Moving in to a $200 camper, help me get some electricity

J

jmattsen

New member
Long story short, starting mid January im moving in to my $200 camper for 15 weeks and i need some electricity. At most im gonna be running a phone and laptop charger, a toaster, a radio and a lamp. and ofcourse i wont be running them all at the same time.

How fast will a 500w inverterkill my battery and will it be a suitable ammount of power? My truck is a 1983 Chevy pickup if that makes a difference. Ive thought about installing a second battery in parallel along with a gage to tell me when its starting to go dead.

I will be driving the truck for atleast a little bit everyday and i can let it idle to charge the batterys if need be.

Thanks
 
J

jmattsen

New member
Pretty low, maybe $200 or so if it seems worth it. My heater and stove are propane so if worst comes to worst i could do without power all togther.

Another idea im tossing around is getting a deep cycle battery in the camper, running a BESTEK 400w inverter off of that then hooking the battery up either straight to my alternator. I need to do some more rescearch on deepcycle batteries work before i jump on this idea tho
 
S

::Squish::

Observer
I'm assuming you don't have a "house" battery and you only have the battery for the truck is that right?
That's the first step, getting a house battery (typically deep cycle) or two and a charging system from your truck
and a way to charge them if you are plugged in somewhere. like a campground (a charger converter, or just a charger could work)

You don't need an inverter to charge a laptop battery, you just need the right hook up, same for a phone
For a phone and tablet a 12volt USB charger is typically all you need for the laptop you can look for a car charger for it.
Phones, laptops and tablets run on DC, residential is AC, so if you are charging your phone with an inverter you are just eating up electrons as waste heat in the conversion from DC to AC and back to DC (that's the wall wart on the 120 plug for your laptop does it's a transformer)

As for other stuff like, the toaster, as mojavephonebooth said will eat power fast, if you need to heat food, a little butane stove can be a decent deal, clean enough to cook with inside as long as a window is open, the stoves sell for about $20 and fuel is fairly reasonable. Don't use a camp stove like white gas or propane inside you risk too much from suffocation, even with the windows and vents all open, If you insist on doing that get a CO (Carbon Monoxide) detector.

There are is a lot of info if you poke around youtube and forums for van living for keeping a functional cheap and low profile system
 
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W

wirenut

Adventurer
Using your truck's starting battery as a deep cycle for your camper is a sure way to not be able to start the truck and to ruin the battery. Starting batteries don't like to be deeply discharged. Also, they don't have very much capacity as compared to a deep cycle battery of similar size.
A group 24 deep cycle is probably a similar physical size to your truck's starting battery. A group 24 is 75 Ah. I would guess the starting battery might be good for 50 but you should never discharge a battery much more than 50% so let's say you've got 25 Ah to work with before you probably can't start the truck. That's a little bit of nothing when it comes to all the devices you listed. 2 or 3 of those portable jump packs would probably have more capacity.
 
dwh

dwh

Tail-End Charlie
You can idle the truck to charge the battery. It will only take about 24 hours to fully charge the battery.


Buy a 75 amp hour RV / deep cycle marine battery at AutoZone for like $100. If it lists cranking amps and reserve capacity in the specs but does not list amp hours then that's a cranking battery and that's not what you want.

Buy the little 2 stroke generator from Harbor Freight. They go on sale usually once a month for a few days for 99 bucks. You can buy a quart of 2 stroke oil at AutoZone for $4. It's 32 ounces and the generator needs 2.5 ounces per gallon and has a 1 gallon tank so you can get quite a few runs of the generator out of one quart of 2-stroke oil. The gas cap has a measuring cup. Buy a decent spark plug and check all the bolts to make sure they're tight.

Buy a halfway decent battery charger. You can get a 25 amp Stanley or Black & Decker smart charger at Lowe's for around fifty bucks. After the generator is broken in it will probably run six to eight hours powering that battery charger and one run with a gallon of gas will probably get the battery just about full.

You'll probably have to run the generator once or twice a week to recharge the battery with what you're doing.

If it's not a sealed battery, then put it in a sealed box vented to the outside, because it will produce hydrogen while being charged. Hydrogen burns so fast it makes black powder look slow. If it builds up and then makes the acquaintance of a source of ignition...well...pow!


You can use a small inverter to power your laptop. Most laptop power supplies are around 60-90 Watts. Rig a cigarette lighter plug and get a 12-volt USB adapter. They usually have two USB slots and they're like 5 bucks at AutoZone.


For cooking you can use a single burner propane stove like a Coleman or Stansport. I wouldn't worry too much about the CO2 levels running the burner an hour here, an hour there. You will create more CO2 and burn more oxygen just by breathing. In a small space if you plan to breathe you should always leave a window cracked anyway. CO2 poisoning (actually, oxygen depletion) is usually only a threat if you're asleep. People have actually died from that while sleeping in tents. No kidding.

Fire is a bigger concern if you ask me.
 
S

::Squish::

Observer
*Edit* deleted incorrect information. forgive me, I wasn't thinking straight.

Generators make their power on the AC side not the DC side. And their DC circuits for the most part, suck.
Forget that advice, it was bad.

However non inverter generators produce dirty power so it's not advisable to plug in your sensitive electronics into those.
But plugging a battery charger in should be ok,

Datatel makes a decent DC voltage meter, but it's not cheap. it's a good idea to have one, especially if you are using the trucks battery for powering your stuff (which for the reasons given above is not recommended)

With whatever generator you end up with make sure you check the oil often, especially if it's a less expensive four-stroke one.

Btw it's easy to confuse CO2 with CO,
http://www.critical-environment.com/blog/carbon-monoxide-co-versus-carbon-dioxide-co2/

It's never a good idea to use a white gas cooking (AKA Colman stove of the non-propane variety,) appliance inside, propane is marginally ok, since it burns much much cleaner. you still need to open a window or two.
 
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dwh

dwh

Tail-End Charlie
Generators or more properly gensets use an engine to drive an *alternator* which makes, not surprisingly, *alternating* current.

Just like a car with an alternator.

If you want DC out of it, for instance to feed an inverter the way an inverter generator does, you have to run the AC through a rectifier.

Just like a car with an alternator.


On most gensets that have a 12v output, that output isn't regulated, or not well regulated. Useful for bulking up a low battery, but doesn't do a great job of battery charging. Most end up either undercharging, or overcharging.

Using a genset to feed a smart charger will do a much better job of properly charging a battery.
 
D

Deleted member 9101

Guest
dwh said:
You can idle the truck to charge the battery. It will only take about 24 hours to fully charge the battery.


Buy a 75 amp hour RV / deep cycle marine battery at AutoZone for like $100. If it lists cranking amps and reserve capacity in the specs but does not list amp hours then that's a cranking battery and that's not what you want.

Buy the little 2 stroke generator from Harbor Freight. They go on sale usually once a month for a few days for 99 bucks. You can buy a quart of 2 stroke oil at AutoZone for $4. It's 32 ounces and the generator needs 2.5 ounces per gallon and has a 1 gallon tank so you can get quite a few runs of the generator out of one quart of 2-stroke oil. The gas cap has a measuring cup. Buy a decent spark plug and check all the bolts to make sure they're tight.

Buy a halfway decent battery charger. You can get a 25 amp Stanley or Black & Decker smart charger at Lowe's for around fifty bucks. After the generator is broken in it will probably run six to eight hours powering that battery charger and one run with a gallon of gas will probably get the battery just about full.

You'll probably have to run the generator once or twice a week to recharge the battery with what you're doing.

If it's not a sealed battery, then put it in a sealed box vented to the outside, because it will produce hydrogen while being charged. Hydrogen burns so fast it makes black powder look slow. If it builds up and then makes the acquaintance of a source of ignition...well...pow!


You can use a small inverter to power your laptop. Most laptop power supplies are around 60-90 Watts. Rig a cigarette lighter plug and get a 12-volt USB adapter. They usually have two USB slots and they're like 5 bucks at AutoZone.


For cooking you can use a single burner propane stove like a Coleman or Stansport. I wouldn't worry too much about the CO2 levels running the burner an hour here, an hour there. You will create more CO2 and burn more oxygen just by breathing. In a small space if you plan to breathe you should always leave a window cracked anyway. CO2 poisoning (actually, oxygen depletion) is usually only a threat if you're asleep. People have actually died from that while sleeping in tents. No kidding.

Fire is a bigger concern if you ask me.
Click to expand...

This fella nailed it!
 
D

downhill

Adventurer
good toast

You can really good camp toast by buttering the bread and "toasting" it in a small non-stick skillet over a stove. :)
 
B

billy2

New member
What are you doing for work and is there electricity you can use there? A small power station and some rechargeable batteries wont attract much attention charging under a desk.
 
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