Cheap Travel

You are going to want some electricity to run your laptop, cell phone, and charge your camera battery. In the summer a 12 volt fan will help keep you cool, and in the winter a 12 volt heating pad under your mattress is a great thing. Plug in a 12 volt crock pot and have a meal ready after the days drive. Here is a simple way to get power. Buy the best deep cycle battery from Walmart you can afford and have room for in your van, or, if you have a little more money buy the best Trojan brand battery you can afford. Replace the battery caps that came with your battery with something called Hydrocaps. If you have the money, buy a deep cycle AGM battery and forget the hydrocaps. Here is one simple way to charge your new battery. Run a cable from the car battery back to the deep cycle battery (I am going to call it a house battery from now on). Don’t hook it up to the battery, hook it up to a battery selector switch instead. Run a cable from the switch to the house battery. To use it, every time you need electricity turn the switch to off, this disconnects the house battery from the starting battery so you won’t accidental run the car battery down leaving you stranded. When you are done using the house battery for power, turn the selector back to on, this connects the two batteries together so that the house battery is being charged by the cars alternator. Buy an inexpensive 600 watt inverter from Walmart and you can run most 110 volt items such as a TV/DVD.

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