Boondocking/Dry camping advice for R-Pod noob

Congratulations on your new 176t!

In addition to what's been said, it depends on usage, but one 12v battery will only get you by for 2 or 3 days without some kind of recharging unless you are almost fanatical about not using battery power.  Even two heavy duty 6v batteries in series won't last a week unless you are very conservative with your lights, water pump, etc.  Speaking of lights, if you haven't replaced your interior lights with LEDs, doing so will help considerably for boondocking.  I can't talk about the technicalities like Techntrek, who will likely chime in, but you don't want to let your battery get too low or it can permanently damage it, aside from leaving you in the dark with no running water.

I dry camp a lot and my solution to keeping the battery charged is a generator.  Depending on the situation, I'll leave my generator running all day just to charge the battery.  I have one of the Yamaha 2400w gennies.  It will run the air con and everything else, but not necessarily at the same time.

  As said, generators are their own can of worms.  Just a few of the issues are the expense and which one to get, which involves deciding how much you want to pay for a relatively low noise level and for reliability.  Then how are you going to haul it around?  Will you need to lift and move it from its transport location to its campground location?  (They aren't light.)  How are you going to keep it secure in the campground and in or on the tow vehicle?  You have to haul extra fuel for the genny.  There are generator hours and location restrictions in most campgrounds.  Even the quietest generators make noise that even you as the user may not find pleasant.

The 120v system and the 12v systems don't overlap, although the fridge and water heater work on either.  I guess the only other overlap is the built-in battery charger/minder that charges the battery whenever you have shore or generator power.

Yes, the vent fan does work on 12v.

No amount of solar power is going to let you run the air con or anything that only runs on 120v.  No practical amount.  If you camp a lot on the beach or in the desert and don't want or can't find shade, a decent amount of solar can keep your battery charged.  For the majority of my camping, I'm under the trees and wouldn't get enough sun anyway so solar hasn't been an option.  It also has transportation and security issues.

You can get a little inverter to convert 12v to 120v to run the TV or a CPAP device.  Those things suck the juice out of your battery though and I wouldn't recommend them for boondocking without a plan on how to recharge the battery on a daily basis.

TT

Welcome to the group! Congrats on your 176!!

Originally posted by Wilde Hi Guys, we're looking to get our R-Pod in the next few weeks. How many batteries do I need?

A tip when you negotiate the deal. The normally supplied battery is a single 12V Group24 battey and it is really inadequate for any dry camping. The battery is a dealer installed item and should be subject to negotiation. The preferred substitute is two 6 volt GC2 golf cart batteries wired in series. This will give you almost three times the original battery capacity; much more than adding a second Gp24 battery in parallel. Do your homework. You should expect some price credit for the single Gp 24 since it was included in the original price.

And, as stated above, the single biggest thing you can do to improve 12V capability, after you've  installed the dual 6V configuration, is the replacement of the interior bulbs with LEDs.

Okay. Good info. Especially the battery advice. Thanks!