[RockyMtnRay]

Originally Posted by PopBeavers

3 SRM-24 (the TM came with 1, 3x11<35)

YIKES! That's only a Grp 24...about 80 amp hours total or about 50 to 60 usable amp hours at a 5 amp rate of drain before going below 30% charge. At a 10 amp rate (normal if you're using more than 3 or 4 lights), you've got maybe 4 hours of battery...barely enough to make it through one evening!

Here is another thought, thinking out loud. Instead of 3 SRM-24 batteries with a weight of 138 pounds. A single battery plus the Honda 3000 is 180 pounds. The Honda 3000 will even run the A/C.

You'll definitely need a WDH if you put a Honda 3000 on the tongue...those things are quite large and quite heavy. And reworking the battery tray will be simplicity compared to crafting a secure mount for the generator.

I'd like to be able to camp in the Nevada desert in July/August (fool that I am) and also camp in northeast CA in October in the forest. Solar would work in Nevada, but I don't see how I could get enough power from solar in a dense forest in October. Sooner or later I will need a generator. Either dual Honda 2000's or a single Honda 3000 seems to make the most sense. With a generator, I don't see any reason to have more than one battery.

I probably won't be buying a generator this year. It doesn't sound like a single battery will last 4 nights for the first trip in 2 weeks. Especially with 5 adults staying up until midnight. My best bet seems to be to purchase a second SRM-24 and try to stretch the two batteries into 4 nights with conservation and recharging from TV. I might be able to borrow a generator from my neighbor's brother for my first trip.

If the battery was the larger Grp 27 (total amp hours about 115), then maybe you'll be able to get by with just one battery for 1 or 2 nights. Even with a generator you've got problems...for one thing, most developed campgrounds have quiet hours (NO generator usage) from 10 pm to 6 am. And a lot of campgrounds are now restricting generator useage to afternoons and evenings before 8 pm. Furthermore, your charging current has to be under about 20 amps (deep cycle batteries should never be rapidly recharged). If your trailer came with the 7300 series converter, the converter can produce that level of current...but if it has the older 6300 series, the charging current is only about 8 amps. You will need to run the generator for 4 to 6 hours a day just to keep the batteries recharged...and that's a lot of time.

I've tried the recharging from TV while camped routine...it doesn't work worth a whoot. The current coming into the battery (even with the refer on propane) is only about 15 amps (battery nearly discharged) and tapers off to 5 amps (battery moderately charged). To get any effective recharging, you'd have to leave the TV continuously idling for 2 to 3 hours! An idling TV engine burns around 2 gallons an hour...which means you'd go through 6 gallons (about a quarter tank of gas) every day trying to recharge your batteries.

All of the above is why I installed 170 watts of solar panels on my TM's roof...they generate a steady 11 amps of current for nearly 10 hours a day in full summer sunshine. Even if I fairly severely deplete the house battery overnight, I'm just about guaranteed a full recharge by the next evening. No, they won't run the AC...but if you have lots of sunshine (like Nevada in the summer) solar is unbeatable for battery charging.

Solar even provides some charge in Autumn in a forest...when I camped in RMNP (far northern Colorado) in Sept 2003 in a quite shady (pine forest) campground I was able to get about 2 to 3 hours of recharge per day (around 25 amp hours). No, it wasn't enough to fully recharge the battery (only had a single, worn out Grp 27 back then)...but it was enough to get me through 3 days of camping. Because of that experience, I went to dual T105s in the Spring of '04 to have a few extra days of reserve capacity in the event of extended cloudy weather or a very shady campsite.