Ice castle battery life

[07TUNDRA]

My old man went and purchased a 6x8 ice castle "grandpas hideout ". It came with an interstate battery. Just wondering what kind of battery life we should be getting with a single battery, using the furnace and maybe one of the lights on ? The CO / propane detector will occasionally ( every 30 seconds ) beep / and will get alternating red / green light which according to user manual, is either battery voltage problem or detector malfunction.

[springermnguy26]

I know in my 8 by 16 I can run the furnace and lights for about 24 hours. This year I replaced all the lights with led so it's probably more then that. I always unhook the battery when not in use. That propane detector will drain my fully charged battery in a week while not in use.

[springermnguy26]

I don't recall my propane detector ever doing that even with low battery. There might be an issue with it.

[harvey lee]

I also went with LED's in my lights, help save some battery. I have no issues with any lights on the detector, mine will flash I believe green but if the battery gets low, it will go to I believe yellow. I know then to turn the generator on to charge them up. I have never checked how long I can go before any of the batteries get low. I run my generator every day for a few hours so I do not have any power issues.

I run so much stuff in the house, I do not know how long the batteries last but I do run one just for the furnace and another for assc.

Only a guess but if the lights are doing what you say, I would guess a low battery, just a guess.

[JSK76]

I just bought a new IC this weekend and it has a master shut off switch for the battery. That will be nice for not draining the battery from the CO and propane detector.

[JSK76]

Ice castle started putting a disconnect in the 2015 models. Just get a 30 amp rocker switch and run the positive battery wire to it. Put it by the door so you don't have to walk in or out in the dark. Mines in the back and although I'm glad I have one, I wish it was by the door. My battery is in the back so I understand why they did it that way.

[Boar]

Ok so let me get this straight. Say you leave for two weeks before fish again. every thing is shut down, lights, radio, ect. its possible for for something in the house to drain the battery partialy, co detector, propane detector,ect, anything that can draw not matter how small will drain some of the charge from tha battery, then since a battery will freeze too the point of the draw down, one will only get partaily life expectancy from a battery than whe he first bought it.Right?

Heres my story,

I bought a 2013 IC fisrt year i noticed the the batter life ran the furnace for quite a while. if my genny ran out of gas in the middle of the night, the battery would carry us thru till morning for sure, cause it happened, onec or twice, then at the begining of this season, I Had a genny problem and shut off everything but the radio and the furnace of cource, and brought in the genny to work on it. the battery drained out in 15-20 min. I bought a new interstate, and the battery ran my buddy house all night with out an on board charger.

I then installed the battery in my house, and now without genny problems Im assuming the battery gets fully charged and stays that way cause of constant charging from the on board charger ran by the genny. right? well after the close of the season I brought it home and parked the IC in the yard and havent given the battery much thought. my circut board has all good fuses. but my new battery is going thru exactly what happend the first season. dosent seem to hold a charge very long. is there enough draw in the house from sensors that it can drain the battery, the freeze it to that point of draw givening it a low charge life.?

[Whoaru99]

ANY amount of draw/parasitic load will drain the battery. How long it takes depends on how much parasitic load there is. Also, a battery will self-discharge all on its own with nothing connected. In cold weather, however, the rate of self-discharge is pretty low.

Parasitic load can be measured. With everything connected that you normally leave connected, disconnect the negative feed from the battery. Connect a multimeter in series between the negative battery feed and the negative battery terminal. Start with the meter set to the highest amp scale for good measure, but hopefully you'll need to turn down the scale and find only some milliamps.

By knowing the parasitic load, you could get a rough estimate of discharge time based on the rated amp-hours of the battery.

A small solar charger probably would be good for off-setting minor parasitic load of things like those detectors. Again, if you know the parasitic load you can make an informed choice about solar charger size. Or, install the disconnect...

[Boar]

well I figured this one out, pretty much what you said Whoaru but on a little bigger scale, I met a IC saleman this weekend and he told me the the on board charger is only a small 3 amp charger qand running lights at night ect drawns down the batt to the point that the charger cant keep up and by the time I leave the batt isnt at full charg. he said go to LED lighting and ad a bigger bat tender.