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Not extendable.. completely
Not extendable.. completely removable. Imagine a bed frame with built in drawer storage underneath. A sink and counter will just sit on the bed frame while its in the garage but when I slide the whole thing into the back of the van I’ll grab the counter and hang it in place, along with some other camper essentials. The bed will double as a couch during the day. I have a couple thoughts on how to do that but I need to mock something up inside the van to decide which would work best. It sounds strange, I know. I’ll post some drawings once I get to that pointNot extendable.. completely
Not extendable.. completely removable. Imagine a bed frame with built in drawer storage underneath. A sink and counter will just sit on the bed frame while its in the garage but when I slide the whole thing into the back of the van I’ll grab the counter and hang it in place, along with some other camper essentials. The bed will double as a couch during the day. I have a couple thoughts on how to do that but I need to mock something up inside the van to decide which would work best. It sounds strange, I know. I’ll post some drawings once I get to that pointThe amp hour capacity of a
The amp hour capacity of a battery is a very tricky thing to pin down. Its a little bit like your vehicle’s fuel economy rating. Under very specific test conditions you can get the same number as the one listed. In reality you never will. Generally deep cycle batteries are rated at a very slow discharge which increases the capacity rating significantly. If you discharge faster than the tested rate you might get as little as 20% of the listed capacity.OK, all that nonsense out of the way.. Here’s what the number means: Say you have a 100 amp hour battery tested at a 20 hour rate. Divide the 100 by the twenty and you get five amps. This battery was designed to provide five amps continuously for 20 hours before the voltage drops off significantly and the battery is dead.
Now connect two of those batteries together, positive to positive, negative to negative. Congrats, you have just made a 200 amp hour battery that will provide 10 amps for 20 hours.
Just remember that first paragraph. If you take that 200 amp hour battery and draw 20 amps it will NOT last 10 hours.
Hope this helps you size your battery bank!
The amp hour capacity of a
The amp hour capacity of a battery is a very tricky thing to pin down. Its a little bit like your vehicle’s fuel economy rating. Under very specific test conditions you can get the same number as the one listed. In reality you never will. Generally deep cycle batteries are rated at a very slow discharge which increases the capacity rating significantly. If you discharge faster than the tested rate you might get as little as 20% of the listed capacity.OK, all that nonsense out of the way.. Here’s what the number means: Say you have a 100 amp hour battery tested at a 20 hour rate. Divide the 100 by the twenty and you get five amps. This battery was designed to provide five amps continuously for 20 hours before the voltage drops off significantly and the battery is dead.
Now connect two of those batteries together, positive to positive, negative to negative. Congrats, you have just made a 200 amp hour battery that will provide 10 amps for 20 hours.
Just remember that first paragraph. If you take that 200 amp hour battery and draw 20 amps it will NOT last 10 hours.
Hope this helps you size your battery bank!
I’m not familiar with zig
I’m not familiar with zig units. I just looked up a couple youtube videos to get an idea of what you’re asking. From what the wiring looked like your lights will always be running off the batteries but the batteries should be charging when you hook up to outside power so it wouldn’t matter. I’m not positive on that though.Here’s the easy way to always know what’s going on with your batteries: buy yourself a cheap digital voltmeter. turn it to DC volts and put one lead on each post of the battery in question. It doesn’t matter which one and it’s almost impossible to hurt your equipment or yourself doing this. If the meter says something above 13 volts (or negative 13 volts if you have the leads backwards) then the battery is charging.. run whatever you want at this point and all that would happen is the battery would charge slower. If the battery reads less than that you can check to see if something is drawing from that battery by holding your leads on the battery and having a lovely assistant turn the thing in question on and off. If your volt reading changes with the switch flipping then its drawing power from that battery. Just not that it would be possible for something to draw so little power that it wouldn’t show up on your meter.. that would take a LONG time to drain the battery but it would happen eventually.
I’m not familiar with zig
I’m not familiar with zig units. I just looked up a couple youtube videos to get an idea of what you’re asking. From what the wiring looked like your lights will always be running off the batteries but the batteries should be charging when you hook up to outside power so it wouldn’t matter. I’m not positive on that though.Here’s the easy way to always know what’s going on with your batteries: buy yourself a cheap digital voltmeter. turn it to DC volts and put one lead on each post of the battery in question. It doesn’t matter which one and it’s almost impossible to hurt your equipment or yourself doing this. If the meter says something above 13 volts (or negative 13 volts if you have the leads backwards) then the battery is charging.. run whatever you want at this point and all that would happen is the battery would charge slower. If the battery reads less than that you can check to see if something is drawing from that battery by holding your leads on the battery and having a lovely assistant turn the thing in question on and off. If your volt reading changes with the switch flipping then its drawing power from that battery. Just not that it would be possible for something to draw so little power that it wouldn’t show up on your meter.. that would take a LONG time to drain the battery but it would happen eventually.
