Batteries 101 - what's best for bonndocking?

Most of the time when we camp, we are boondocking in the mountians of Utah. I was reading about batteries and conserving power and had a question. What are the best batteries to have? We bought our 97' 3023 last year and they put new batteries on it. We have 2 and I am assuming they are 12 volt but I guess I don't know for sure. Are 2 6 volts better? I thought I read they have more amp hours of use. Is this true? What do you think they put on my trailer?

Thanks,
Chris

[Civil_War_Buff]

When I bought my trailer, the factory rep said that 2 6V golfcart batteries were to be included, but the trailer was delivered with 2 12V Deep cycle RV batteries. It is fairly commonly accepted that 2 6V GC will out perform the 2 12V. If you do a lot of dry camping, then I would recommend the 6Volters.

Larry

[Bill]

[quote author=chvaka link=board=1;threadid=1955;start=msg13810#msg13810 date=1085591753]We bought our 97' 3023 last year and they put new batteries on it. We have 2 and I am assuming they are 12 volt but I guess I don't know for sure. Are 2 6 volts better?[/quote]Chris -

It is easy to tell whether you have 6-volt batteries or 12-volt batteries. Just look at the top of the battery. If it has 6 caps or 6 openings or 6 of anything, it is a 12-volt battery. If it has only 3, then it is a 6-volt battery.

Assuming they have the same physical size, it seems to be common wisdom that a pair of 6-volt batteries in series will slightly outperform a pair of 12-volt batteries in parallel. Both give you 12 volts, of course, but the former combination gives a few more amp-hours of capacity. It is not real clear why this would be true (assuming it is). My guess is that it's because a battery is composed of several cells (like the D-batteries in your flashlight, but bigger). The cells must be separated (insulated from each other) by some inert material like hard rubber or plastic. Since 6-volt batteries have only 3 cells, they need only 2 separators, whereas 12-volt batteries have 6 cells and thus 5 separators. The space that is taken up by separators is wasted - it doesn't produce any battery capacity. If you can remove some of the separators, and recover some of the wasted space, you can put in a little more active material (lead and acid), so you get a bit more capacity.

But that's just my guess.

Bill