2008 roadtrek 210P Tripp lite inverter low battery charging dip switch setting.

[youngnretired]

I was troubleshooting some electrical in our 2008 roadtrek 210 popular yesterday and was reviewing the Tripp lite inverter manual and the dip switch settings. My battery charging amp setting dip switch is set to high, which is the factory default setting. The manual says the low setting may result in longer battery life. Is anyone running theirs on the low amp setting, and have you had any positive or negatives with this? I do realize that depending on your battery charge state and how long you drive the vehicle for depends on if you fully recharge the batteries or not. Looking for real world feedback.

 

[booster]

I was troubleshooting some electrical in our 2008 roadtrek 210 popular yesterday and was reviewing the Tripp lite inverter manual and the dip switch settings. My battery charging amp setting dip switch is set to high, which is the factory default setting. The manual says the low setting may result in longer battery life. Is anyone running theirs on the low amp setting, and have you had any positive or negatives with this? I do realize that depending on your battery charge state and how long you drive the vehicle for depends on if you fully recharge the batteries or not. Looking for real world feedback.

I used that a bit way back when we had the Tripplite to try to get the batteries more full. IIRC it is 10 amps instead of 45 amps and it stays in absorption longer. The downside is it takes forever to charge so depending on battery bank size and discharge depth, overnight might not be enough. The high setting will leave you batteries at about 80-85% full.

 

[youngnretired]

Thanks for the insight on this. We have a 2 month route 66 trip scheduled for this fall where we'll be moving just about every day. We'll visit friends in Vegas and stop at the Balloon festival in Albuquerque, so except for about 3 days of not moving from one location to the next two different times, the van will be driven every day. We usually do 200-250 miles a day when we take trips like this. Typically the only thing we use electric while camping are occasional interior lights, water pump and likely a TV (when I get that solved). Fridge will be on gas unless we have shore power. So I'm thinking the 10A setting would be just fine on that trip. That is assuming that we don't have shore power, and likely given the option at a campground, we'd typically opt for the non-electrical site.

 

[booster]

Thanks for the insight on this. We have a 2 month route 66 trip scheduled for this fall where we'll be moving just about every day. We'll visit friends in Vegas and stop at the Balloon festival in Albuquerque, so except for about 3 days of not moving from one location to the next two different times, the van will be driven every day. We usually do 200-250 miles a day when we take trips like this. Typically the only thing we use electric while camping are occasional interior lights, water pump and likely a TV (when I get that solved). Fridge will be on gas unless we have shore power. So I'm thinking the 10A setting would be just fine on that trip. That is assuming that we don't have shore power, and likely given the option at a campground, we'd typically opt for the non-electrical site.

Thanks for the details of the upcoming trip use pattern as that is a big deal in deciding how to use equipment or replace it if you decide to do that.

A lot of people on here do the drive every day "touring" type camping, although we usually don't and prefer longer stays in desirable areas. All personal choice.

You won't be using much power with absorption frig on gas when not on shore power and a few lights won't be too bad on power but always good to change them to LED if they haven't been already. The Roadtrek lights are 10 watts and the fluorescent quite a bit more than that and all can be changed to LED easily. The TV, depending on how it is done could be anywhere from 40 watts to 300 watts so that will probably be the largest drain. I would expect you will easily be under 40ah per day. The propane and CO detectors can use 9ah day if the 12v power is on so be sure to add that into you planned use. What you haven't mentioned is device charging which has gotten to be a larger part of power use lately. A couple of phone, tablet, laptop, etc can add up very quickly. Often it is best to charge them while driving if you have a smaller (by today's standard) battery bank.

200-250 miles a day will 4-5 hours of driving for most people so it should get you near full, but not all the way as with lead acid it can take up to 8 hours because the rate decreases so much at the near full range. If the batteries are in good shape you should get to about 95% or more, I think.

If your batteries are in good shape you should be fine on your trip, it looks like.

 

[youngnretired]

the coach batteries are a couple months old, so those are good.

The 12V TV's that I've seen (been concentrating on mechanical things first) have been <40W, and the last one I looked it, it was <30W. I suppose these are getting more and more efficient as the days go on. I'll work on this after I figure out what I'm going to do with the trans cooler and radiator.

All our previous camping experiences up until 2 years ago have been pretty much sitting in the woods enjoying the quiet and burning wood, and we certainly burn a whole lot of it. Typically the only time we go anywhere is to go get ice cream, and more wood. We camp at a little known location in the middle of the woods just off a fire road in the federal forest. It's federal so it has a picnic table and fire ring. During the fall, we've seen as few as 5 cars go down the road a day. Yea, it's pretty quiet.

Two years ago we got a Subaru Outback and did a 4 week Washington trip and lower Canada return in the fall and camped out of the back of it a for 9 nights. It was extremely comfortable, except for getting in and out of the back. I also made window screens to keep the bugs out and we could have the windows down any distance we wanted. Last fall we did a 6.5 week Alaska trip as we had a wedding to attend in upper BC Canada. We rented a Chrysler mini van and I built a elevated wood floor to put bins underneath and allow us to sleep out of the back, and we did that for 19 nights. Same thing, extremely comfortable except for getting in and out. Since it was a rental, I didn't know what we were going to get, so I just brought screen material and closed the door around screening, and we could have the windows down most of the way without getting bugs in. We saw so many campers on this trip, we talked about it and decided to get one. But any of our other previous trips have been typically driving somewhere, motel it, then the next day go somewhere else and explore. My wife has the mindset that if we sit somewhere, she wants a fire. As of now, I'm not enthused to haul wood in the RT like I do in the truck, for obvious reasons.

I've not converted the interior lights to LED yet. I may get to that before the fall, or maybe not. We'll see. Concentrating on the mechanical stuff, because that's going to take a while to figure out and get done, and be the most expensive.

Typically, we'll charge the hand devices with the chassis system, when we drive from location to location. I'm much better at that than my wife. She's used to plugging in while at home/motel, but this fall will be totally different.

Pictures of a day's worth of fire wood and the minivan conversion.

 

[booster]

You need to be very careful with the firewood as it is illegal to transport between many areas of the country due to pest infestations.

Emerald ash borer, pine bark beetles, etc.

A single careless camper can accelerate the spread greatly, so please get only local wood for all of our benefit and the forests.

We are living it currently at our home in the north exurbs of Minneapolis. Ash borer is here and killing ash trees in our neighborhood much sooner than areas around us. Our city has a lot of that and the arborist at the city says it almost always transported firewood that causes these pockets of borer dead trees. And, yes our neighbors (2.5 acre lots) had lots of bonfires with people bringing in firewood from who knows where. It is not exaggerated as dying trees are all around us. We spend about $400 a year to get our 7 ash trees treated as we need them for shade and we will be long dead before we could regrow trees of that size. Ours appear to be the only ones on the two block street that are not infected.

 

[youngnretired]

We don't move wood too far from it's source for that very reason. We also have ash trees in our yard and spend about $550 a year treating 4 trees. We didn't get to them soon enough, but they are still pretty green. 3 of the 4 trees in the front yard are ash trees, and two of them are pretty good size, likely 50+ years old (We've been at this house for 35 years). The ash borer flies, so it will naturally move itself to eventually infect all the ash trees. It's just that humans help them spread around faster. It's inevitable that the ash borer is going to get everywhere there are ash trees, then the borer will begin to die off. Then there will be another bug that will come and take out some other species of tree. It's an endless cycle. I've said for years that the city/county/etc needs to start cutting down the dead trees before they all start falling on roads and killing people. Ironically just the other day there was a news piece on that very thing. Around here there are complete groves of trees that are all dead. It's sad.

 

[booster]

We don't move wood too far from it's source for that very reason. We also have ash trees in our yard and spend about $550 a year treating 4 trees. We didn't get to them soon enough, but they are still pretty green. 3 of the 4 trees in the front yard are ash trees, and two of them are pretty good size, likely 50+ years old (We've been at this house for 35 years). The ash borer flies, so it will naturally move itself to eventually infect all the ash trees. It's just that humans help them spread around faster. It's inevitable that the ash borer is going to get everywhere there are ash trees, then the borer will begin to die off. Then there will be another bug that will come and take out some other species of tree. It's an endless cycle. I've said for years that the city/county/etc needs to start cutting down the dead trees before they all start falling on roads and killing people. Ironically just the other day there was a news piece on that very thing. Around here there are complete groves of trees that are all dead. It's sad.

I am very glad to hear you don't move it far from use point. Many places around here in the state and national parks are actually requiring only inspected certified wood now. It started a few years ago. We got over the bonfire thing pretty quickly after a couple of years. Why pollute the nice areas with all the smoke.

We started to treat ours a long time ago. First with drench around the base that we did ourselves and then once past 12" diameter (chest high) we switched to getting them injected. We started really early after there was a hot spot about 50 miles from us on the opposite side of the city back when the nearest known infestation was nearly 200 miles away from there. They traced it to firewood brought home from a lake cabin.

I think we are the only ones treating ash trees around our neighborhood, which is too bad. People are betting on false money savings, but we can treat for about $125 every two years per tree and it takes a long time to get to the $3000+ that it would cost to take down and dispose of a 16"+ dead one. I expect they will mostly stand until they fall, like you are seeing and if it hits the house the insurance may well refuse it because you left the dead tree in place. Tree trimmer said that ash dry out very quickly and get brittle so fall over sooner than other trees do.

I asked the arborist that treats ours about saving them once they show infestation and his answer wasn't encouraging. Basically, he said that if the crown isn't much thinned and you go to double dose treatments every year, you MIGHT be able to save them. I asked for a % chance and was told 50% or less and you have spent a lot on the treatment before it dies.

We have had multiple rows of red pines and spruce on two sides total about 850' with 140 trees that we planted 35 years ago. They are now crowded and looking bad so we have been having them thinned and trimmed up. about 45 removed so far and rest in the process of getting trimmed up to about 10 feet so we can underplant new trees to take over eventually (next owners, we will be dead by then). This time using Balsam fir and white/maybe some red cedar trees . Probably have about 30 started currently. Pine bark beetles and a spruce disease are coming so our trees are all doomed, I think.

 

[youngnretired]

When we go camping and sit in the woods, we get our wood from typically less than a 1/2 mile away. We're in the national forest, and there's plenty of fallen trees to take back. When we camp, we cook everything over the campfire. Since having the popup, it's nice to be able to use the stove to cook eggs and bacon, because doing those over the fire was quite challenging. Either the eggs cooked in like 30 seconds, or 30 minutes. Hard to regulate heat over a fire.

When we started having our trees treated 2 years ago, we were quite far behind the plan for saving them. I didn't know they were ash trees until a friend stopped by and commented that he was surprised that ours were still green. The arborist said we had a 50/50 shot if they'd make it. This year when they came out to measure the trees, 3 of them grew and one didn't. So, we'll see. But we did see dead green bugs on the driveway after it was treated 2 years ago, so hopefully we got to it in time.

Something will likely get to whatever you plant (unless it's weeds), just give it time and something will eventually get it.