New battery box

[philip47]

[attachment id="1311" thumbnail="1"][attachment id="1312" thumbnail="1"]

[philip47]

New 2 bank six volt battery box and 30lb tank upgrade.  420 amp hour battery reserve.  Hope to do so boondocking this summer.  Very surprised at the small wire size ran from the battery box back to the converter.  Was wondering if this should be upgraded in the future?  Hope to add solar 400 watts or more and a small generator in the future.  

[daplumbr]

So you've got four 6 volt batteries and two 30 lb tanks?

[philip47]

Added 4 Trojan 6 volt batteries 2 30lb tanks and new tank cover.  Had a friend of mine build the box out of aluminum diamond plate to match the front of the trailer.y

[daplumbr]

You're ready for anything! What a rig.

What's the tongue weight now?

Are the batteries all wired together (two series strings in parallel), or do you have two completely separate series banks with a switch?

[philip47]

Each pair of batteries are wired in series then paralleled.  I installed a marine cut off switch to kill the power when needed.  on the back of the box to keep road grime off of it.
Not sure of the new tongue weight yet.  The batteries weigh about 60lbs apiece plus the box.

[joanne]

Very surprised at the small wire size ran from the battery box back to the converter.  Was wondering if this should be upgraded in the future?  Hope to add solar 400 watts or more and a small generator in the future.  

Yes.

There are formulas for calculating voltage drop, and if the drop is too high, your batteries will not fully charge.

With two 6-volts's on the tongue, I went with 6ga wire from the tongue to the converter. Probably could have gone bigger (4ga), but the 6ga was readily available.

[whoofit]

You don't need to increase wire gauge from the converter unless you will tie your solar panels into the 12V wire at the converter. With 400W of panel suggest you go direct to battery with that and keep the charge controller as close as possible to the batteries instead.

Most decent charge controllers allow you to calibrate and set different points for Absorb and Float. These can be used effectively to dial out voltage drops within reason.