Trickle charging my Motorhome

pnichols wrote:
Hmm ... my solution to this is ultra simple:

I leave my Class C permanently plugged into 120V AC whenever it's in storage, so it's coach batteries are kept fully charged all the time by the Class C's built-in converter.

I have a 120V AC trickle charger with a 12V plug on it's output. I plug the trickle charger into one of the motorhome's regular 120V AC outlets. I then plug it's 12V plug into the cab's 12V receptacle in the dash. This dash receptacle was wired by Ford to always be connected to the engine's starting battery (through a fuse), even with the starting key removed. So ... whenever the trickle charger's output is plugged into a dash receptacle, it's keeping the engine starting battery fully charged.

Hence the coach batteries are being kept fully charged by the converter at the same time as the engine battery is being kept fully charged by the trickle charger.

This above arrangement works like a champ ... and the only extra expense I had was buying the trickle charger.

Phil's setup is very simple and very effective. It has one potential drawback which one needs to consider. In the event of an AC power failure (think popped breaker, cord removed from outlet, cord kicked loose, etc), The batteries are now all engaged with their associated parasitic loads drawing them down (stereo, detectors, alarms, relays, etc). At some point if power is not restored in time the batteries are going to be drawn down completely. Now IF the RV is being stored somewhere that the power to it is being checked periodically, life is good. If not I would go with battery maintainer(s) and the batteries disconnected from all loads. You don't have to ask me how I came to this conclusion....yeah, it happened to me.