A little discouraged

Originally posted by Jazz trumpet Why are two 6 volt batteries better and preferred than one or two 12 volts?  Sorry if I seem naive, Newbie here.

The short answer is, more amp hours.  I'm no expert in things electrical, so perhaps others will chime in to give a more detailed, technical answer, but my understanding is 6 volt batteries are true "deep cycle," having much thicker and heavier lead plates inside, etc.  Wiring two of them together in series produces 12 volts.

The downside with going that route is that 6 volt batteries are pretty expensive and heavy.  Most folks don't need the extra amp hours, since they don't camp without electric hookups that often or for that long.  For many, the single 12 volt (typically a group 24) battery that generally comes with R-pods is sufficient.

Since we do a bit more dry camping than many, but not typically for more than three nights in a row, I went with adding a second 12 volt (wired in parallel), doubling the amp hours of a single 12 volt, but not getting as many amp hours as two 6 volts.  It was a much cheaper route, since I only had to purchase one 12 volt (plus another battery box and a couple of cables to wire the batteries together).