Hi everyone!
Been a lurker here for quite awhile... Have a 2004 Suburban with a pretty fair amount of "features" for overlanding/ we call it “luxury camping” (140w worth of solar, winch, 14bolt rear end with e-locker, 33's leveled, onboard air, homebuilt hot water and cold water filter system, radios, outside lighting etc. etc.) I am going to write a build thread soon as most of the ideas are all taken from this forum, and either made it my own, or just stole them I hope I can inspire someone as a lot of you all have done to me.
Anyway…
My next purchase is going to be an ARB style 12v fridge, and I have been looking into boosting my reserve capacity for my power storage.
I already have the dual battery/ dual alternator setup under the hood with a large deep cycle battery for the house battery. In normal operating they are completely separate wring systems, with a “jump” switch/ solenoid connecting them together in an emergency use or in winch use.
The solar I have, should be enough to run my current power needs with the fridge as I do have 120w solar going to top off the house battery under the hood (20w goes to the starter battery), but as with everything, I believe just enough is not enough, especially when I go camping in winter and sometimes where I am with tree coverage or weather, getting all the sun is not possible. I also do not want to have to worry about my power usage and running other power hungry devices, such as my water filters and pump, speakers, etc. The solar I have is about the max I can get away with the space on my roof, and I am not interested in removable panels to setup in camp. I figured, more power storage, can get me at least 2 or 3 days of no car starting on the solar and storage alone. I calculate for worst case scenario and to do 3 days I need 100ah more. (realistically this will probably be good for at least a week of limited solar, but in “worst case” it will be good for 3 days with my maximum power usage.)
As such, I have been looking to boost the capacity of deep cycle house battery I currently have
I walked into RadioShack the other day, and they have a serious sale on their 15ah 12v sealed deep discharge batteries for UPC's (first one is 25% off, second is 50% and third is 75%.) Turns out to be like 8 bucks for each battery. More so, I haven't been able to find a good place to add a matching deepcycle house battery like the one under the hood as there no more room under the hood, and a huge battery in the interior space isn't going to work. These 15 ah, fit perfectly under the middle row seat, and I could fit 8+ of them easily and neatly,
Sorry for the long intro…my question is, I know connecting unlike brand/size/age batteries is a pretty big nono, as they will self-discharge on each other. Is there some type of inline device, so I can connect this new radioshack house battery bank to the existing house battery circuit but eliminates the batteries discharging on themselves (IE the radioshack batteries discharging the large deep cycle battery and viceversa?) I would like to keep the house system as one system so the solar keeps them all charged, and the devices connected to the system have all the available storage at any given time, without human intervention of having to switch the banks etc.
Thanks!
Harrison
Been a lurker here for quite awhile... Have a 2004 Suburban with a pretty fair amount of "features" for overlanding/ we call it “luxury camping” (140w worth of solar, winch, 14bolt rear end with e-locker, 33's leveled, onboard air, homebuilt hot water and cold water filter system, radios, outside lighting etc. etc.) I am going to write a build thread soon as most of the ideas are all taken from this forum, and either made it my own, or just stole them I hope I can inspire someone as a lot of you all have done to me.
Anyway…
My next purchase is going to be an ARB style 12v fridge, and I have been looking into boosting my reserve capacity for my power storage.
I already have the dual battery/ dual alternator setup under the hood with a large deep cycle battery for the house battery. In normal operating they are completely separate wring systems, with a “jump” switch/ solenoid connecting them together in an emergency use or in winch use.
The solar I have, should be enough to run my current power needs with the fridge as I do have 120w solar going to top off the house battery under the hood (20w goes to the starter battery), but as with everything, I believe just enough is not enough, especially when I go camping in winter and sometimes where I am with tree coverage or weather, getting all the sun is not possible. I also do not want to have to worry about my power usage and running other power hungry devices, such as my water filters and pump, speakers, etc. The solar I have is about the max I can get away with the space on my roof, and I am not interested in removable panels to setup in camp. I figured, more power storage, can get me at least 2 or 3 days of no car starting on the solar and storage alone. I calculate for worst case scenario and to do 3 days I need 100ah more. (realistically this will probably be good for at least a week of limited solar, but in “worst case” it will be good for 3 days with my maximum power usage.)
As such, I have been looking to boost the capacity of deep cycle house battery I currently have
I walked into RadioShack the other day, and they have a serious sale on their 15ah 12v sealed deep discharge batteries for UPC's (first one is 25% off, second is 50% and third is 75%.) Turns out to be like 8 bucks for each battery. More so, I haven't been able to find a good place to add a matching deepcycle house battery like the one under the hood as there no more room under the hood, and a huge battery in the interior space isn't going to work. These 15 ah, fit perfectly under the middle row seat, and I could fit 8+ of them easily and neatly,
Sorry for the long intro…my question is, I know connecting unlike brand/size/age batteries is a pretty big nono, as they will self-discharge on each other. Is there some type of inline device, so I can connect this new radioshack house battery bank to the existing house battery circuit but eliminates the batteries discharging on themselves (IE the radioshack batteries discharging the large deep cycle battery and viceversa?) I would like to keep the house system as one system so the solar keeps them all charged, and the devices connected to the system have all the available storage at any given time, without human intervention of having to switch the banks etc.
Thanks!
Harrison