Car camping, Ventilation Question..

freeballer

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i bought my bronco sport late last year and honestly been pretty happy with my decision. Going from civic is a big change, and i'll have
some other questions about maintenance later. I'd like to pick your brain about car camping, more specifically ventilation.

What are some of you using to circulate air, keep it cool? I had an idea of using some old pc fans through the moonroof but not sure how to "mount them"..


Hopefully someone will reply because i'm not sure what materials i can use, and which ones are easy to find in my neck of the woods.
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PaulOinMA

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I thought of using a window instead and searched "car window fan." They mention for camping. One bundle by LUNO comes with fan and screens for the windows.
 

NMhunter

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It says it uses 6.5 watts, which is a little over 1/2 an amp. Car batteries aren't really rated for amp hours because they are designed for high amperage starter motors. I think if you were to run this all night on your car battery, you'd run your battery down. Any time you run your battery down more than 50%, you are shortening its life.

I purchased a 20 amp-hour lithium battery for camping. It runs my camping lights and would work for the fan. I have a 20 watt solar panel with a charge controller designed for lithium batteries. It recharges it with a few hours of sunlight. Lithium batteries can't be charged when it is below freezing. I use an Ultima battery for winter camping.

Here in the high desert southwest, it cools down nicely as soon as the sun goes down, so I've never needed a fan.
 

JamesT

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I thought of using a window instead and searched "car window fan." They mention for camping. One bundle by LUNO comes with fan and screens for the windows.
I have luno gear for my BS and love it. The window screens are great.
 


atlsrt44

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It says it uses 6.5 watts, which is a little over 1/2 an amp. Car batteries aren't really rated for amp hours because they are designed for high amperage starter motors. I think if you were to run this all night on your car battery, you'd run your battery down. Any time you run your battery down more than 50%, you are shortening its life.

I purchased a 20 amp-hour lithium battery for camping. It runs my camping lights and would work for the fan. I have a 20 watt solar panel with a charge controller designed for lithium batteries. It recharges it with a few hours of sunlight. Lithium batteries can't be charged when it is below freezing. I use an Ultima battery for winter camping.

Here in the high desert southwest, it cools down nicely as soon as the sun goes down, so I've never needed a fan.
Wow im surprised that solar panel charges anything.

My 400sf office requires 2200w of panels.
 

sajohnson

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i bought my bronco sport late last year and honestly been pretty happy with my decision. Going from civic is a big change, and i'll have
some other questions about maintenance later. I'd like to pick your brain about car camping, more specifically ventilation.

What are some of you using to circulate air, keep it cool? I had an idea of using some old pc fans through the moonroof but not sure how to "mount them"..


Hopefully someone will reply because i'm not sure what materials i can use, and which ones are easy to find in my neck of the woods.
As NMhunter mentioned, discharging the battery is a concern. There is some good OE battery info here (see post #18):
https://www.broncosportforum.com/forum/threads/battery-replaced-after-3-months.5395/page-2

You'll see the OE battery (lead-acid or AGM) has a reserve capacity (RC) of 120 minutes. That means it can put out 25 amps continuously for 2 hours without going below 10.5 volts. However:

"There’s another important thing to note about maxing out battery reserve capacity levels in lead-acid batteries. Reaching the full RC will draw the battery down to 10.5 volts, which is lower than 50% of charge. This is a level that will dramatically shorten lead-acid battery life if reached regularly. Therefore, consider RC more of an upper limit than a target range.":
https://battlebornbatteries.com/battery-reserve-capacity/

Since the OE battery is designed as a *starting* battery, not deep-cycle, it's really not a good idea to use it as if it was a deep cycle. As Battle Born says, if it is used in that way (using the full RC) will harm the battery, and it's questionable whether it will start the engine.

Having a second battery, ideally lithium (LiFePO4) will eliminate those concerns.

If using the OE starting battery, it would be a good ide to limit the use to about half of the RC -- or 25A for 1 hour (25Ah) or 300 watt-hours. If a load (like a fan) uses 2A for (say) 10-12 hours, that's 20-24Ah which would probably be OK (assuming a healthy, fully charged battery).

It's very easy to forget that there are other loads plugged in -- say a couple chargers. That's why RVs have two (2) or more batteries -- a chassis/starting battery, and a house/coach battery. That way, there's no risk of killing the starting battery.
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