Warm Weather Wonders

With the Warmer Weather here, at least for now, I will need to run Jenny less and less. This is good, as this will save me fuel and therefore money. 

I ran her last night, even though I didn’t need to, just to charge up Wanda’s batteries. It worked, by the time I turned Jenny off, Wanda’s batteries were full, as in completely full . . . 4 bars! You see, there is one little station in Wanda that allows me to check on how full each of Wanda’s tanks are and yes her batteries. It has a simple measuring scale of 4 bars. 

I can use Wanda’s systems even if she has one bar, but then you are risking things not working or cutting out. As in it is risky to operate the slide out with her charge that low, as it could stop part way in. That has happened once and I had to fire up and connect Jenny for a few minutes as I brought the slide-out in. 

The other risk when Wanda’s batteries are at one bar is that if the batteries are too low then the furnace stops working. The same is true if the propane bottle runs dry. Again, no warning, no indicator light, just that it stops and Wanda starts to get cold, you then go to investigate. 

Typically when I am done running Jenny, Wanda’s batteries are at 3 bars and by the end of the morning they are down to one bar or perhaps two. Yet even at one bar still the lights aren’t dim and things still work. Last night she was all the way up to 4 bars, fully charged, usually I don’t see that unless Jenny is running and connected. 

What this means is that I won’t bother running Jenny tonight and may even not run the furnace at all. I may use my inverter to tap into Wanda’s battery power and run my laptop that way tonight. One of the advantages of getting used to the colder weather is that now, anything above 10C is T-shirt weather.

I may have to do some research but I am wondering if Wanda’s batteries actually function poorer in cold weather. I do remember them lasting longer in warmer weather; again I will have to research this. If this is true, if I were to build my own RV rig, I would make sure to heat and insulate my bank of batteries so as to increase their efficiency in winter. Of course this would need to be regulated somehow, so as to not overheat your batteries.