Battery Load and Longevity?

[porthole]

Technically your math is correct, but that's not exactly how it works.
But, before you spend a lot of money on installing two Trojan's you should find out why two batteries in that time frame.

Either they are cheap batteries or you or you have a problem with your charging and or electrical system, or both.

No no sense throwing good money at the wrong issue.


And yes, 2 batteries in one year is excessive.

 

[BusManRG]

Technically your math is correct, but that's not exactly how it works.
But, before you spend a lot of money on installing two Trojan's you should find out why two batteries in that time frame.

Either they are cheap batteries or you or you have a problem with your charging and or electrical system, or both.

No no sense throwing good money at the wrong issue.


And yes, 2 batteries in one year is excessive.

Absolutely! We've been in touch with heartland and while it's going in to the shop for one issue they're willing to let the shop try to track down any electrical problems before the warranty expires. But we will be needing a new batteries so this is the perfect time to make sure we do things right. So what say you? Two 6v or 2 12's? And why?

 

[wdk450]

According to this expert, there is little difference in capacity between the two systems. I am guessing that you would have a lower price with the 2 -12 volt batteries due to their more common usage.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGNMenyNqwU

BTW, in my opinion, the biggest thing you can do to affect battery longevity is to have a multi-stage intelligent charger with a daily desulphation cycle like the Progessive Dynamics 9200 series charger/converters. http://www.progressivedyn.com/prod_details/charge_wizard.html

 

[BusManRG]

According to this expert, there is little difference in capacity between the two systems. I am guessing that you would have a lower price with the 2 -12 volt batteries due to their more common usage.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGNMenyNqwU

BTW, in my opinion, the biggest thing you can do to affect battery longevity is to have a multi-stage intelligent charger with a daily desulphation cycle like the Progessive Dynamics 9200 series charger/converters. http://www.progressivedyn.com/prod_details/charge_wizard.html

Well after watching the above videos and quite a few others, I feel up to speed on six and 12 V systems. Thank you for the links. Now that we know which batteries we want, we need to take a look at the converter. So now to determine which converter is in our 2017 Big Horn? Do we have a Progressive Dynamics converter? And if so which model? Won't be able to get to the trailer or the owners manual's until this weekend. We may be able to just add the charging wizard adapter if we have the 9100 model. I'm pretty sure we don't have the 9200 model or we wouldn't be having the issues we have. Of course we may not even have a progressive dynamics unit and then I guess I'll start shopping for one Lol.

 

[Desertsky]

Actually, you would hook them up in parallel and still have 12v but with twice the capacity. Also, if you are trying to run appliances through an inverter with only one or two batteries, that is your problem. Here is the math simplified. If you have 12v at 100ah rating, that is about equal to 120v a 10ah rating. Most inverters run at somewhere around 90% efficient, that means from the batteries, through the inverter, you would end up with about 9ah available. Since you can't get ALL of the available power out of the battery without damaging it, assume you can get about 80% of the available power before the inverter shuts off. Now you are left with 7.2ah of power available. What does that mean? That means you can run something that draws 864 watts for one hour before the battery is "dead". A small microwave for example. A hair dryer for 1/2 hour. Your AC for 15 minutes! Many self-contained motor homes can have 10-12 batteries in them.

The solution is to add more batteries. It doesn't matter if they are 6v or 12v because the power density is usually about the same.

Check the low voltage shut off point for the inverter. If it is set too low, you can be damaging the batteries using it too long before recharges.