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Topic: Power inverter

Fintious

via mobile 13/4/2024 at 2:37pm
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Hi all, off camping near Bamburgh Castle in the summer on a non electric pitch (have always gone electric before except wild camps). My wife likes camping so long as she has her comforts, one of which is a huge inflatable bed which has a built in pump on a 3 pin plug. With this in mind I’ve been looking at the idea of getting a power inverter and have seen some online which have a cigarette lighter plug and a croc clip option to connect straight to the car battery. Anyone got any experience of using such an inverter? Will probably only use it to inflate the bed as have gas cookers etc. not sure if the site has a freezer for cold box ice packs but can deal with that.

Colin21

13/4/2024 at 6:43pm
Location: East Herts
Outfit: 1992 Elddis Wisp 450CT + X Trail

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Inverters are a really heavy drain on a battery, as even on their own they draw power. Plug something into them and they draw even more. Not sure how much those air pumps take, but they do need to be run for quite a while to inflate a big air-bed. You would need to check how many watts the air-bed pump takes, then look at inverters with about 50% more capacity. Don't run the inverter off the car battery though, unless you have the engine running or you might not have enough battery power left to start the car.

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Colin

Fintious

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Yeah, will check a page of the pump. It’s quite a hefty one that inflates the bed in 4 minutes. Might be better off ‘forgetting’ to pack the big bed and using a standard blow up🤔

Colin21

13/4/2024 at 8:21pm
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Quote: Originally posted by Fintious on 13/4/2024
Yeah, will check a page of the pump. It’s quite a hefty one that inflates the bed in 4 minutes. Might be better off ‘forgetting’ to pack the big bed and using a standard blow up🤔

If the electric pump only takes 4 minutes it must be quite a hefty one indeed. You would probably need a really big inverter to cope with that, and it would take a correspondingly big chunk of power out of the battery. Can the air-bed not be hand-pumped? Some can I believe. If not I think you have the right idea in "forgetting" it.

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Colin

Francais

20/4/2024 at 6:07pm
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The little (20cm x 11cm x 7cm) inverters that ALDI do are pretty good (KSM300), only 300w but runs my 300w 220v MIUI 400ml kettle perfectly, the ALDI inverters are Modulated Sine Wave, which I think is better than Modified Sine Wave, but unless you know what your specific usage is, I would always advise to go for a Pure Sine Wave inverter.

The ALDI inverter comes with a separate lead for connection to the car 12v cigarette outlet, of course I could not use my kettle that way, as running of the 12v outlet the load would have to be under 200w and only then if the car is on a 20amp fuse, many cars are on 10amp, and some are 15amp.

These days I use a DiY 50ah LiFePO4 power bank with 500w PSW inverter, very handy piece of camping kit, and saves depleting the car battery, all contained within a TREM group 24 battery box, and at 9kg is super portable.

TimCESmith

via mobile 21/4/2024 at 8:31am
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I used a bog standard 300w inverter off &mazon for our air beds back in the day. Leave the engine idling and plug in an extension reel from home so you can inflate the beds inside the bedroom pods. I still use it to inflate our Karsten when off grid.

SoggySteve

05/5/2024 at 6:25pm
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Quote: Originally posted by TimCESmith on 21/4/2024
I used a bog standard 300w inverter off &mazon for our air beds back in the day. Leave the engine idling and plug in an extension reel from home so you can inflate the beds inside the bedroom pods. I still use it to inflate our Karsten when off grid.

That's what I would do. Yeah the pump may run a bit rough without a proper AC sine wave but hey...

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