Your Questions Answered! Run an RV Fridge on Inverter!

this morning I was answering questions and emails and I thought some of these might be helpful to answer in a video how's it goin I'm jared Gillis welcome to another all about rvs video and today answering some of those questions I actually get quite a few questions throughout the week and let's tackle a handful of these so we got question number one coming from Jeff Brown he says I would like to rip out the linoleum in my camper you have a video on that or what do you suggest so you've probably seen from a lot of our other videos that we've replaced just about all the flooring in our RV and there's a few things that we keep in mind when we're doing it it's actually a pretty easy process and it's nice to build it make it your own personal style so I would consider weight when you're looking at flooring and you also want to consider the durability is it gonna hold up to going out camping and tracking in a lot of stuff so weight durability how is the install going to go with a lot of these vinyl tongue-and-groove click together kind of floating systems or the peel-and-stick there's a lot of great options out there when you're going to install it you also want to consider how you're going to trim the edges be ready to do some trim work with that for instance we put quarter round around our cabinets and around the walls we put trim work just normal trim and we do that because if it's a floating floor like I clicked together vinyl then you're going to stop that usually they they have you stop just a little bit before your wall or your cabinets so there's not buckling if there's expansion or anything like that usually you do that on wood floors that usually goes over to vinyl floors too just because your cuts don't have to be a hundred percent perfect exact you can cover it up with some of that trim work so be prepared to do some of that it helps it make it look a lot better and doing this really just adds a personal touch of your own to your RV and so if you're thinking about doing that I think it's I think it's a great idea just consider weight as number one durability and the the install factor oh and just a quick side note on that sometimes the transition strip can be one of the most difficult things to deal with you don't want to leave a gap if your slide is one that kind of sits flush if it one is one that sits up what are you gonna do you need to put some kind of edging on that or if it sits flat right now we're using like a cove base we've used wood before but something to fill that gap so that stuff doesn't fall in there it doesn't look ugly so consider what you're going to do with that get a game plan before you tear out all your flooring so that you're gonna be happy with the finished product moving on to the next question comes from Carlos he says I know you did a review on the Gerrard tankless water heater and a follow up I'm wondering after all this time do you still recommend it versus a traditional water heater and I would say definitely yes and no well for us we're my wife and I were talking about it if we were gonna get a new rig number one on the list of things that we would change on the RV is we would go to a tankless water heater hands-down we absolutely love it now do I recommend it to everybody absolutely not because you have to be willing to use it as this tankless water heater works best I say works best because I don't know if this is entirely how they intended it to be used but for us and I think the the area that people have a lot of frustration with it and they they try them and they hate them is if you try and use it like a regular tank water heater and this one I'm specifically talking about the Gerard the one that we have it doesn't do well if you turn on the hot water to go take a shower and then try and mix in the cold it it's gonna shut off on you it's gonna be miserable at times it's gonna be too hot and then freezing cold and you're just gonna absolutely hate it but for us we set the temperature for the water heater if I want to take a shower at 108 degrees I set it a hundred eight and I take a shower I only turn on the hot water so if you're not willing to use it that way I would absolutely not recommend it to you if you are willing to use it that way then they are fantastic now I said it's specific to the Gerard because I don't think the trauma is that way you're gonna pay a lot more for the trauma but I think as far as using it like a normal water heater and the quality of the product I think it is absolutely amazing I'd love to get a hands on trial review of the the trauma but we absolutely love our Gerard tankless water heater so the the main reasons why we like it and we would do it again is because we can get you know we have a family of four we don't have to worry about any recovery time in between showers so I know a lot of people will say the tank ones they recover quick just we don't you have to think about that it's just zero recovery time you can go from washing dishes to somebody jumping into the shower with zero time in between and you're not limited to 6 gallon worth of a shower if you're in an RV park we have the option to still save water when we're out there we can still do a quick shower but if you want to take a little bit longer shower when you're in an RV park because you're not worried about conserving water for your tanks you can take just a normal shower which is nice for us being full time if it's a weekend situation you may not really care about it you can take short showers and it's totally fine but for us having that convenience living full-time in the rig is just hands-down one of the things that we love about having a tankless water heater okay number three this is this is way better than typing I'm loving this this one comes from Jim my friends call me fish with a name like that we if we ever meet on the road we are going fishing you're taking me to some kind of special fishing spot that you secret fish and spot that you know of but here's those questions my question is or maybe your thoughts on running your propane gas refrigerator off your inverter while driving from location to location I've always turned my gas off for traveling it's off for hours and I just thought the other day why couldn't I run the inverter for for a while driving currently my inverters and has only hooked into one circuit what are your thoughts I think it could be a good idea running your refrigerator off of your batteries and but there's a few things that I would want to consider I agree with you I we always turn our propane off when we travel I just feel better about it I feel a little safer I know tons of people have done it for a long time we recommend to people and always turn our propane off when we travel it's easier around tunnels all that kind of stuff so great idea there and running your fridge off of the inverter I would consider your battery bank because you don't want to get to where you're camping especially if you're gonna be going boondocking you don't want to get there with your batteries already drained you also want to consider how big your inverter is how much draw your specific fridge drawers will be drawing from that battery bank and so if you're considering those things if you have solar on your rig you can help replenish some of that that's getting pulled out of your batteries while you drive even your your vehicle charging your batteries as you drive can can be a benefit to in that situation I don't know if it would put any more stress on your vehicle that you're towing with I don't think it would but something to consider so off to try that out but for our fridge I know if we're pulling it off the inverter it pulls about 30 amps out of the batteries now that's it's not a hundred percent cycle all the time it's cycling off and on so that's not a hundred percent of the time and I know that our our solar setup that we're going to be installing soon is about that that same equivalent that it can be putting into the batteries so it could be somewhat of a wash you may not even you might be able to make enough power as you drive through your solar use it from your batteries to be able to run your fridge but you want to know how many amps your fridge is going to draw how much battery capacity you have and are you gonna be able to get your batteries up to capacity when you get there or as you're driving because you don't want to show up with empty batteries so those are the things that I would consider but I don't see a problem with running your fridge off the inverter I think it's a I think it's a good good idea okay our next question from Keith gray if I put two battleborn 100 amp batteries in my fifth wheel what amp converters should I use because there's a there's a lot of options out there for how many amps in a converter you can put in there so I know that battleborn batteries they say this plainly that you can charge their battery at like five times the the speed of a lead-acid so if it's a hundred amp hour battery they say you could technically charge it at a hundred amps like you can get a hundred amp converter and charge it they also say that's not good for the battery it's it's not good to charge it that fast so what they usually recommend is about 50% you're not going to do any damage to that battery if it's a hundred amp hour battery and you charge it at 50 amps it's supposed to be completely fine and not harm your battery at all so I would recommend doing you could do something up to there so we have 200 amp hour battleborn batteries and ours and we have the I think it's the 65 amp 60 or 65 amp from progressive dynamics and it works great we I've seen it when it's charging it does good it doesn't do it too fast obviously we're not at that stage where it would be too fast were also it charges it up fairly quickly so it does an efficient job I would highly recommend it I think it's a great unit so yeah that's what we use got another question from Brent Davis and kind of on a battery kick here I have heard recently of a gel battery I'm guessing it is a it's between the AGM and lithium batteries so usually the price of gel batteries is kind of like AGM gel and lithium so it'd be natural to think that the the gel is going to be better than the AGM but traditionally if you're looking at that type of battery chemistry and the pros and cons to those kind of things a hundred times to one people are going to buy the AGM I think literally they sell a hundred AGM battery - one gel battery AGM batteries they do a little bit better if you're gonna draw a massive amount of power out them out of them at at a time gel batteries don't perform quite as well traditionally so why spend that much more money when it's going to be similar performance gel batteries do they handle the heat a little bit better now all batteries aren't they don't love the heat so it would be marginal so I it would be a strange situation why you would want to do that because of heat your AGM you're absorbed glass mat battery is going to is going to do fantastic now the gel battery each of them you know you can mount them in two different positions you don't have to check the fluids in them I believe both of them are like no maintenance they they have a lot of similar properties but I would recommend going with an AGM it's a there's a lot of great options out there for AGM batteries next question Scott Scott Haley another battery question I know very little about batteries and I guess I missed it in your explanation explanation in the video right set a good rule of thumb is don't let your your depth of discharge how low you bring down your battery go beyond that 50% how does one know when it's at 50% thanks so a great question now that that 50% mark like we were just talking about those AGM batteries there's some AGM batteries that say you can bring it down to 80% the key is since we're talking about the depth of discharge just a quick side note is if you're going to bring your batteries down to 50 percent or 80 percent the key is there's going to be kind of a sulfation process that begins there and the longer that it sits with that sulfation on those plates the worse is going to be further your battery so in a nutshell very simple if you're gonna bring your batteries down it's a good idea not a good idea it's better for your battery it's safer for your battery and your battery will last longer if you charge it up quickly don't let it sit down at that depth of discharge being down there for a very long time you want to bring it back up so that brings back to his question is how do you know when you get down to that 50 percent mark so a good battery monitor having a good battery monitor I don't like the battery monitor that came in our RV it's basically just a light system and it tries to tell you where your battery is at with voltage but if you're drawing or if you're charging you don't really know where your batteries are at your battery has to be sitting stationary for a while not having any load or charge put on it so that you can know where it's at as as far as your percentage but if you have a good battery monitor with a shunt that is how you know so let me grab something so these are a couple of battery monitors that we're gonna be talking about in the future this one's a Belmar it's the SG 200 phenomenal new technology coming out in this and it's probably around the same price range as the victor on one that we have that we actually love our battery monitor at they're around 200 bucks so pretty pretty pricey but amazing information and technology that comes out of these kind of guys so we are going to be doing another video this has this cute little baby shunt a little little 100 amp shunt but this will also give you some information a lot of limitations compared to this guy but this will definitely help you figure out how much how much juice you still have in your batteries and this guy cost around $18 a lot of limitations on this but I want to give you guys options so that you can better monitor your your battery level so a good battery monitor with a shunt the shunt is kind of the key part to knowing what is in your battery so I have a whole video on that I'll put a link to it if you wanted to see more about that so good battery monitor so last couple of questions let's hear we got Ronald Landers this one's kind of funny he says anyone ever tell you that you resembled Jim Nabors maybe I'll just leave it at that Jim Nabors if you know who Jim Nabors no that's uh that's Gomer Pyle from Andy Griffith you know the guy that well golly Andy Shazam you know that that guy that's yes I have been told only on from people on YouTube that I look like Jim Nabors I've never had anybody in real life maybe they're they're too embarrassed to tell me I look like Jim Nabors I've been told I look like travis Pastrana back when I had like bushy hair also that reminds me somebody asked what I look like without a hat there you go another answer to your question so I think that's gonna do it and hope you guys enjoyed this if you did give it a thumbs up if you haven't subscribed already and you want to see more videos coming up hit that subscribe button and if we don't see you on the road hopefully we'll see you in the next video

Channel: All About RV's

Views: 107,504

Keywords: Jared Gillis, All about RVs, RVing, RVing questions, RV Batteries, RV Converter Charger, RV Water heater, Water heater, RV, RV Life, RV Life Style, RV Flooring, Inverter fridge, RV Battery care, RV Battery maintenance, RV Battery, Girard Tankless Water heater, Girard, RV Tankless Water heater, Truma Water heater, RV DIY, Less house More Living, RV questions

Id: BOHpyyfku98

Length: 16min 44sec (1004 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 03 2019