Inverter usage while underway
Greetings to all. This may or may not be a tough question. I am presently considering the purchase of an inverter to keep my reefer running while underway. I have a single 12v deep cycle battery. ...
Forum Discussion
I would not connect the inverter to the chassis battery. If you stop for more than a few minutes, it will run the chassis battery down low, to the low voltage cutoff of the inverter; and if the chassis battery is getting old (or if you do that more than a few times), it probably would not start the V10, or not start it very well. Far better, if one insists on this setup, is to make sure the charging path between the chassis and house battery banks is up to snuff.
The battery isolation/interconnection is generally designed and installed by the coach builder, as I understand it. It's not a standardized thing on the E-series chassis. At the least, mine is clearly installed by Coachmen, and suitably and substantially designed at that. (2 gauge wire, basically directly between the battery terminals, with appropriate fuses and a solenoid switch to control it.)
Incidentally, just turning off the propane at the tank does nothing to remove the gas that is already in the gas lines. In the event of a catastrophic failure of one of the low-pressure lines, not a whole lot less propane would leak out in either case since the system is designed with a safety valve that closes automatically when there's an excessive flow of gas. Yes, it likely is a bit safer to travel with the gas valve closed; but the system is not a giant bomb with a hair-trigger in any case. The only times I shut off my propane valve is when filling the propane tank or doing maintenance or repair work on the propane system (or, in some cases, on things uncomfortably close to it).
The battery isolation/interconnection is generally designed and installed by the coach builder, as I understand it. It's not a standardized thing on the E-series chassis. At the least, mine is clearly installed by Coachmen, and suitably and substantially designed at that. (2 gauge wire, basically directly between the battery terminals, with appropriate fuses and a solenoid switch to control it.)
Incidentally, just turning off the propane at the tank does nothing to remove the gas that is already in the gas lines. In the event of a catastrophic failure of one of the low-pressure lines, not a whole lot less propane would leak out in either case since the system is designed with a safety valve that closes automatically when there's an excessive flow of gas. Yes, it likely is a bit safer to travel with the gas valve closed; but the system is not a giant bomb with a hair-trigger in any case. The only times I shut off my propane valve is when filling the propane tank or doing maintenance or repair work on the propane system (or, in some cases, on things uncomfortably close to it).
