Recent content by Lou Schneider

Call Newmar and ask them.

All lithium batteries are "deep cycle" - you can repeatedly drain them to the last 10% or less of their rated capacity without harming them. You'll pay lots more for 6 volt lithiums if you can find them - 12 volts is such a basic building block that economies of mass production really come into...

Happy to help! To further clarify, you'll have 4 wires total going to the meter. One each going directly to the battery's (+) terminal with fuse and one going to the battery's (-) terminal. And one to each side of the shunt, the physical polarity of the shunt doesn't matter since it doesn't...

It is nice when you're waiting in line for 4 hours for one of those Canadian ferries. :)

Welcome to The RV Forum, Trooper! I'd go with one or two 100 a/h lithiums. Prices are extremely cheap right now, with 12 volt 100 a/h batteries available on Amazon for less than $300. Be sure to get one with cold temperature charging protection (most include this now, even the inexpensive...

Figure the refrigerator will draw about 1 kWh (80 amp-hours) a day from your batteries. That's how much power you'll have to replace while boondocking, either from solar or from running a generator. If it was me, I'd go with the lithium batteries. Prices are ridiculously low right now.

Not in any quantity until we substantially increase (double or triple) the capacity of our power grid. 250 miles at 150 watt-hours per mile means you have to pump 37.5 kWh into the battery. To do this in 10 minutes (1/6 of an hour) requires 225,000 watts, or 10 times the peak power a 100 amp...

I rented a new Jeep Compass and had the same opinion of it's tech and performance. Heck, the 25 year old radio and CD player in my 1999 Ford F350 works better than the Jeep's "sound system" and the manual controls for the cabin climate control system are easier to operate and more intuitive...

At $5 a gallon, $10k will buy 2,000 gallons of gas. If your commute is 30 km (20 miles) roundtrip, you'll use about 3/4 gallon per day. Assuming the carport doesn't take time off due to snow load, cloudy weather, etc. you're looking at 2600 days, or about 8 years of a 5 day a week commute to...

High rate supercharging and full discharges are hard on the battery. As the article says, guess what usually happens to a rental car.

The 6300 is an older design with an unfiltered, unregulated output for most loads and a low current (13.5 volts, 10 amps) regulated output for sensitive electronics and battery charging. When you are boondocking an internal relay connects both sets of loads to the battery via an internal relay...

The shunt should be installed at the battery, directly on the negative battery post. If you install the shunt at the load center it may miss some of the current from other sources connected directly to the battery like a solar charger or the charging wire coming from the tow vehicle and loads...

Used oil also used to be spread on dirt roads to keep the dust down. Today there are much better products for both.

I considered getting a commercial tractor a while back when I got my CDL and spent a summer driving one during the harvest I but gave up the idea for several reasons. First is insurance, policies are expensive, especially for inexperienced drivers. The commercial policies assume the vehicle...

This started in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy in New York. Rather than rebuild the damaged landline network the phone companies provided cellular adapters to let landline phones use the 3G cellular network. You'd put it on the counter next to the phone, plug it in and the phone would...