Trailer battery charging while towing

ekirkland wrote:
Some of the replies went right over my head. It sounds like some are saying a separate heavy gage charging wire with battery isolator is the way to go and some saying that's not such a good idea. What is a mechanically and electrically challenged person to do? I guess I have the options of parallel charging line with isolator vs. solar vs. generator. About the most I intend to dry camp is 3-5 days and then hit a campground with power to recharge on our next trip to Utah. I would imagine the batteries (2 ea. 24's) would be pretty depleted in that 3-5 day period. My present Jayco camper is new and we have not done any dry camping yet; only powered camping. With our previous Casita, we could do maybe 4 days with very frugal power usage on one battery. I'm trying to decide my best (maybe cheapest) means to extend battery power. Thanks for all the help.

Much depends on what type of camper/traveler you are. I tend to boondock/dry camp for a day or two then move on down the road, I tend to be more of a traveler than a camper, so adding a 4 gauge power wire to the camper batteries has been a big asset, more so than a generator or solar panels (I have both). However this changes if you are someone who likes to stop and dry camp for 4 days or more at a time, a generator or solar panels would be better. Time of year and area of country are other aspects to consider.

If you were to run 4 gauge pos and neg wires from tow vehicle to trailer batteries it would take approx. 3 hrs for the batteries to go from 50% to 90%+ charge. I typically get a initial 40 amp charge rate with a 35ft run of 4 gauge wire. My setup has two group 31 agm 12v batteries.