[Rick & Denise]

Plastic or metal?

[Rick & Denise]

Dean, this site isn’t set up to do that. Near top right of the forum page is a button that let’s you see all posts, separated by thread, since your last visit to the site. Accomplishe’s the same purpose.

[Rick & Denise]

Sadly we will be missing the rally. We have to be back home on March 23. Darn work keeps getting in the way.But our day will come to trave more, just can’t come soon enought. We have stayed at Lazy Days in the past and liked it very much. Where the rally will be is a cool place to park with all the over hanging trees. We’ll miss you by a month as we will be 1 exit up for a week starting March 3. It’ll be Strawberry Festival week. Great place to hang out and listen to country music. Rick

[Rick & Denise]

Liam

We have been here about a week but unfortunately we will be pulling out on the 15th or early on the 16th… I think we just missed you the last time you were here.

have a great visit.

Bill

[Rick & Denise]

Harry, you ole metal man, glad to hear from you. I think Jon is heading your way next year, wish we were heading west as we’ll. We made it to WY and Co this year, but that’s as far as we got.

I think you should get that steak dinner from Sid! Hi to Shirley…

[Rick & Denise]

Charles,

The easy
answer is to simply multiple your 120V AC current draw by 10 and you have a
rough equivalent for your 12VDC current draw.
For your purposes, this is likely good enough, because there are several
other factors that come into play. If
you want to be more precise then the formula is AC Volts * AC amps = watts / DC
volts = DC Amps. Here are a couple of
examples that show the DC current draw with a fully charged 12V battery and one
at full discharge. Keep in mind this is
for illustration purposes only and it’s not recommended to fully discharge a
battery. To do so significantly reduces
the number of discharge cycles the battery will support.

120 * 25 =
3000 / 12.8 = 234.4

120 * 25 =
3000 / 10.5 = 285.7

Total
battery capacity has to be factored and it’s not a simple math equation where
you divide current draw into the total capacity. A scientist by the name of Peukert determined
a batteries capacity varies by the current draw. If a battery’s capacity is rated for a 20-hour
discharge cycle, which is the standard, its capacity is reduced if the
discharge time is shortened. As an
example, if a 20-hour discharge rate equals 100% of the batteries capacity, a
discharge rate of 1 hour would only provide 45% of the capacity that was
available at the lower discharge rate of 20 hours. This is the single greatest factor in
determining the number of batteries you should have in your battery bank.

I’m not sure
what your goal is. I will say a constant
120V/25A load is significant, but it’s not the only load factor. Indictive loads are different from resistive
loads. Inductive loads have significant
start-up current. We also have many
devices that run directly off 12VDC (such as lights, water pumps, Webasto, etc),
so those loads need to be factored. You
are already aware of the inefficiency of the inverter. Although slight, it too needs to be factored.

BTW, our
coaches and those from other converters don’t have AC amp meters on the
inverter loads because they aren’t critical and provide limited
information. What is critical is
understanding your current load from your power source. So, with commercial and generator power you
should have AC amp meters on both legs of the incoming AC power. When on batteries, which is the case on
inverter power, you need to have DC amp meters.
You should have them on your Link 2000 or Xantrex basic remotes. Keep in mind you need to add the DC current
readings if you have a single battery bank supplying power to two inverters,
like we do. It would be easy enough to
add 2 AC amp meters to the inverter output, which would be beneficial to those
required to do AC power management while on inverter power or those that have
Trace inverters that are configured to supplement the incoming commercial
power.

[Rick & Denise]

Thanks to everyone for the input. I will call tomorrow and get a reservation.

I am actually hoping that the Dallas trip will not be needed, but need to be ready just in case.

[Rick & Denise]

Hard questions like yours are answered by Gil or Ben. But knowing and accepting the fact I am going to blow some smoke, here is my spin on what you describe.

First, you have to understand how your coach is set up. On my coach and I think yours, if you have input to the coach (and inverters from a 120 V power source the 120 volt loads are not drawing power from your batteries. The 120 volt input is by-passing the inverter and supplying power directly to the 120 volt devices and loads.

However your 12 or 24 volt loads are drawing power from the batteries and as long as the inverter has the 120 volt input the inverters are acting like battery chargers. The question is if your inverters are supplying enough charging current to offest the current draw from the 12 and 24 volt loads. The answer is in how your inverters have been set up for charging current.

In my coach if I turn on all the lights I draw more from the batteries than the inverter replaces. However, at some point I turn off the lights and go to bed and then the inverters have 8 hours to fully charge the house batteries.

Did that make sense? If you owned a Vantare the information I gave above would be invalid.

[Rick & Denise]

Hey Mark here is a simple rule that a friend of mine told me years ago.

6 for cocktails

4 for dinner

2 for sleeping

This makes for a happy times

Mark I have Valid slides in my coach and so far the only thing was a display screen. They are great to work with and are very patient with the customer. Even told me to cool down and have an ice tea and he would stay on the line.

[Rick & Denise]

Every now and then I have to spank him. When he wakes up I expect it will be his turn to take a shot at me.

[Rick & Denise]

Check you ground you may have lost ground to the alternator.

[Rick & Denise]

It was sold weeks ago. Unless the deal fell through.

[Rick & Denise]

Don’t have clue but on mine the microwave pulls the same amps on gen or shore power same with a/cs and everything else.

[Rick & Denise]

Me too- Thank you Alicia. I’ve also been running inside. They’ve had it pre-printed and waiting for me everytime. Super easy. Great savings!

[Rick & Denise]

It is specific to Oregon. If you do not have a Oregon commercial fuel permit number you pay the higher price. Oregon does not have sales tax so they have to make it up somewhere. I used the card in California and Texas. It works perfectly. Love not having to go inside after fueling. Thank you for this program.