Most heater of that type are not vented and so all the burned propane adds a lot of water to the air and the anyone winter camping may experience a lot of condensation from these type of heater if they are not direct vented. Especially if skiing and trying to dry out damp clothes each night. Better to do ot right qnd plan on using a vented heater. If fan driven, just size the battery appropriately by calculating the amp draw and estimating worst case scenario for hourly fan run time.
2020 Overland Explorer Vehicles (OEV) CAMP-X pop-up slide-in pickup camper (renamed "Back Country" as of 2023)
- Thread starter Chadx
- Start date
Most heater of that type are not vented and so all the burned propane adds a lot of water to the air and the anyone winter camping may experience a lot of condensation from these type of heater if they are not direct vented. Especially if skiing and trying to dry out damp clothes each night. Better to do ot right qnd plan on using a vented heater. If fan driven, just size the battery appropriately by calculating the amp draw and estimating worst case scenario for hourly fan run time.
I have mixed feelings about the new 20lb horizontal tank as well. Horizontal tanks can be finicky to fill and so often hold less than a 20lb vertical tank. Also, a 20lb vertical tank is very cheap to replace when they expire. Horizontal tanks are about 5 times more expensive (not that the expense is significant in the grand scheme of ownership costs). At least the horizontal tanks have a float and gauge so one will have a bit of an idea how much propane remains. Will say that I'm making an assumption that new 20lb is horizontal as they called it a marine tank, which usually means horizontal, but there are some vertical 20lb marine tanks as well. We'll need further clarification on that.
If they are switching new campers over to the extra weight of a 20lb over 10lb, they may as well make it convenient and use an economical standard 20lb vertical. Then one could swap them out at the fast and easy tank exchange places. You won't be swapping out a horizontal tank or a vertical marine tank. And and some places don't have much horizontal filling experience if that turns out to be what it is.
I personally much prefer the existing twin 10lb bottles. We leave one at home to reduce weight. Honestly, we have yet to go through a 10lb bottle in one camping season in any of our slide in pickup campers and some years camped into October and 15 degree nights. I expect even less propane use with our CAMP-X than previous rigs. We'll run a single newly filled 10lb all year then throw in our second 10lb the next season and run the first until empty then swap to the other 10lb. When we get home, refill the first one but leave it at home rather than hauling it around. That is typically 1/2 way through the second season. So for us, two 10lb or one 20lb will last two years. But we only keep it 60 - 65F while awake and sleep at 50F and don't cook elaborate meals on the propane stove.
In the end, if there is some greatly beneficial design reason to switch to the 20lb horizontal or vertical tank, it's not that big of a deal. They said there was a reason but did not say what it was. Will be fun to see what was the design change that necessitated the switch to a 20lb.
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Update on the battery decision. When I removed and stored my CAMPX for the winter, I pulled out the 100AH AGM with the intent of replacing it with lithium by spring. It was a VERY tight fit removing it. I saw they have changed the layout within that compartment and moved the shunt and breakers over to the partition wall to which the REDARC is mounted. That seems like a great move as it will allow for more room removing and replacing a battery from the battery box. Love the constant refinements.
After measuring everything, I determined I could only fit one 100AH lithium battery rather than two in the water tank cabinet even if I removed the battery box. I'd wanted two batteries which would allowed me to drive a larger inverter since max continuous discharge current would be split over two batteries. Most 100AH lithium have a 100A 'max continuous discharge current' rating so a 100AH can run an inverter of about 1200w; but two 100AH with 100A draw could run a 2400 - 3000w inverter. Ah well, 1200w inverter will suffice. I'd planned on Battleborn but was open to other brands as long as the quality was there. Several reviewers had recently tested and torn down the SOK brand battery and found construction quality to be high so I decided to try one of this brand. Bonus is that they are significantly more economical than Battleborn (though they are imported rather than made in the USA like Battleborn). Besides the price, the main deciding factor was they offer a 200AH 12V battery. Same footprint as the 100AH but just taller. But, since they are a single battery, the max continuous discharge current is the same 100A as the 100AH battery so still limited to a 1200w inverter unlike going with two 100AH batteries.
SOK Lithium:
100AH specs: 11.42 x 7.87 x 7.87", 26 lbs.
200AH specs: 11.42" x 7.87" x 11.02", 47.6 lbs.
I looked at the two sizes/types of Battleborn 100AH batteries and there is no way to two of them in my battery box. Battleborn does not make a 200AH, so I went with a SOK. Next batch was 30 days out when I ordered and mine is now ready and will be shipping. This will give me around 180 - 190AH usable vs the 50AH usable from my stock 100AH AGM so this will be a huge improvement (nearly 4x). We use 20 - 30amps per 24 hours so if I utilize 180AH of the new battery, we'll be good for 6 to 9 days with no input. This is with our current typical use. I do intend to add an inverter and will use our induction cooktop and start charging our eMTB and electric offroad mini-motorcycle off if it so with additional capacity will come increased use!
I also found a deal on Renogy 175watt flexible solar panels over the holidays and bought two. I'll sell our Renogy 100watt portable suitcase. It is heavy and a bit awkward to set up and travel with so figure I might as well find another solution to make it more pleasant. With 200AH battery, I won't bring solar panel(s) with very often, but have other projects where I'll use the solar panels as well (a Bluetti AC200 Solar Generator), so I will not permanently mount them on the CAMPX roof. That means I will not need to add roof-top solar wiring (another bonus). I can throw one panel in the cabover bed or pickup's back seat if I want to bring it with, which will be rare unless we expect to do a lot of eMTB or eDirtbike charging. When I do, we'll lay it on the roof, the ground, across the windshield, etc. as appropriate and plug into the existing side solar plug.
Won't bring solar with very often because we typically do 2 or 3 day trips and 200AH will be plenty with no input the entire trip. On all our longer trips, we drive every day or two. I don't like to stress my alternator with fast charge rates, but on a 4 our drive (typical when road tripping from spot to spot), I am comfortable recharging as we drive if I set the REDARD to between a slow 4amps (minimum REDARC setting) to 10 amps per hour as to not stress anything. If an emergency fast charge is needed, one can set the REDARC all the way up to 30amps, but I don't foresee, and prefer to not be, doing that from the truck's DC. Nice to have the 30amp charge rate if one needs a quick charge off shore power, though. I also have a manual switch, under the hood, to disconnect the pickup DC from the camper. I did that in anticipation of going lithium someday as lithium batteries do not like to be stored at 100% especially in heat and I wanted a way for the truck to NOT be charging the battery. My intent is to never charge off the pickup's DC unless absolutely needed. When driving home, I don't want the truck to recharge the battery. When we arrive home, I'll let the battery sit at whatever state of charge we got down to on the trip. Ideal lithium storage SOC is between 40% and 60%. Will wait to charge it back up to 100% until the day before leaving on a trip (be that with AC shore power or by parking outside and hooking up the solar panels, which are my preferred methods of charging the battery rather than DC from the truck alternator).
Still deciding on what inverter and where to place it. Leaning towards the Victron Phoenix 12V/1200. I think I'll be able to mount it on top of the battery box which would allow the shortest 12v run. I'll leave the under-sink 120v outlet tied to shore power but will change the corner counter-top 120v outlet to be powered by the inverter. Alternative inverter locations are in the under-fridge cabinet or in the under-sink cabinet, but like mentioned, would much prefer to mount in the underseat water tank compartment somewhere to keep DC cable run short.
[Update on 2/5/2021: The SOK 206AH battery arrived, and while it will fit in the battery box itself, there is no way to get into the battery box due to the placement of the battery box within the under-seat cabinet, water tank location, and shunt/breaker locations. While I had premeasured and knew I'd have to cut out a section of the aluminum battery box to install this particular battery, I started a cut and quickly realized it would be a long and messy grinding/cutting process so lost all enthusiasm to make this work by cutting up the battery box. I even considered cutting an access hole in the front exterior wall and installing an external door (or patch) to allow a battery to be inserted into the battery box from the outside, but decided against it so never contacted Overland Explorer to see if there would be any structural concerns with that. Next bit of research was to see if the smaller 100AH SOK battery would fit with less or no modifications. It has the same footprint as the 206AH but is a few inches shorter. I used cardboard to model a lifesized blank. No go. It is the 7.9" width that makes the SOK batteries impossible to fit. Battleborn are 6.88" wide so the same width as the frustratingly tight-to-remove-but-still-possible stock AGM. So I modeled another blank based on the Battleborn 100AH and it will juuuuuuust fit. So I ordered a Battleborn and am awaiting it to arrive. Yes I could have repurposed the under-fridge cabinet for one or more batteries, and would have been fairly easy to wire, but we would lose a valuable storage area, so wasn't willing to consider that. We'll settle for a 100AH battery instead of the 206AH that we were so excited to have.]
After measuring everything, I determined I could only fit one 100AH lithium battery rather than two in the water tank cabinet even if I removed the battery box. I'd wanted two batteries which would allowed me to drive a larger inverter since max continuous discharge current would be split over two batteries. Most 100AH lithium have a 100A 'max continuous discharge current' rating so a 100AH can run an inverter of about 1200w; but two 100AH with 100A draw could run a 2400 - 3000w inverter. Ah well, 1200w inverter will suffice. I'd planned on Battleborn but was open to other brands as long as the quality was there. Several reviewers had recently tested and torn down the SOK brand battery and found construction quality to be high so I decided to try one of this brand. Bonus is that they are significantly more economical than Battleborn (though they are imported rather than made in the USA like Battleborn). Besides the price, the main deciding factor was they offer a 200AH 12V battery. Same footprint as the 100AH but just taller. But, since they are a single battery, the max continuous discharge current is the same 100A as the 100AH battery so still limited to a 1200w inverter unlike going with two 100AH batteries.
SOK Lithium:
100AH specs: 11.42 x 7.87 x 7.87", 26 lbs.
200AH specs: 11.42" x 7.87" x 11.02", 47.6 lbs.
I looked at the two sizes/types of Battleborn 100AH batteries and there is no way to two of them in my battery box. Battleborn does not make a 200AH, so I went with a SOK. Next batch was 30 days out when I ordered and mine is now ready and will be shipping. This will give me around 180 - 190AH usable vs the 50AH usable from my stock 100AH AGM so this will be a huge improvement (nearly 4x). We use 20 - 30amps per 24 hours so if I utilize 180AH of the new battery, we'll be good for 6 to 9 days with no input. This is with our current typical use. I do intend to add an inverter and will use our induction cooktop and start charging our eMTB and electric offroad mini-motorcycle off if it so with additional capacity will come increased use!
I also found a deal on Renogy 175watt flexible solar panels over the holidays and bought two. I'll sell our Renogy 100watt portable suitcase. It is heavy and a bit awkward to set up and travel with so figure I might as well find another solution to make it more pleasant. With 200AH battery, I won't bring solar panel(s) with very often, but have other projects where I'll use the solar panels as well (a Bluetti AC200 Solar Generator), so I will not permanently mount them on the CAMPX roof. That means I will not need to add roof-top solar wiring (another bonus). I can throw one panel in the cabover bed or pickup's back seat if I want to bring it with, which will be rare unless we expect to do a lot of eMTB or eDirtbike charging. When I do, we'll lay it on the roof, the ground, across the windshield, etc. as appropriate and plug into the existing side solar plug.
Won't bring solar with very often because we typically do 2 or 3 day trips and 200AH will be plenty with no input the entire trip. On all our longer trips, we drive every day or two. I don't like to stress my alternator with fast charge rates, but on a 4 our drive (typical when road tripping from spot to spot), I am comfortable recharging as we drive if I set the REDARD to between a slow 4amps (minimum REDARC setting) to 10 amps per hour as to not stress anything. If an emergency fast charge is needed, one can set the REDARC all the way up to 30amps, but I don't foresee, and prefer to not be, doing that from the truck's DC. Nice to have the 30amp charge rate if one needs a quick charge off shore power, though. I also have a manual switch, under the hood, to disconnect the pickup DC from the camper. I did that in anticipation of going lithium someday as lithium batteries do not like to be stored at 100% especially in heat and I wanted a way for the truck to NOT be charging the battery. My intent is to never charge off the pickup's DC unless absolutely needed. When driving home, I don't want the truck to recharge the battery. When we arrive home, I'll let the battery sit at whatever state of charge we got down to on the trip. Ideal lithium storage SOC is between 40% and 60%. Will wait to charge it back up to 100% until the day before leaving on a trip (be that with AC shore power or by parking outside and hooking up the solar panels, which are my preferred methods of charging the battery rather than DC from the truck alternator).
Still deciding on what inverter and where to place it. Leaning towards the Victron Phoenix 12V/1200. I think I'll be able to mount it on top of the battery box which would allow the shortest 12v run. I'll leave the under-sink 120v outlet tied to shore power but will change the corner counter-top 120v outlet to be powered by the inverter. Alternative inverter locations are in the under-fridge cabinet or in the under-sink cabinet, but like mentioned, would much prefer to mount in the underseat water tank compartment somewhere to keep DC cable run short.
[Update on 2/5/2021: The SOK 206AH battery arrived, and while it will fit in the battery box itself, there is no way to get into the battery box due to the placement of the battery box within the under-seat cabinet, water tank location, and shunt/breaker locations. While I had premeasured and knew I'd have to cut out a section of the aluminum battery box to install this particular battery, I started a cut and quickly realized it would be a long and messy grinding/cutting process so lost all enthusiasm to make this work by cutting up the battery box. I even considered cutting an access hole in the front exterior wall and installing an external door (or patch) to allow a battery to be inserted into the battery box from the outside, but decided against it so never contacted Overland Explorer to see if there would be any structural concerns with that. Next bit of research was to see if the smaller 100AH SOK battery would fit with less or no modifications. It has the same footprint as the 206AH but is a few inches shorter. I used cardboard to model a lifesized blank. No go. It is the 7.9" width that makes the SOK batteries impossible to fit. Battleborn are 6.88" wide so the same width as the frustratingly tight-to-remove-but-still-possible stock AGM. So I modeled another blank based on the Battleborn 100AH and it will juuuuuuust fit. So I ordered a Battleborn and am awaiting it to arrive. Yes I could have repurposed the under-fridge cabinet for one or more batteries, and would have been fairly easy to wire, but we would lose a valuable storage area, so wasn't willing to consider that. We'll settle for a 100AH battery instead of the 206AH that we were so excited to have.]
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crystalclear
Observer
fyi - the renogy 170ah lifepo fits inside the batt box - its fun to get it in there, but i managed with no cutting/headaches, just patience and a bit of arm strength
i got 2, with the other inside the under-fridge storage spot - easy parallel cable run from there and power for days
inverter - i mounted it to the batt box lid, with on/off switch run to that little partition that has the ac breaker box, and a nice surge outlet run from the top water check hole
i got 2, with the other inside the under-fridge storage spot - easy parallel cable run from there and power for days
inverter - i mounted it to the batt box lid, with on/off switch run to that little partition that has the ac breaker box, and a nice surge outlet run from the top water check hole
Thanks for the info, @crystalclear ! I'd considered the Renogy batteries as well. The Renogy 170ah is 14" x 6.1" x 10.6" and 48.5lbs for those that want to compare (and, currently on sale on the Renogy site for $1,275 vs the $1,500 MSRP). The Renogy chart shows that one 170AH can handle a 2000w inverter (though the chart also shows a max continuous discharge rate of 125A). Still, that is better than the 100A max of the single SOK 200AH that I ordered. I also edited my above post to remove the C-rating comments and only talk 'max continuous current discharge' rating with is a better metric to use.
Any issues with sourcing 1/2" terminal rings for the huge M12 terminals? Really like the inverter switch location you chose. Great to hear the battery-box top mount worked. What inverter did you go with (so I can compare dimension and weight to the Victron I plan to use)? Mounting details and pics would be great, too.
When/if I need more capacity (for when I start doing even more intense electric motorcycle charging), the second battery in the under-fridge location sounds like a good solution. Though in that case, I'd also have my trailer so was thinking it's more likely that I use my Bluetti AC200 and solar panels attached to it to care for those charging needs.
Any issues with sourcing 1/2" terminal rings for the huge M12 terminals? Really like the inverter switch location you chose. Great to hear the battery-box top mount worked. What inverter did you go with (so I can compare dimension and weight to the Victron I plan to use)? Mounting details and pics would be great, too.
When/if I need more capacity (for when I start doing even more intense electric motorcycle charging), the second battery in the under-fridge location sounds like a good solution. Though in that case, I'd also have my trailer so was thinking it's more likely that I use my Bluetti AC200 and solar panels attached to it to care for those charging needs.
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crystalclear
Observer
@chadx no issues sourcing, but had to wait on amazon a few days, the inverter is nothing special, a highly rated pure sine amazon $200 unit, but thoughts of a sur run x have entered my mind so upgrades down the line as well ha!
the worst thing about the camp x is storage imo - so, some pics of some more of my favorite little storage mods (all dolphin grey starboard and rivets to match factory spec)
plus where i mounted an additional mppt controller and the weboost
the worst thing about the camp x is storage imo - so, some pics of some more of my favorite little storage mods (all dolphin grey starboard and rivets to match factory spec)
plus where i mounted an additional mppt controller and the weboost
Attachments
Great shelving ideas. Since the CAMP-X REDARC manager 30 will handle up to 520watt of 9v - 30v solar input (though the Turn On trigger occurs at/above an open circuit of 17.5v is reached) what is the extra solar controller for? Just a backup? or for some other on-board project?
FYI, the stock 120v 10amp 600watt chargers, for Surron X, pull around 650 - 700 watts (as tested with a Kill-A-Watt). 10% SOC to 100 SOC% charge takes about 3 hours. It's a 60v 31.9AH battery so about 2,000watt hour. With inverter losses, I suspect my 200AH battery would do about one Surron X charge. Buying a second 200AH battery for the camper or buying a 200AH "solar generator" (which I already own) is cheaper than buying a second Surron Battery ($1,600) plus much more useful.
FYI, the stock 120v 10amp 600watt chargers, for Surron X, pull around 650 - 700 watts (as tested with a Kill-A-Watt). 10% SOC to 100 SOC% charge takes about 3 hours. It's a 60v 31.9AH battery so about 2,000watt hour. With inverter losses, I suspect my 200AH battery would do about one Surron X charge. Buying a second 200AH battery for the camper or buying a 200AH "solar generator" (which I already own) is cheaper than buying a second Surron Battery ($1,600) plus much more useful.
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crystalclear
Observer
the redarc makes no sense to me as an mppt controller - at 30v max, you basically are limited to 100-200watts of panels in series
the victron is a 100v max - which allows me to use 4x100w panels in series and generate mega volts
the victron is a 100v max - which allows me to use 4x100w panels in series and generate mega volts
I agree its disappointing to not have the choice of a higher voltage in-series setup built in. Since REDARC can handle 500+ watts in parallel, there is the option of running your four 100watt in parallel. The other benefit of running four 100watt panels in parallel is that shade on one panel only impacts that panel; not the entire circuit. While panels wired in series, the entire circuit is disrupted when shade hits a single panel. I do think series wiring is tidier, though, and more efficient from a "voltage over a given wire gauge" perspective. Pros and cons. Wish the REDARC offered more flexibility for the user.
crystalclear
Observer
true - ive just turned ignorantly stubborn in believing that series setups work better for me, given shade/cloud cover is my most common hindrance and the boost in volts seems to always provide sufficient voltage to charge the batts
thanks for the info on the surron, looking like charging that batt via dc2dc power while driving will be best
thanks for the info on the surron, looking like charging that batt via dc2dc power while driving will be best
crystalclear
Observer
love this camper....
the lows hovered between 15-20f in utah last week - cozy 65 indoors with minimal condensation, its almost cute how the tiny cap head bolts freeze
pretty sure im gonna add in a smaller/long-thin window on the driver side - i find it uncomfortable to only see out the passenger side (besides the softtop windows of course)
the lows hovered between 15-20f in utah last week - cozy 65 indoors with minimal condensation, its almost cute how the tiny cap head bolts freeze
pretty sure im gonna add in a smaller/long-thin window on the driver side - i find it uncomfortable to only see out the passenger side (besides the softtop windows of course)
Boltripper
Member
Finally picked up my camper this week. And we are about to leave for a 3-week trip. Super excited!
This thread definitely helped me to take my decision, so thanks for everyone who posted! Especially Chad!
I worked with Boulder Vehicle Outfitters on a few upgrades for the camper. Including adding an inverter (Xantrex 1000w) and a WeBoost antenna for when we work from the camper. They did a fantastic job, and I know in the next few days they will describe the mods on their Instagram account so you check it out! The WeBoost antenna is a fun one (you can see where it's mounted on the following pictures)
(@bouldervehicleoutfitters) • Instagram photos and videos
22 Followers, 0 Following, 1 Posts - See Instagram photos and videos from (@bouldervehicleoutfitters)www.instagram.com
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Pictures from Basil Lynch.
Beautiful setup.. That looks fantastic on the AEV~
Best,
John