Thread: 12 Volt in the Camper Trailer

PM drivesafe he's the man your after

Thanks Hiline.

Doug, are you talking about charging while you are driving or while you are camped.

There are number of way to achieve both so let me know what you want to set up for and I’ll try and help you.

Cheers.

Hi Drivesafe
I would like to charge the battery while driving I thought while camping I could use a solar panel. We have not considered a generator because of the noise factor and other campers.
Regards
Doug

Hi Doug, I meant to ask you what type and size of batteries you are using or going to use.

Plus, what sort of driving times are you expecting to do when you go away.

Nosy I know, but it all helps.

I’ve already started a reply and it’s going to be a bit lengthy but it will give you some ideas, I hope.

Cheers.

Hi Drivesafe
The battery in the rear of the Disco is an AC Delco hm27mf 105ah 550 cca would most likely fit something similar in the camper as this is the battery i originally had in the camper.
Driving times when we are away are vary but we like to get somewhere and camp for a couple of days then move on rarely drive more than 6-8 hrs a day When camped we tend to explore the sites around for 2-3 hrs a day. But this will not charge the camper battery
Regards
Doug

Hi Doug, if you have a multi stage battery charger, about 4 amp size would best suite and an inverter, the following info is a suggestion and a generalisation of what you can do to get all your batteries charged to a usable level.

While not in use, try to make sure Camper Trailer ( CT ) battery is kept fully charged. This will help to get the maximum life out of your battery.

When you head off on your trips, if the battery in the rear of the vehicle is permanently fitted then it to will either fully charged or that close that the drive will top it and the CT battery up the full charged so your first night’s power will be covered.

The next day, once you have arrived back at the camp site, hook up your inverter to the rear battery and run a 240 vac extension cord to the battery charger in the CT and leave it overnight.

This is just a guesstimate but you will draw off between 30% and 60% of your rear battery’s stored capacity, depending on how much charging is needed to get the CT battery fully charged.

In a worst case scenario, if you CT battery is at 60% capacity when you hook up the battery charger at night then to replace the 40% used, you will probably draw up to 60% off the rear battery.

My guess though is that you are probably not likely to use more than 20% of the CT battery’s stored capacity because for about 12 hours, while the CT battery is being charged, any power being used by your fridge is going to be replace as it’s being used.

So when you go off driving in the morning, your CT battery is going to be fully charged but you now have to charge your rear battery and depending on how much stored capacity was used overnight will govern how long you need to drive.

I don’t expect you to do a study of your batteries every night and morning but just take the whether into consideration, if it’s hot and your using your fridge a lot, you will need to do a few bit of charging of the rear battery and it would and again just a rough estimate, about 3 to 4 hours driving is needed to get the battery from 40% to 80% and it would take another 3 to 4 hours to get the rear battery to near 100% charge.

But you don’t need to get this battery fully charged to be able to use it to fully charge your CT battery as long as you get the bulk of the charge back into the rear battery and means up to about 80%.

Cheers and hope this is of some help and by the way, if was setting up to camp like you are planning to, the above set up is how I would do it as it is the cheapest and best way to keep the CT battery charged.

Solar panels will work but as you are planning on driving for a few hours each will give you more stored capacity than toe 65 to 80 watt solar panes could provide on the other hand, if you were planning to stop in one location and not do any driving for a week or so, I would then go with a couple of solar panels.

Hi All
Thanks for the info drivesafe will put it to good use. To charge the camper while on the road would it work to put a battery controller like the sc40 on the second battery.
Regards
Doug

Hi again Doug, as you already had an isolator, I didn’t push mine.

But if you are considering an SC40, I would recommend you remove the BI-120 and fit an SC80.

The SC80 would not only look after both of your auxiliary batteries while protecting the cranking battery, but it would also allow you to use the main cranking battery to supply some of the power while you are running the inverter.

This has a number of advantages.

First off, it would mean that the rear battery would not be discharged to as low a state.

Second, as the rear battery would not be as low when you go on your daily drives, it would therefore have a better charge in it when you get back to the camp site after the drive.

Third, the added power from the main cranking battery means that you will be able to go even longer before you actually have to charge the two batteries up, so if you decide not to go for your daily drive for a few days, you will still have heaps of power available

By the way, it takes the same amount of time to charge two batteries as it takes to charge one, so you will charge both the rear battery and the main cranking battery at the same time.

One last suggestion. I take it you will be connecting the disco’s battery power to your CT battery via an Anderson plug. If you go with the SC80, you could put an Anderson plug on your inverter and when you get back to your campsite after your drive, simply plug the inverter in the the Anderson plug on the back of the disco.

Doing it this way means that you draw power from both the rear battery and the cranking battery and if the power is left on for a few days, when the SC80 isolates the batteries, it will at the same time disconnect the inverter so the both vehicle batteries are protected from over discharging.


Cheers.