Batteries in new Forest River Heritage Glen

Cracker Barrel won't work for them. You'll get about 1 night and they will be well below the 50% discharge threshold for their batteries. Better come up with an alternate plan; generator, overnight at campground, or maybe they can just sleep in your RV and not run their furnace at all.

SoundGuy wrote:

GaryS1953 wrote:
We'll be caravaning cross country in February with friends who have a new Forest River Heritage Glen with a residential fridge.

Wondering if anyone knows what type of batteries Forest River is putting in their units with residential fridges?

I doubt Forest River installs any batteries as they're considered a dealer installed item. What you have is what your dealer installed - ask them.

I've asked their dealer, and hard a hard time getting them to tell me anything about the batteries, and they seemed not to have a clue about amp hours.

DrewE wrote:
How are the batteries getting recharged during the day? A typical trailer seven-wire connection doesn't provide a lot of charging power, and very likely would not fully recharge them and keep up with the fridge while driving, which means you're probably looking at more than a single night's worth of usage.

Anyhow, a typical residential fridge uses somewhere around 1 kWh per day, more or less, or 100 Ah per 24 hours. For an overnight stop, I would expect two batteries in good shape (regardless of whether they are 12V or 6V) to be able to keep up with it and run the furnace moderately for a single night, but probably not a vast amount more. That's a very rough estimate, of course, not at all a precise calculation.

I think I saw here that often the batteries are installed by the dealer rather than the manufacturer; all they'd put in is something adequate to safely get the trailer to the dealer (i.e. sized to operate the breakaway brake system and not much more).

I forgot to mention they won't have a generator, but they also will not be running their residential fridge. They were thinking they would either just wait till we reached our destination to buy food, OR they would store some food in their small outside kitchen fridge. Are those typically just 110, or are they 2-way and run on propane as well?

GaryS1953 wrote:
We'll be caravaning cross country in February with friends who have a new Forest River Heritage Glen with a residential fridge.

Wondering if anyone knows what type of batteries Forest River is putting in their units with residential fridges?

I doubt Forest River installs any batteries as they're considered a dealer installed item. What you have is what your dealer installed - ask them.

I forgot to mention they won't have a generator, but they also will not be running their residential fridge. They were thinking they would either just wait till we reached our destination to buy food, OR they would store some food in their small outside kitchen fridge. Are those typically just 110, or are they 2-way and run on propane as well?

Don't know about their batteries but I run the generator for about 2 hrs when i stop to let it recharge.

How are the batteries getting recharged during the day? A typical trailer seven-wire connection doesn't provide a lot of charging power, and very likely would not fully recharge them and keep up with the fridge while driving, which means you're probably looking at more than a single night's worth of usage.

Anyhow, a typical residential fridge uses somewhere around 1 kWh per day, more or less, or 100 Ah per 24 hours. For an overnight stop, I would expect two batteries in good shape (regardless of whether they are 12V or 6V) to be able to keep up with it and run the furnace moderately for a single night, but probably not a vast amount more. That's a very rough estimate, of course, not at all a precise calculation.

I think I saw here that often the batteries are installed by the dealer rather than the manufacturer; all they'd put in is something adequate to safely get the trailer to the dealer (i.e. sized to operate the breakaway brake system and not much more).