Batteries

The saga of the batteries could easily fill a book.  I'll spare you most of the boring details.  Suffice it to say that the ARB fridge/freezer needs a lot more power than most owners will profess.  We found this out on out test trip to Yellowstone when we used the regular car battery and a Walmart deep cycle battery that we borrowed from the 5th wheel.  The ARB situatiuon, combined with the fact that Carol needs a heated bed, caused us to really think about our battery situation when we got back from Yellowstine.  We ended up replacing the car battery with a dual purpose battery.  It is both a starting battery and a deep cycle battery.  Odyssey makes the best dual purpose battery, but it costs nearly $300.  Turns out that Sears sells a Diehard Platinum battery that is the Odyssey battery repackaged for about $200:

Still a lot of money but, because it would be purchased at Sears. I knew I could return it if it wasn't all everyone said it was.  It turned out to be such an amazing battery that I bought another one to replace the auxiliary battery.  So we now have tons of available power.  These batteries have a four year full replacement warranty and a 100 month prorated warranty.  When you do the math and, consider how hard this setup can be on batteries, what appears to be a very expensive setup really isn't as expensive as you might think.  There is a good chance that the warranty will be used on a least one of these batteries in the first four years.  Any other battery might last two years if you are lucky under these circumstances.  So it really isn't as bad as it might sound.  That said, the $700 fridge/freezer is now costing closer to $1200.  That's a lot of money to keep food really cold.  But, then again, it is also keeping us warm at night which is extremely important because, with our health problems, there is no other option.