Supertramp Flagship LT pop-up slide-in pickup camper

Chadx

♫ Offroad, again. Just can't wait to get...♫
I don't recall if I posted this STC video previously, but still one of their best comprehensive system walk throughs and Matt always does a great job. Held up quite well over the last 10 months, though there are some additional options since this was releases (like the Victron battery options for anything over 200Ah of battery and can be sized up to 800Ah).

One can find their other videos here: https://www.youtube.com/@supertrampcampers2223/videos

 

roamie

New member
@roamie Went back to some of your previous posts and and guessing you have the Victron batteries. If so, then they have external battery heaters and power consumption that would be tracked by the shunt (the load you see when everything else is off and battery heaters are on) unlike the Battleborn and other brands that have internal heaters and power consumption that is not tracked by the shunt. If so, ignore all the internal heater comments above but I'll leave that info as it applies to those with Battleborn with internal heaters.
Yep that's correct, I have the Victron batteries. And yeah, my understanding is the trade off in size for the battery capacity was that the heaters were moved to be external. I actually don't remember turning the battery heaters on, so I think it must have been switched on when I picked it up.

I'm going to try turning off the battery heater and seeing what the discharge is on the system. It's not really a big deal to turn off the fuse block and main breakers since I'm already having to turn off the actuator switches, but I wouldn't expect there to be much drain with everything off.
 

roamie

New member
With the battery heaters turned off, the constant drain right now is around -0.6A. Much more in line with what I'd expect. From their website, Supertramp said the Battle Born heater pulls 3A per hour at max heat, so I'm surprised the Victron pull is as high as it is. It's not even that cold here, between 45-60 degrees. But turning off the battery heater is the only change I made, I didn't turn off any of the fuse blocks.
 

Chadx

♫ Offroad, again. Just can't wait to get...♫
With the battery heaters turned off, the constant drain right now is around -0.6A. Much more in line with what I'd expect. From their website, Supertramp said the Battle Born heater pulls 3A per hour at max heat, so I'm surprised the Victron pull is as high as it is. It's not even that cold here, between 45-60 degrees. But turning off the battery heater is the only change I made, I didn't turn off any of the fuse blocks.

STC estimate sounds about right. Battleborn says there heater draws 1.8A when active, so that would be 3.6A for the typical STC which has two 100Ah batteries. Internal battery heaters are much more efficient per watt because they are within the battery housing. With the Victron batteries, the heating pads are much larger and external so they have to be much higher wattage to heat up the cells within the battery housing. When I saw the Victron setup for 400Ah (two 200Ah victron batteries), heating pads covered the entire front and back of the batteries, so 9" x 24" heating pads times two. I can see that drawing a fair bit considering the surface area compared to the small internal heaters.

It does seem odd that they are triggering when your lows are only 45F. Not sure where the thermostat is located on these heating pads. If external, it would have to deal with a lot of variables including the toughest, which is a below freezing cabin/battery that has recently been heated up by Truma heater. The battery itself would still be below 40F. The battery protect would not allow charging due to the internal cell temp sensor, but if the pads were controlled by an external sensor, it wouldn't know so functionally it would make sense to turn it on a warmer temps. Now you have me curious if the external heating pads are triggered by external sensor or somehow communicate with the Victron BMS. I've reached out to STC and will report back.
 
Last edited:

Forum statistics

Threads
190,550
Messages
2,928,986
Members
234,211
Latest member
darrylkd
Top