How to keep toy hauler batteries charged?

Hi and congrats on your new RV and welcome to the forum. Most of us were once where you are so do not feel like you are asking dumb questions.

"Still perplexed why there is a female 50amp plug in the housing compartment where the 50amp extension cord is stored..."

Ok think of it this way... Your RV is a very large electrical appliance than must be plugged in for anything AC to work inside. That is what the 50 amp cord is for. You can either plug it into a 15 or 20 amp outlet on the outside of your house with the proper adaptors or you can plug it into a pedistel at the campground you are parked at.

Now, if you are camping where there in no electricity available, you can plug it into the female outlet where the cord is stored and that will connect your large camping appliance to your generator. That female outlet is your generator outlet and you must be plugged into it in order to use it. Many people often times do not need the full power of their generator so they buy a small portable inverter generator (very quite) and, again with adaptors, plug their cord into the little generator. Your built in generator is sized to be able to run your air conditioned and most everything else where as a small portable will usually run everything except the AC.

Depending on many factors, you will need to be plugged every day of camping for 3-6 hours on order for your batteries to get you through the night. Your batteries run all DC equipment including most lighting, Heater, exhaust fans, and built in stereo etc.

If you have an INverter, your batteries can also provide some AC power to certain circuits but it will not run your Air conditioner.

Your CONverter is what charges your batteries and also provides DC power when your big 50 amp cord is plugged into something. CONverters come in many varities, some dumb ones do not charge very well, some smart and some very smart. The smarter they are, the better and quicker they charge your batteries.

I hope this helps.

We have the same hauler, PM me if you have any questions, i know our rig inside and out.....

Congrats on your new hauler

A battery cut-off switch will eliminate parasitic draw. My batteries sit for months without charging and have plenty of juice to run the jack in the spring. Have fun.

Frankandbeans wrote:
Still perplexed why there is a female 50amp plug in the housing compartment where the 50amp extension cord is stored...

Some RVs, like my Raptor have what's called a Transfer Switch, that automatically switches to either generator power supply or the hook up power supply. Good ones are not cheap, and bad ones are annoying. The one in our Raptor had issues of sticking. A real pain if you're unable to use hook up's. I ended up finding mine and taking the cover off and blowing it out several times, after the 5th time or so I stopped having problems. When our Winnebago didn't have one I was happy. When I store my cord I just plug it in and I'm good to go on generator power.

Thank you for the info Y-Guy. I have random parts of electrical knowledge...using a volt meter is easy-peasy for me (Yes I know it's ironic that RV electrical confuses the hell out of me). My strength lies mainly in just DC electrical, so mixing DC with A/C (shore power) and the electrical equipment needed to do so is what makes it black voo-doo for me.

I never thought of it until now, but I guess an easy way to see if shore power will charge my batteries is just doing a simple test of the voltage of the batteries? Once with it disconnected, and once with the shore power plugged in. There should be a noticeable increase, just like a car battery would be if were on a charger -correct?

Still perplexed why there is a female 50amp plug in the housing compartment where the 50amp extension cord is stored...

When we are not using the hauler we plug it in at the house and use and IOTA IQ smart charger. We have used it for over 7 years and no problems, Cheap to.

http://www.iotaengineering.com/iq.htm

There is no such thing as a dumb question, ok well maybe but you're not even close so don't worry about it.

The inverter has nothing to do with your truck charging your batteries while towing. However, not all trucks are setup to do this. Some require an additional fuse to be installed before this will work. For many without a generator this is how you charge up your batteries. What truck, model and year do you have?

You can test your truck a couple of ways. If you are on battery power without the truck connected look at your inside lights, then plug into your truck with it running and see if the lights are brighter, if they are then your truck will charge as you drive. Or with a multimeter you can touch the negative to the #1 Ground and the positive to #4 battery, if you don't know how to to use a multimeter use the first option.

Thanks for the advice. I have a lot of googling to do in my future.

Another dumb question - Can an aftermarket inverter allow the batteries to charge when the trailer is plugged in (The trailer brake plug) while you're towing?

I'm just super worried about running into a dead battery scenario, and I know I can crank the front jacks down, but it seems like that would take FOREVER to do...

First of all congrats on the Toy Hauler.

As for the cord and plugging it in. I have the same thing on our RV now, it's the poor man's transfer switch. I'm not sure how yours is setup but my guess is that if it's not plugged in you won't have any 110v power in your RV when the generator is running.

My Raptor used a 50amp cord too, make sure you have a 50->30amp adapter. I found quickly that most of the sites we camped at didn't have 50amp plugs. So one thing I did so I could avoid uncoiling that beast of a 50amp cord was to use a 25' 30amp extension cord. Once you try to move that 50am cord when it's cold you'll understand why.

Like SandiaMan I have a multi-stage converter installed in my RV, I did it after the 1st converter/charger died. If you are going to leave it plugged in it's the best way go to, and they are not all that expensive. The other way is to put your plug on a timer so it doesn't run all the time. But without knowing what converter you have it's hard to say.

Congrats on the Sandpiper TH. In order for your converter to charge your batteries you must be plugged into shore power or generator. Yes, you can purchase the appropriate adapters (CW, Walmart) so that you can plug into shore power at home, but it can prove fatal to your batteries over time if you have a single charging stage converter, as it will eventually boil your batteries dry. Verify brand and model of converter and check online to see it's capabilities, I have a multi-stage converter (Iota) on our TH and it's always plugged in while stored in our backyard.

Sounds like you got a nice rig and a generator with low hours which can be good or bad depending on prior maintenance. If it hasn't been done recently, change oil, along with air, oil and fuel filters, clean and/or replace spark plugs (manuals are available online), and run genny for a couple of hours under at least 50% load. Our Onan has provided over 700 hours of trouble-free service powering our entire rig as if plugged into shore power. We add Stabil when getting gas and add a bottle of Seafoam periodically to keep gunk to a minimum. Never an issue with starting, no hunting, surging, or dying out after releasing the switch, and just use 85/86 octane (regular unleaded in our area) ethanol-laced gas. We love the versatility of our TH as we use it about half the time without bringing along any of the toys. Hope you enjoy yours as much, Happy Camping!!!