House batteries
So this is our first excursion with our RV. We bought second hand from a rental group. The RV has been in a storage lot with a few small trips to the house and then a 3 hour drive to our non electrifi...
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ybconway wrote:
Thanks for all the information, I'll have to reread this a couple of time. There is a small solar system on the camper with one panel. I wasn't sure how effective they are but it may be worth adding extra panels to the system.
We did go out for an hour since I posted, turned the lights off and it is at 12.3 now.
We don't have power at the storage site.
Looking under the unit, Forest River 23c on a 450 chassis there is lots of room on the frame rails to add some battery boxes.
I don't think you mentioned what year your Class C is. Our Class C is a 2005 on an E450 chassis. The engine is a V10 with a 130 amp alternator.
We recharge our two RV batteries about every other day very quietly by idling the V10 engine a bit. The idling V10 can hardly be heard or felt and the 130 amp alternator does a great job of bringing the batteries back up quickly. Other nearby campers will not hear it idling.
Of course this method works at night, during days too cloudy for much solar, and in shaded camping spots. Fuel consumption for an idling V10 is about 7/10 of a gallon per hour and most, if not all, E450 based Class C motorhomes have a 55 gallon fuel tank. The built-in generator will use only around 4/10 of a gallon per hour from the main 55 gallon tank when recharging the batteries, but it will be quite a bit louder.
