking my kids up on the blue ridge parkway to any of the tiny campgrounds.

Anyway, things I need to consider.
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Old 08-23-2013, 07:26 PM   #7
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Norm,

I haven't given up on working remote for my company, which involves sitting in one spot remoting in for hours at a time. I can see a somewhat different electrical requirement from perhaps most full timers, though what I do is not uncommon either. I was talking to someone the other day who FTs and the wife remotes in every day from the road.

And yes, I could choose to use full service campgrounds but I truly enjoy the peace and quite of less busy places. ATM I am a camp host in a tent loop. As it happens I have electricity and water but I could see intentionally selecting a tent loop on the road just because they tend to be less populated. But they don't have electricity, or this one doesn't anyway - other than the camp host spot. And of course, neither does the WalMart parking lot.
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Old 08-23-2013, 08:36 PM   #8
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JWC,
When we prepared our Scamp for the road we located the convertor and 1200 watt inverter under the couch providing a short run to the battery to and from the inverter and converter. We use a heavy set of cables that came with the inverter to run to the battery and just have short jumpers to the inverter from the converter. The solar panels are tied to the output of the inverter and go thru the heavy cables of the inverter to the battery, Thus the inverter's supply cables from the battery, though rarely used by.the Inverter, serve duty for the solar panels and converter.

We installed the converter and inverter under the end of the couch that is hard to get to and hence not convenient storage space though we store some rarely needed things there as well.

Our solar controller is located right above this end of the couch in an over the couch cabinet, again providing a relatively short path to the Inverter's output.

We have over the years met number of people who remote in from the road. The electrical load for remoting is actually relatively light. We never shut off our Internet connection and if we were working we could be connected all the time. Actually it is very rare that we don't have a Verizon data connection.

In reality we have hardly ever run the 1200 watt Inverter. What we have done is locate a few 12 volt outlets arounf the trailer. We sometimes use the 12 volt outlets for 100 watt cigarette lighter inverters and use them to run the TV or Sat dish or any other light 110 VAC device.

We also carry one of the cigarette lighter Inverters in the car for charging the computer when driving or when parked in front of wireless facilitity to again power the computer. In general when driving we will put our phone on a charger.

Though our group 24 has been adequate, it came with the trailer, we plan to go larger on replacement. We will probably get a 12 volt Trojan because we have had such good experiences with our Trojan 105. They are expensive but they were 14 years old when we sold our motorhome and had been fully discharged on two occasions recovered beautifully.
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Old 08-24-2013, 02:02 PM   #9
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Golf cart batteries have outsized lead plates and excess battery water capacity so they can handle the high demand of running an electric motor that propells the golf cart and its occupants through the grass and up the hills of a golf course.

All that extra lead and water adds weight and cost you probably don't need unless you motorize your trailer and cruise arounf the trailer park in it. For more traditional purposes a standard deep-cycle Marine battery sized to meet your daily energy consumption is all you need.

If you're going to move to solar, you might consider going with a maintainance-free AGM battery, which runs more efficiently. If you do go that route, you should consider replacing your trailer's Converter/Charger with a BatteryMinder battery charger or (better yet) putting a Pulse Tech 12v on-board desulfination in your battery box.
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Old 08-24-2013, 03:53 PM   #10
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Originally Posted by jwcolby54 View Post
The point of 6v is that the plate size is radically thicker and thus take true deep discharge better.
The point of a commercial-grade deep-cycle battery - of any voltage - is that the construction (including plate thickness) is suitable for heavy duty use. Other voltages (including 12V) of battery in the same model have the same construction as the 6V.

I was amused to note when I found specs for three common brands of golf car that all came with 8 volt batteries (six of them for 48V), not 6 volt (of which one would use eight).
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Old 08-24-2013, 08:30 PM   #11
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What are the agm options outside of optima and exide? The Trojan batteries sound promising.
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Old 08-25-2013, 02:08 AM   #12
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Interstate, Universal, Trojan, Exide, Yusa . . . Take your pick. Most of the major manufacturers that make traditional flooded batteries also make AGM batteries.
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Old 08-25-2013, 02:32 AM   #13
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I probably should have explained better, I was wondering what people had luck with. I won't buy exide or optima.
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Old 08-25-2013, 04:59 AM   #14
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I have a Lifeline.
Lifeline Batteries - Marine & RV Deep Cycle AGM Batteries
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Old 08-25-2013, 06:56 AM   #15
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I probably should have explained better, I was wondering what people had luck with. I won't buy exide or optima.
Forgive my ignorance, but what's the scoop on Optima, at least in your opinion? Too expensive for what you actually get? Or is there some other issue?
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Old 08-25-2013, 02:33 PM   #16
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I used to run optima red tops in all my vehicles. They ran for years. When I started replacing them, the new red tops failed repeatedly.
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Old 08-25-2013, 02:43 PM   #17
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Like all batteries, the Optima has a set of trade-offs. For starters, their spiral-wound, cylindrical design, which hails from the very first commercial AGM battery design, makes them highly vibration and drop resistant as well as very slightly more efficient when accepting a charge.

The downside of the cylindrical design for us RV owners, on the other hand, are many. Their cylindrical design leaves lots of unused space between the cylinders that square cell battery designs use to for additional capacity. A spiral-cell AGM battery's capacity is about a third, 50Ah (Amp-hours) capacity, compared to a box-shape design that packs 75-80Ah into the same footprint.

Flipping back to advantages for a moment, AGM batteries weigh slightly less per Ah than traditional flooded cells do, and the the amount of weight per Ah is pretty comparable between Optima and other AGM batteries. So, if you are trying to save weight and all you need is a 50Ah battery, the Optima might be your best bet.

Another difference is Optima brand doesn't make a pure deep-cycle design. All their "RV/Marine" designs are hybrids that can be used as a marine starter battery and deep cycle.

Finally, there's the name. The Optima name tag seems to boost prices by a third or so per Ah.

Another difference -- I won't call it an advantage or disadvantage -- is that Optima has been using the same basic battery design for 25 years, and a few of those Optimas are still in serviceable condition. With a desulphination float charger you can expect to get 10 or more years out of a quality AGM battery, Optima or otherwise, as long as you don't bust its charge down to flat nothing every year or overcharge it frequently.

Overcharging is, however, a great way to kill an AGM battery. Unlike other designs, there's not a lot of electrolyte (aka water) in an AGM battery, so it's easy to "boil" the water off into oxygen and hydrogen gas by overcharging them. To compensate for this, AGMs have a reaction chamber that re-combines any hydrogen and oxygen that boil off back into water, but it's a slow process that can't keep up if you overcharge the battery often.

I have an Optima in my Scamp 5er. It's been a good performer, but I've learned that the Scamp's converter has a tendency to overcharge batteries and is not good for my battery life. So, most of the time, I don't even turn it on and depend on either on our tow vehicle or solar cells to charge the battery when we're out on the road. When the trailer is in storage I use a small, smart desulphination trickle charger (a BatteryMinder) to maintain my battery.

Longer term, I'm thinking of removing the converter all together and replacing it with a smart 6 or 10 amp charger with a desulphination feature, and will do exactly that with the Surfside project trailer we're working on. (Our Surfside is currently hollowed out and sitting in our garage, devoid of windows, doors, cabinetry, or appliances and detached from its frame. It does have a new floor . . . )
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Old 08-25-2013, 03:01 PM   #18
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Their cylindrical design leaves lots of unused space between the cylinders that square cell battery designs use to for additional capacity. A spiral-cell AGM battery's capacity is about a third, 50Ah (Amp-hours) capacity, compared to a box-shape design that packs 75-80Ah into the same footprint.
I assume that was supposed to be one-third less capacity, not one third of the capacity.

The area of a circle is pi/4 or 79% of the area of a square, and fitting industry-standard package sizes further compromises spiral cell packing efficiency.
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Old 08-26-2013, 07:47 PM   #19
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Thank you, Brian. Yes, the Optima has about a third less capacity that a square-cell battery with the same footprint.
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Old 08-27-2013, 06:31 AM   #20
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Why would any one buy a battery with 1/3rd less capacity?
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