I spent last weekend doing some upgrades to the house electrical system. Added another house battery and upgraded the fuses and some wiring.

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Comment by paul nevitt on October 20, 2014 at 4:43pm

Thanks John for the info. I will have to look into the proper charging for these AGM's. I have been running an AGM in my hotrod for 5 years now without any problem but never took the charging into consideration. The deep cycle is a different battery so thank you for pointing out the charging I will look into that. As far as power consumption we are on the same page, only the water pump and the bathroom fan in the day little light at night. In spring I had upgraded the lighting exterior and interior to LED so our power usage even if we use all the interior light is still very low.

Comment by John "T" Nordhoff on October 20, 2014 at 4:27pm

  Paul, Yep those AGM's can pack a punch. I've read that they are more sensitive to proper charging then a conventional flooded lead acid, so you might take a look at your Converter/Charger and see if it has a setting for AGM versus lead acid as mine did?? You don't wanna shorten the life of an expensive AGM battery !!! When I looked at deep cycle cost versus life cycles and life expectancy, I went with conventional flooded lead acid, but that's all a matter of ones free choice as its their money lol  I went with a brand OTHER THEN Trojan, but the next time I think I will go with the Trojan RE series deep cycle (4) batteries.

 Based on a ton of dry camping experience, for the wife and I we get by just fine with 200 watts of rooftop solar and an MPPT Solar Charge Controller. Even when its been cold and cloudy or rainy (ie low solar energy available) we still collect more energy in the day then we use up at night, so we are basically self sustained indefinitely. However, that's greatly improved by my conversion to LED lighting. During the day there's little light useage, maybe a bit of water pump or a vent fan use, then at night a few lights, some water pump use, and the (forced air) furnace which is one of the bigger energy users.

Despite all that energy stuff, the limiting factor for dry camping is running out of fresh water (NOT electricity). I added extra water tanks for a total of 110 gallons so we can get by over a week (7 to 9 days)  before we need to take on water, but by then we need to dump anyway lol. Hey a week is long enough in one place anyway.

 Safe travels, nice chattin with ya

 John T 

Comment by paul nevitt on October 20, 2014 at 3:52pm

Well my budget didn't allow for the same age. Both the house are the same size brand and amp rating. I am using an AGM deep cycle not built for starting and they cost an arm and a leg. Not sure if the golf cart has the same style battery but is was made as a house battery not a starting battery. Hopefully we will get good life out of this batteries seeing as they cost a lot. I replaced the one battery we had on board in Feb and just added the newest one last weekend, The new battery was made in June and the older one in built in Feb so not a huge age difference.

 It was nice being on the Cape this weekend in the cold weather (about 35 at night) and not having to worry about the house battery/batteries running low. Over the winter/spring I plan on installing 200W of solar to help with the batteries charge. Well that is the plan but that is only one of a list of many upgrades planed. LOL 

Comment by John "T" Nordhoff on October 20, 2014 at 2:29pm

  Ya gotta love extra house battery energy storage. With years of dry camping experience in all sorts of RV's, I found if its a real cold night and the furnace is having to run often and you only have a single house battery that may not be in ideal charge/condition, YOU MIGHT WAKE UP COLDDDDDDDDDDDD LOL

 Anytime you have more then one battery, they should be equally matched in age, type, brand, size, rating etc., so the weak one isn't feeding off the strong.

 As myself and others have often noted on here, for RV use true Deep Cycle golf cart type batteries are preferred over Quasi (so called) Deep Cycle RV/Marine Batteries. REGARDLESS more batteries still = more stored energy.

 Best wishes

 John T

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