Calling the electrical gurus! electrical question--camper/rv

[Bocefus78]

I am about to go look at a pop up camper here in an hour or so.The owner says that the furnace, lights, etc, cannot be run from a 12v battery. Only standard 110v power. I dont know the year yet, but guessing from pics to be a 97 or so dutchman. Now, Im the kinda guy that when you tell me I cant do something, I make it happen. What would be involved to make it run off of 12v as well as normal plug in power? Would an inverter work? What kind of draw can I expect from the little rv furnace blower? I know the newer pop ups will run off the battery and run the furnace (propane fueled). What makes them different?

My situation is this....where the camper will be permanently parked, has no power. I have a 750w inverter, and 12v marine battery already.

 

[smokinj]

Inverter will work. I cant really see the lights not beinging 12 volt and 110. Furnace a/c another story.

Oh I have a couple monster 12v batteries. Sounds like a trade coming up?

 

[dave11]

I am about to go look at a pop up camper here in an hour or so.The owner says that the furnace, lights, etc, cannot be run from a 12v battery. Only standard 110v power. I dont know the year yet, but guessing from pics to be a 97 or so dutchman. Now, Im the kinda guy that when you tell me I cant do something, I make it happen. What would be involved to make it run off of 12v as well as normal plug in power? Would an inverter work? What kind of draw can I expect from the little rv furnace blower? I know the newer pop ups will run off the battery and run the furnace (propane fueled). What makes them different?

My situation is this....where the camper will be permanently parked, has no power. I have a 750w inverter, and 12v marine battery already.

The draw for the camper is the total amperage rating for all the appliances likely to be used together, multiplied by 110. That gives you a power rating in watts. Based on that number, you'd know how many watts of AC power your inverter would need to generate. You'd need to look at the amperage rating stamped on the furnace motor to know it's draw.

What would you use to recharge the marine battery? It's going to drain pretty quickly, if running motors etc.

Why not an AC generator?

 

[Fifelaker]

My old Dutchman has a switch to run on either 12v or120 so there is a trasformer in line. I would check that first. They do go bad but the olus side is they are cheap at Radio Shack.

 

[daveswoodhauler]

Find out the year and model of your popup, and then sign up on this forum and post questions:

http://www.popupexplorer.com/forum/index.php

I got an account when we first got our popup, and like this forum there were a ton of folks willing to help/point you in the right direction.

 

[jebatty]

If you have access to a Kill-A-Watt meter, run your camper through that with everything "on", or with just what you need to have "on" under battery power, and you will know right away what your amperage is under 120V. Take that X 10 (or 11 to account for efficiency loss) and you will have your draw off a 12V battery through a modified sine wave inverter. Next take the amp hour rating of your deep cycle battery and divide that by the amperage computation, and then divide by 2. That will give you a realistic time under battery power. Best not to run down batteries less than 50%.