Hotlanta - Not

[sawdust_128]

Dumptruck: I have no idea.

However, as I said, I checked and yes indeedy they do come up on inverter and watch the batteries go bye bye. I have not checked to see if the situation is the same with the electric heaters in the bays.

I agree, Aqua-Hot is more than sufficient to keep the cabin and plumbing bay at safe temps. However, there is no aqua-hot for the storage bay. If heat is needed for important things (those 48 cases of Bear Pee Beer) then you need something else.

I believe that Vantare has the Xantrex's programmed to fire the gen-set either on battery condition or on high load detection.

ON EDIT: Thinking about this some more, I do seem to remember that the load was measured-battery-voltage-based. If draw-down was severe, there was a voltage that triggered the genset at 15, 10 and 5 minutes after monitoring three different low voltage readings. There may also be an load amps observation in the mix as well. I'll try to check these.

Michael,

1. make sure that you go to the "Meters" menu on the inverters. There you will be able to check the actual and the temp adjusted voltage state of the house batteries. I usually leave one inverter at this position so I can always get a quick look at the state of the batteries. If you are shutting off the generator before full charge and doing this every time, you may end up discharging the batteries to a detrimental point.

2. Also, if you have a Guest (or other brand) battery tender for your chassis batteries running off of the engine heater circuit, shut that circuit off in the panel. First your chassis bateries should be charged (check the 12 and 24 VAC dash guages). Second, you don't need to be using your house batteries to keep the chassis topped up.

3. If you have time, you should ride out a auto-start through auto-shut-down cycle. You can watch the process as the inverter
a. Verifies the AC-2 (generator) input as good,
b. Goes through the bulk charging mode to float charging mode (different on the two inverters)
c. finishes float and proceeds to shutdown.

Depending on battery condition when you start, it should take about 3 hours.

You will feel much more comfortable using and depending on this feature once you actually see with your own eyes that it works. I was very skeptical until I went through this exercise.

Somewhere in your docs you might find a sheet for your inverter with the voltages and programming parameters which control the auto-run features. Armed with these, the execise becomes very valuable. If you don't have it, I will talk you through what they should be reading off what I have in my manuals. I believe we previously established that we have the same inverter compliment.

Cheers and I hope this helps.