Hello R-Pod owners,

We just picked up our 2015 R-Pod 177 Monday. We drove from Harrisburg PA to Pittsburgh PA, Spent an hour or so transferring ownership, then, hauled it back to Harrisburg. What a long day. almost 500 mile round trip. We are very happy with it so far. I am not familiar with the systems yet. It is still winterized. The 2 year old battery would not charge past 4.7 volts using my 2 amp charger. The charger says "Check the battery". We are probably going to buy the cheap Autozone 12 volt marine battery for now. Their website specs show Cold Cranking Amps (CCA): 800, Cranking Amps (CA): 1000, Reserve Capacity (min): 180 min at 25 Amps. Does anyone happen to know how long the furnace can run and how much gas it would use? I was hoping to stay out at least a night or two. Any advice on how to stay off grid for three nights? If you are only supposed to let the battery power drop no more than 50%, how will I know when to cut the battery off? I am new to this and we are starting to learn. Any advice on anything R-pod or camping is welcome.

My own take -  With no electricity, treat your r-pod this time of year as a big tent, the weather looks like it is moderating out east for the next 10 days or so. Blankets or sleeping bags for the nite, the heater is great but you won't really need it. Head lamps work really good to minimize battery use, even for reading at nite. With a full battery, I have no trouble with 3 nights, but I am very careful with electricity use and don't ever use the tv. Also, "Deep cycle" batteries are much more forgiving in recovering from low charges than car batteries.

If you have 'shore power" (an electric hook up) things really get easy but it sounds like you are boondocking. I am sure you'll enjoy your trip.

Next in order of preference will be a combination starting/deep cycle, which are much more common at auto parts stores and big box stores. It might have a CCA rating or MCA rating but it SHOULD have an amp hour (ah) rating.

It's this ah rating that tells you it's rated for deep cycle use. Typical ah numbers for a 'group 24' battery wil be in the 80 to 100 ah range. 

Expect to pay around $80-$120 or so for a decent group 24 deep cycle battery.

Separate from that, pack some good jumper cables and you can boost your battery from your tow vehicle with an hour of idling.

Thanks podwerkz, That is a great help. I see the difference now. The deep cycle is 10 bucks cheaper too $

If you have two of them, they will have twice the capacity. Just as if you had two 12 volt batteries. 

HOWEVER... the 6V GC (AKA "Golf Cart") batteries will be less expensive than the equivalent capacity 12V battery. Also, the 6V GC batteries come in slightly larger sizes (like 240 amp-hour).

But, its always best to wire batteries in series not parallel. Why? Because if you wire them in series the same current is alwas flowing through both so they are guaranteed to alwyaybe charged and discharged identically. In parallel, one battery (the one with lower internal resistance) will always be cycling more than the other. No two batteries are exactly the same due to manufacturing varaiation, so this will happen.

I hear a lot about using golf cart batteries. An old timer at the nursing home told me he used 2 6 volt batteries. The old timers usually know best I think. He also told me to cook ground hog in a pressure cooker. I'll have to try both.

Thanks again. I put it on my amazon list of things to buy.

Is there any concern about having 142 pounds of battery up front? I am looking at interstate bateries at 71 pounds each.

https://www.interstatebatteries.com/products/2400utl?productLine=golf-car&subcategoryKey=&ignorecategoryid=true

Some tow vehicles deliver more amps to the Bargman than others.  Some will deliver enough to charge the Pod battery, even if you have the fridge on 12v.  Many won't.  You could end up at your destination with hot food and a dead trailer battery.  This is one reason a lot of people travel with the fridge on propane.

TT, stepping back now

Originally posted by GlueGuy So it behooves you to know if and how much current your particular tow vehicle can provide to the trailer. Ours works fine, others have reported varying degrees of success.

Can I find that out with the battery off?

 There should be a circuit breaker or fuse installed in the trailer connector charging circuit somewhere near the two vehicle battery, that would tell you the max charge current you could potentially get. Those are usually around 30 amps, you will always get less than that. The fridge on 12V takes about 11A so you can see that it is a very significant load. 

If you wanted to route separate heavy cabling to the trailer battery from the tow vehicle (when I say heavy I'm taking about maybe 2/0 conductors) then yes the larger alt could improve things.  But you are likely to find you're just fine with what you already have. 

That's a relief. I believe I am going to go with 2 golf cart batteries. 6 volt wired in series. I would like to be able to boondock for 1 or 2 nights. It would be just my wife and myself. Probably just in the heat of summer for my wife. We will see. Our first trip is going to be at French Creek State Park in PA. Full hook ups.  We will drive from there an back to Philly to see the Cherry blossoms. I still haven't run any of the systems yet. I'll have to learn how to do that.

I use dual 6V batteries and have since we bought out RPod 179 in December, 2015. We can get multiple nights boondocking. Now, if you are thinking that the batteries will run the AC, forget about it. That isn't going to happen unless you have a massive solar bank and lots of LiFePo4 batteries or a good generator. However, you can run the lights, water pump, and Fantastic/MaxxAir fan on battery for multiple nights if you plan on running the refrigerator and water heater on propane. The furnace can also be run, but since it draws more, you would not get as many nights with it running. Also, we found that dual 6V batteries will also not power the refrigerator overnight so plan on using propane for it if you don't have shore power.

Full hook-ups will allow you to run everything on electricity with multiple items at the same time such as the AC and Convection Microwave or water heater.