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12V or 120V Water Heater
Dry camping at Philadelphia Folk Festival for 4 days. We can run the generator during the day but must be off at night. When the generator is running should I be on 12V Water Heater, 120V or both?
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9 Replies
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Don’t you have the Webasto in there? The Webasto will give you hot water on 12v and a little diesel you shouldn’t need to run gen all the time just to keep batteries up
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120v Jimmy, thats your electric water heaters.
Running your gen and 12v webasto at same time will smoke the people out.
Later
bv
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It’s hot and muggy and sweaty here. Need to run air conditioners. Getting old like Jon plus wife likes it freezing. Got Gen-Turi with extra height for generator exhaust to the sky.
Was under impression from seminars that we shouldn’t rely on inverters for A/C so loading up genny like Jon preaches.
Only Prevost here. They didn’t know what to do with me so I’m in my own spot away from crowd. Plus I’m right near ice truck which will be running generator all night.
So, with genny water heater on 120V or just 12V?
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On my Marathon – 10 yrs older than yours – as long as the 110v breaker in interior AC panel labeled “water heater” is on, water heaters will be on anytime on shorepower or generator.
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There seems to be no reason to run 12V heat when you have power, gen or campground.
If your Webasto is like mine, anytime it is on, it keeps the hot water heater, engine, and all the interior heat exchangers up to temperature. The interior heat exchanger fans won’t be on but the heat is there. That also means that the circulating pumps will be running as needed, further drawing down your 12 volt power.
If you have power, gen or shore power, your 110V hot water heaters are the way to go.
Again, if your system is similar to mine…
If you only take showers during the day when the generator is running, hot water will not be a problem.
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Different perspective…This is how we do it.
If not on shore power or not running generator over night…We turn off the 110V water heater. No need to use batteries/inverter to heat water when nobody is using it.
If we think we will need/want hot water as soon as we wake up, we turn on the 12V water heater/webasto and let it cycle all night, if the rules allow it.
If we think we will need/want hot water maybe 30-45 minutes after we wake up we will start the 12V water heater/webasto when we first get up. The webasto will heat the water faster than the 110V elements. Again, if the rules allow you to run the 12v heater/webasto.
If we think we can wait a 11/2 to 2 hours for hot water we will start the 110V water heater after we start the generator.
If not in a cold weather situation, the water heaters retain a good deal of their heat over night. Meaning your not really starting off trying to heat really cold water after an over night without heating the water.
That’s just how we do it, your mileage may vary!
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My 96 Marathon the water heaters do not flow thru the inverters. Shore power or generator only. Same for Cruisairs and 110v toekick baseboard heaters.
The water heaters are heated by engine coolant while running via Webasto loop.
Newer Marathons or those without OTR A/C may be configured differently.
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Jimmy, quit picking on me.
Just so there is no confusion my posture on running A/C units through inverters came from the folks at Inverter Service who indicated the early three transformer inverters were robust and easily handled the starting current of A/Cs.
Those units were rated at around 4000 watts, but easily handled the 39 or 40 amp current draw on start up of A/Cs. If my memory is correct they stated those early inverters (which were modified sine wave) easily could handle surges of 9000 watts.
The newer inverters whose output was the same 4000 watts were not as stout and their life would be extended if people made more use of the generators which are typicaly underutilized.
I have OTR so running an A/C through an inverter is not necessary on my current coach, but it is set up so I could do that if I wanted. If my OTR quit I would not only start my generator I would also run every A/C unit I have plus whatever other electric devices I could run so I was loading the generator which is a good thing for all of us to do to keep it healthy.
I seriously doubt if we could measure the impact on fuel consumption using inverters or the generator.
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Got it. As usual, phone call from Bernie set me straight.
Time to boogie.
later
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