Dumb Electrical Question- Bed plug

Hey, silly question. . . I have looked at the other threads about "what can be powered from the outlet in the back of TRD truck beds," but I have a question (maybe dumb- but i did do a search).

Trying to get the fiance to come camping with me this winter. I like camping in the bed (nice snugtop rebel shell). She asked, "can we run an electric blanket through that outlet?"

I honestly couldnt answer. I assume running it all night will kill the battery. . . it will, right? Secondly, even if it didnt, would the outlet in the back of the truck even power an electric blanket?

Thank you in advance for your answers.

 

Your truck should be running if you want to use the receptacle in the bed, I would not advise camping in the bed of the truck with it running for obvious reasons.

 

Multiply the voltage of the item by the amp rating and that will give you the total watts it will take to power it. It may not draw that much on a regular basis but it will at its peak. Large is correct, not smart running your truck while camping in the back.

 

Second battery, run isolated off the alternator, maintain before going camping. You could probably get a night of use out of it. Check what the blanket consumes.

 

Electric blankets draw 75-100 W per side. Even turned down to lower settings, it'll probably drain your battery over night.

Hair dryer is also not a good idea.

 

+1


To find out if it will even run it is easy - look athte tag on the blanket, it should state how many amps it draws at 120Vac.

the stock bed plug with the engine idling in park will provide 400watts, or just over 3amps. (400/120 = 3.3). If the blanket is more htan 3 amps it wont work.


Now I don't know if the plug stays live wit the engine off, but if it does the easy way to figure this out is take your amps at 120v and multiple by 10 to get how many amps the inverter is pulling at 12v.. (ie. 3 amps at 120v = 30amps at 12 volts). Actually its even higher since the inverter is not 100% efficient.


If you have the tow pack the stock battery as a reserve capacity of about 68 amp hours (165min at 25amp). You never want to use more than half of that else the truck might not start, so figure you have no more than 20-25 amp hours at 12volts to work with.

So if you had a 120v/2amp blanket for example - it would draw 20amps at the battery and only be able to run 1-2 hours before the truck may not have enough juice to start.

In other words, don't

 

The 100 watt rating is what the outlet is capable of while the truck is off, it should only be used for short periods though, otherwise yes it will run your battery down. It will do 400 watts while the truck is running (constant). Again as stated you obviously would not want to run the truck all night long especially while you were sleeping in the back. Figure out if what you want to run is 400 watts or less by the method stated above, if it is then you could run it for short periods of time to warm her up again i would advise not falling asleep. Or there are other ways you could keep your fiance warm. Just sayin...

 

May have to snuggle more for safety reasons, don't chance it.