A bit off topic.....I am going camping in a couple of weeks. Taking our popup trailer and will have no electric. I will be running the campers lights and water pump on batteries. I have one on board RV battery and an going to take a 2nd, maybe a 3rd. Heres the question...Which will last longer....Hook the batteries in parallel...or run them one at a time and switch them when they get low?
If you're going to hook up batteries in parallel you can possibly damage one of the batteries as one may drain too low and you could damage a cell
The safest way would be to use them individually
It's all about wattage. 10 batteries connected in parallel will last exactly the same if you used each battery separately 10 times.
It's easy to figure out how long they will last if you know the current draw of your lights/pump, and you know the battery's capacity which is measured in amp/hrs.
I really don't see any advantage to going parallel, just longer to drain it, but i would use them individually. Probably about the same hours out of them either way.
I bought a small solar panel for my trillium and have used it for up to 3 nights and never had to charge the battery. I have a deep cycle battery with water pump, lights and fan for furnace and with small solar panel it seems to keep up. I think I picked it up at CTC for less than 20 bucks.
