Lessons Learned - house battery use and life

I have read with interest the accounts of house battery use and life. I had no first hand experience day camping prior to this summer. In preparation of the trip, I installed a 100 amp/hour AGM battery. (no space in a 3123 for dual batteries) And at the behest of several contributors to this forum I also replaced the charger/converter with a Power Dynamics 9160. Still having no idea of what I might be getting into, I became the lucky recipient of a Honda 2kw generator.

What follows is based on our particular habits and our camping environment. i.e. Your mileage may vary considerably 1) This covers the period of June and July in the upper tier states where it does not get dark until after 9:30. This fact almost eliminates the need for lighting for us as we are so tired after recreating all day we are asleep before 10. 2) Running the stereo and computer caused the volt meter to drop much less than one lamp! 3) We still had plenty of juice left on day 3. 4) On day 4 I tested the generator. I ran it for less than two hours and that returned the battery to almost full charge. We concluded that we can be comfortable dry camping for four or more consecutive days without a generator.

Now if I could only figure out what causes the inline fuse on the positive side of the battery to blow. I have not isolated it, but it seems to occur whenever shore power is connected.

The blown fuse has determined for me that the power from the TV is sufficient to power the refrigerator while driving. We had no drop in the temperature, even during the 90 plus days this summer running only on the power from the TV. A normal driving day for us 4 to 5 hours.

We are starting month three of a five month trip and we will be doing
more dry camping in parts of Oregon. I am sure more lessons will be learned.

Life is good on the road.

[tucsoncarol]

Thank you for the timely information. I have been worrying this problem to death for a while now (see our discussion in electrical under "so confused"). Your real life figures are invaluable.