coleman Hot water unit

Mate, what do you expect from a battery? miracles?

Look, your average 100Ah battery is good for 3600kWs of energy storage.

Take an inlet water temperature of 23, and outlet of 38 degrees, a differential of 15 degrees. To heat one litre up by one degree you need about 4kWs.

Doing a back of the envelope calculation reveals you can heat up 60 litres of water by 15 degrees.
Divide this by 6 people and everyone gets his/her share of 10 litres of warm shower water.

cheers, Peter

Hi GT Cruiser,
I have a Coleman unit (gas heating). The last trip I did the unit did approximately 25 showers before recharging. Shower were kept to about 4 minutes at most. Our method was to wet ones self down, turn unit off, soap up then turn unit on and wash off. We also needed to conserve water so kept the showering as quick as possible. Hope this helps.

Mike

Define quick showers? LOL

In high usage situations it may be better to use the HWOD unit to heat the water in a bucket, then use a cheap shower unit like as shown in the following thread (reply 2 of 5) to do the showering:

- http://www.exploroz.com/Forum/Topic/68788/Coleman_Hot_water_on_Demand.aspx

The batteries are a smallish capacity 6v one, probably designed to last 30 minutes continous at most or even one gas bottle worth as a guess. Intermittant use may be better for the battery rather than 6 x couple minutes continous as a guess. Other factors may affect the life of the battery, including the suction and head heights. I tend to run ours with the bucket/plastic container at the same height as the unit, with the unit placed as high as practical to achieve minimal head.

Would be interested in what Coleman have to say about your situation.

Hope that helps,
Andrew

Andrew

I had a similar problem with our Coleman & s/t a Coleman Tech who said to charge the battery for 24 hrs prior to going away & rechargeables must be recharged every 3 mths. I pump the water required through the Coleman or heat up water by the fire. Once water is to my liking I use a $29.95 Yellow shower which runs off 12v. The shower unit comes equiped with cigarette (male) connector & aligator clamps onto car battery. The shower unit has an off/on switch & you can see how much water you have actually used because the shower motor is in the bucket next to you. The only problem I have ever had with this unit in 6 years (Chinese made) was the impellor got stuck with a bit of dirt. Easy to clean and a spray of WD-40 & away it goes. Buy a second battery from battery world & keep both charged.

I took my second Coleman unit on the Canning this year. It was a borderline decision as the first one had failed last year. It worked well throughout. It handled two showers of about 20 litres one after the other with no fuss. Used it most days. The Coleman was plugged into one of my auxiliary 12 volt sockets during the day so it was always at a full charge come late afternoon or evening when used for showers.

The battery should handle six short showers. It might be expecting too much to handle six 20 litre showers. I doubt an incorrect power supply is a contributing factor. I see no reason for a second battery at all. One is good enough.

My Coleman is rather temperature sensitive. If operated below an ambient temperature of about 10 degrees Celsius it displays a "low battery" light. Warm it up to 12 degrees and it functions OK. For showering I can live with this limitation but it makes the unit unreliable as a source of hot water for washing up etc. I don't know if mine is faulty or this 10 degree thing is common to them all.

As your showers were in the evening could the temperature have been dropping below 10? If so that might be the problem.

With the Coleman it is not really necessary to preheat a bucket of water. Adjusting the temperature during a shower is a bit difficult so better to make sure the adjustment is right in the first place before showering.

Flynnie

My coleman will do 4 showers each night for 2 or even 3 nights without a charge. I have not had any battery issues. I would estimate the volume at approx 40 to 50 litres per night. Hope this helps.

Just on a different line is it possible to change the shower head to a switch on/off type or will this damage the the unit due to no water flow?
Ian