Dry camping battery charging options

Get a straight hitch bar with a removable ball. Have a battery tray welded on it. Take a 7-way trailer plug and put 12v and ground wires in it. Put the battery on the tray. Start your tow vehicle and hook up the wires to the battery. Drive around for the day and your battery will charge.
Before all the electronics, I would start the tow vehicle, then swap my trailer battery for the tow vehicle battery. At the end of the day it would be well charged. Can't do that with modern vehicles.

Heavy Duty Jumper Cables 12 feet long
since 1995 we have done a 9 day campout with our camping circle of friends off the grid .
we park the trailer , turn the pickup around and run from 4 batteries
the pickup gets driven every 2nd or 3rd day .
when we return we hook up all 4 batteries with the jumpers .
we do not run the engine to try to bring the RV batteries up .
the 4 batteries equalize via the HD jumpers .
we do charge up our batteries on 120V at home before and after each trip , while packing / unpacking .
we do not own solar or a genny .
nor do our friends .
quiet in the campground is very nice .

Double post - stupid internet:M

If you're recharging with a generator but find it takes all day with your onboard converter, you should invest in either a new converter with more charging output or a stand alone smart charger with more output. Most chargers are in the 10-15amp range, but bigger ones with 40-50amp output are available for under $200. They will fully recharge your battery in just a few hours (or less.)

It goes without saying that being frugal with your electrical use (limit lights, water pump, electric awning, etc.) will extend your battery use. I have found, however, that the real problem is parasitic loads. Some are important enough that you should never try to defeat them (CO detector/ propane leak detetctor) but todays refrigerators have a climate control (or some other similar name) that applies power continuously to a heater in the door to prevent condensation from forming. Some models have a switch that enables you to turn this feature off but many do not. If you do have the switch turn it OFF to extend your batttery. If you have no switch you may be able to find the connection to the heater on the control board and unplug it. Your installation manual probably has a schematic diagram that my help you to find this connection.

I have camped alot off the power grid in the past five years and at fist also tried just re-charging the batteries a hour or so each day. It seemed to be working for us as well but after a couple of days of doing this my batteries begin to start falling off on how long they would keep working at the same levels.. They would start going below approximately 50% charge state earlier than the day before.

I guess if I was going to do this just for a couple of days it would probably work for me just fine. I suspect doing this over a longer time frame I would do some harm to my batteries...

After increasing my battery capacity to around 255Ahs to handle all the 120VAC and 12VDC loads we wanted to use and recharging everyday with my trailer shore power cable directly connected to my 2KW generator using a RV30A-15A long adapter we was able to bring back the battery bank to its 90% charge state in as little as three hours of generator run time. This is using smart mode charging technology with my on-board smart mode PD9260C converter/charger.

We can stay out a good two weeks time using this mode of re-charging and not see any harm done to my batteries at all... We try to get our batteries re-charged back up to their 90% charge starting at 8AM each morning.

By re-charging my previous single 12VDC battery every day by connecting to my truck start battery using a jumper cable and running the truck for an hour or so did not do well for us over a few days time.

Thinking back I suspect if I had run my truck motor for around three hours I may have indeed brought my single 12VDC battery back up to its 90% charge state.

The battery science for today's deep cycle battery is telling me that I need to hit my batteries that are just at 50% charged state with 14.4VDC with the capacity of around 20AMPS per battery to be able to re-charge this battery backup to their 90% charge state in a three hour time frame. It appears to me if they are not brought back to their the 90% charge state state then their performance will start falling off and after a few days of this I also suspect I will most likely start doing internal damage to my batteries.

These are just my thoughts as I am not a battery charging expert - only a frequent user of deep cycle batteries when camping off the power grid.

I do not disagree with those that say they do the one hour or so of recharging and do just fine. I suspect if they continue doing this over time without getting the charge state up to at least 90% charge state it will follow more of what I have experienced. Additionally to coming back to the 90% charge state right away everyday I also have experienced the batteries start falling off in performance after doing coupe of weeks of this 50% to 90% charge state cycles. I have to do full 100% recharge of these batteries to get my performance back. Doing a 100% charge state when camping off the power grid requires me to run my 2KW generator about 12 hours of run time which usually gets me in trouble with the generator run restrictions at the camp grounds we use here on the East side of the US.

I watch my battery DC voltages real close when camping off the power grid and use these DC voltage reading to keep me in the ball park when the battery is charged to either a 50% or a 90% charge state. It may not be 100% battery science but works for me just fine camping off the power grid over a two week camping period.

All of this is based on my experiences only...

Just passing along how we camp off off the power grid for extended times and recharging our batteries each day.

Roy ken

For my situation, where I am not able to use solar because of clouds and high trees in the campgrounds I use, I did the following;
1 installed two 6 volt batteries that gave a higher capacity than two 12 volt would have done
2 purchased a 2000 watt inverter generator that I can run during the allowed two periods each of two hours
3 replaced all of my lights with led panels bought off ebay (total cost was about $50)

If I don't need the furnace, I can run nearly a week without recharging, but we don't watch TV. If I run the furnace, I can go two nights with the temp turned down to 55.perhaps longer, but I haven't tried.

This is all very helpful. Thanks a ton. Arctic Dodge, when you say, add a second battery, are you suggesting adding one somewhere in parallel? Or just as one to swap out with the first?

Add a second battery first and then buy a small generator like a Honda or Yamaha 1000 inverter generators (light, quiet, and fuel efficient). If your current battery is 4 + years old, I'd replace it also to maximize the 2nd battery.
Weather in Yellowstone is unpredictable at best so solar is not a guarantee. We were there in early August 06 and had daily rain storms in the afternoon and a couple of nights it dropped below freezing.

Using your TV to recharge is the least effective method.

Hope you enjoy Yellowstone as much as we did. The place is amazing!

I can get the best part of the week out of one battery, but I’m pretty frugal. When I need to recharge I have a few options. I sometimes move to a site with power for a couple of days, not an option in YS. I can carry a charger, pull the battery, and find a plug to recharge. The Rangers have helped me out on a few occasions with that. Or pull the battery and take it to the nearest service station and have it charged. Or carry two batteries and switch them out while one is recharged in some manner. Or the obvious, a generator, but I don’t carry one.

Two true deep cycles would extend your time, but at some point you still need to recharge. Suffice to say that in many decades of camping I’ve always managed to recharge my battery somehow but I’ve never used my TV as a generator.