One of the first things we did when we bought our pop up camper, was buy a battery. The camper didn’t come with one, but we we knew we needed electricity when we were dry camping, so we started shopping for a good battery. We kept hearing that we should buy the biggest battery we were able to afford. After a little research, we ended up with a group 27 deep cycle marine/RV battery. I was pretty satisfied with our purchase. It got us through our huge summer road trip with zero issues. The battery would charge while we were driving, and we’d be good for a few days of camping. It seemed pretty easy and worry free. What more did we need to know?
We even installed a battery monitor to keep track of our usage and let us know how much battery life we had left while we were off the grid. I felt pretty confident with our system. We took a few more camping trips to state parks after our big summer trip. Every place we stayed had hookups, though, so we didn’t really need to use the battery much this winter, and it sat unused a lot. Over spring break, we decided to load up the camper and take the kids to Chiricahua National Monument. There were no hookups, but we had our battery and our fresh water tank, so we thought we were set.
We plugged in the trailer the day before we left, confident that it would top off our battery and we’d have enough power for the weekend. After an unexpected flat on our tow vehicle and few other unexpected delays, we finally hit the campground at 8pm. We had never set up in the dark before, so this was new territory for us. We were pretty confident we knew the ins and outs of our little camper well enough to set it up by lantern light. We got the trailer popped up, pulled up the galley, and turned on the lights. Imagine our surprise when we found out that our battery was completely dead. No lights, no water pump, and no heater. It made for an interesting evening. Mr. TypeTwoFun’s parents were actually camping a few spots away and had a generator, so they loaned us a battery the next day. We limped through that trip, and we had a great time, but when we got home, I decided it was time to learn everything I could about battery maintenance. I was pretty shocked to find out that I really knew absolutely nothing about how a battery works. So, in case you are just like me, I decided to share what I learned here with you! 😛
There are a variety of ways to set up the battery system in your camper, and I’m not the definitive expert on batteries. We decided to go with one 12V battery for our camper, because it seemed to fit our needs best. If you do more boondocking than we do, there may be a better system for your needs. This just happens to be what works best for us… and it was fairly inexpensive, which also works for us.
Purchasing a Pop Up Camper Battery
What type of battery do I need?
You’ll want to make sure you’ve selected a deep cycle battery. Deep cycle batteries have less starting energy than the type of battery you’d use to start your car, but they have a greater long-term energy delivery. Deep cycle batteries are also designed to be discharged down as much as 80% and then recharged time after time. That’s important when you are camping for several days, because you’ll put a significant drain on that battery. There are different types of deep cycle batteries that require different types of maintenance. The cheapest, and the one we decided to purchase, is the wet cell (flooded) lead acid battery. These batteries require a little bit of maintenance, but they are much cheaper than their maintenance-free counterparts.
What size deep cycle battery should I purchase?
Deep cycle batteries are divided into different “groups” based on physical size and terminal placement. You can also get a few more amp hours (I’ll cover that in a bit) from a larger battery. Common deep cycle battery sizes are groups 24, 27, and 31 (although there are other sizes). The battery box on our camper fit a group 24 battery, but we realized we’d really like the extra amp hours we’d get from a larger battery. We decided to purchase a group 27 deep cycle marine/RV battery from Costco. Although I know there are some better batteries out there, this one only cost us about $90, and you really can’t beat Costco’s return policy. Of course, we had to purchase a bigger battery box, so if you choose to upsize your battery, make sure you purchase a new box and that the new box will fit on the tongue of your camper.
What are amp hours?
Yeah, that confused me for a while. All deep cycle batteries are rated in amp hours (AH). The amp hour rating is basically, how many amps the battery can deliver for how many hours before the battery is discharged. Amps times hours. The standard AH rating is usually for 20 hours. This means that the battery is discharged down to 10.5 volts (when a battery is generally considered dead) over a 20 hour period while the total actual amp-hours it supplies is measured. A battery that can deliver 5 amps for 20 hours before it is discharged would have a 100 amp hour rating. 5 Amps X 20 Hours = 100 Amp Hours. A typical group 24 deep cycle battery has a rating of 70-85 amp hours, whereas a typical group 27 deep cycle battery has a rating of between 85-105 amp hours. If you do a lot of dry camping or you have a number of things running off your battery when you camp (A/C unit, heaters, lights, phone chargers, etc.), it makes sense to buy the biggest battery you can afford–or your camper can accommodate.
Now that you know about battery basics, let’s talk about Maintaining Your Pop Up Camper Battery.
Happy Camping!
My family just picked up our first pop up yesterday and in doing various research came across your site. What an amazing job you are doing and it’s great that you explain everything in lay person’s terms. I do have to pick up a new battery so your blog on battery maintenance was very helpful. I can see one of my first projects being the voltmeter. My question is, do you or your readers have any thoughts on a solar panel for charging the battery while at primitive sites? I thought if we camped at a primitive site for several days or longer this might be a great way to recharge the battery. Some of the sites discussing solar for RV’s I have been to are older and some are frankly making my head spin. I’m just not sure of all the gotchas to look for. Thanks in advance for any advice.
Congrats on the new camper, Bob! They are so much fun. We are looking at solar for our pop up camper, but I’m still in the research stages. 😉 You’re right, there are so many things to learn. It makes my head spin a bit, too. It’s definitely on our long list up camper projects, though.
Have you added solar to your camper yet? If so what did you go with?
Not yet, Robert. We definitely have it on the list, but haven’t had a chance to do much camping lately. 🙁
Really helpful article. Thank you for sharing. I have 2006 Fleetwood Utah CP, nearly brand new… Used only 7 times in 9 years. We experienced the battery problem in very 2nd trip.
Batteries were a little confusing for me, too, Ajay. Since purchasing the BatteryMINDer, we haven’t had any issues. 🙂
I have a question….When you say that the battery was charging while you guys were driving, how was it doing this? Did you guys make a connection from your vehicle (vehicles alternator?) to the camper/battery? Otherwise, great article! I just had some confusion on that because I’d also like to learn how to charge my camper battery while I’m driving and not around a electrical outlet. Thanks for any advice! BTW…GREAT WEBSITE!!!
Matt, on most 7-pin connectors there is a 12V line from your tow vehicle to your camper battery. This will charge the battery at a moderate rate while you drive, but we’ve found that if we are staying in one place for more than a night, we need a long drive to keep our battery topped off.
Now you need to explore adding solar to your camper… you’ll never go back! We can charge electronics, run the water pump, fan, lights etc every day with no hookups, no generator. Love it.
That’s next on the list, Anthony! 😀
Anthony:
Just wondering if you would care to share what type of system you are using here to help ease the learning curve.
Thanks!
My husband tell me that we need to take the battery off the trailer and charge it on a charger in our storage room. Do you know if that is a good idea or not?
That’s what we do when we charge our battery. Make sure you get a good quality charger that will also desulfate the battery. Like this one. 🙂
Hi Larissa,
One more thing to consider is the Carbon Monoxide Detector that is installed in every Pop-Up Camper. The Carbon Monoxide Detector will drain your battery if your battery is left connected to the Pop-Up. It will only take about a week to 2 weeks to drain the battery. Even if you flip the breakers on the power converter the Carbon Monoxide Detector will still stay on, it is a fail safe. The battery should be disconnected from the Pop-Up when not in use. I connect my battery the morning of the trip and I know it is ready once I get to the camp site.
I could not figure out for the life of me what was draining my battery after every camping trip until I figured out it was the Carbon Monoxide Detector.
Happy Camping!
Adam
Yep! You’re right, Adam. You’ll usually hear a beeping sound from the carbon monoxide detector when the battery is low. We typically pull the battery out of the camper and store it on the charger when not in use.
do you take it of between EVERY trip? or just for the winter? we bought our new(used) pop up in October, i was told to take it off and keep it on a trickle charger over the winter and bad me, i didnt. it was already a 5 year old battery anyway, but i killed it. ill learn next time. im reading to determine what battery to replace with and how to get the most life and use out of it. we mainly use electrical hook up when we camp but i would love to try some off grid. so back to my original question, how often do you put it on the charger? do you ever just plug in the camper and allow that to charge it?
We plug it into the trickle charger at least once a month. We have hot AZ summers, so sometimes more often. Our camper is old and doesn’t do a good job of charging it.
Hi Larissa,
You can also conserve battery life by switching your T10 Incandescent Light Bulbs to LED. The traditional incandescent bulbs draw about 1.25 to 1.35 amps per bulb x 4 bulbs in my Pop-Up and it was 5.4 amps for just 4 light bulbs which is INSANE!. I switched to LED ($6.99 for eight bulbs) and only use 0.40 amps now for all 4 bulbs, yeah that is it! I also installed AA battery Push Stick Up LED lights next to my hard wired lights to also conserve 12v battery life.
Adam
Absolutely, Adam. We covered LED lighting here, when we changed out our fixtures. Of course, you don’t have to change out the whole fixture. You can just change out the bulbs. Makes a huge difference either way. 🙂
Quick question about the outlets (1982 Starcraft Starlite). I’ve installed an LED rope around the inside of the roof.
It seems that none of the outlets work when the battery is providing the power. They all work when the pop-up is plugged in.
Any ideas?
You can’t run the outlets off your battery, Layne. They’ll only work when you are plugged into shore power. 😉
First time camping with pop up and noticed solar panels. I would like to research them. Website ideas? Or info?
That one is still on our to-do list, Tracy. We are leaning towards portable solar panels rather than mounting them to the roof of the PUP, though. 🙂
Just a comment about the CO detector draining the battery. Have you thought about removing it and capping off the wires. Replace it with a battery operated (no connections) detector. I know these are available at Home Depot and Lowes.
What about the refrigerator? I don’t think there’s an on/off switch.
You should have an on/off switch on the outside of the camper, just behind the fridge panel door. 🙂
http://www.zampsolar.com/
portable rv units.
this is what i purchased. it folds down to a suitcase size, & the plug in connection made it girl-easy to use.
i say yes invest.
We are actually considering the Renogy version of that kit, Kat. Great minds think alike. 😉
Have several Renogy systems and highly recommend them.
RV, Sea Can, Farm, Ham Go-Kit
Just clicked on the link to battery minder on Amazon from your link and ordered it. I was on the fence about whether to get this or battery tender but you sold me because I know you do your research. Thanks!
Hello,
You seem to offer some great advice so thanks for that. I had to lookup boondocking as it seems to be a well used ‘US’ term but had not made it to me here in Canada before.
We bought a larger battery that we had before purely by accident as Costco would not allow us to take out other battery into the store to do a comparison but they said bring it it with the receipt for the new one to get money back so there was a bit of back and forth in the costco parking lot and when we got home the new battery did not fit the battery box, our camping budget is so tight we cant go get another battery box so I have the camper hooked up to the house to charge the battery before we leave and I will unhook and hookup again when we arrive for the 4 day camp in a local ground.
I read a few forums and one person said idling a vehicle for 1 hour with jumpers will charge the battery at the camp ground but I am unsure how other campers will like that as idling is not very green and is banned in some areas.
We are so green that we dont even know how to charge the battery when driving, Do we need the 12v on in the tent trailer, do we leave it all off? Not even sure if having the tent trailer hooked up to the house requires us to have the 120v on to charge or if it will with it off. I feel so out of my depth. Before we got the new battery we had been camping a few times where we had to jumper the battery to get the power winch to go up and down and then just camped with LED lights from the dollar store in thee camper. We like roughing it so its okay but would prefer to have all the stuff working and understand it better.
Thanks
Robert and Michelle
Thanks so much for this! We are going through this right now! Such a headache! We actually had to hand crank it down yesterday because our brand new battery was dead!
Ugh. We had that a lot in the beginning. Now our BatteryMINDer keeps everything in working order. Just hook it up once a month or so.
Just bought a 50Watt portable solar panel for our pup (rockwood 2514g) for this camping season. Haven’t tried it yet but will let you know how it works out. Got it on sale at Canadian Tire for $100, reg price $300! So if it keeps our battery charged while boondocking for 5 days it’ll be great deal. Lots of great info on your blog. Thanks