Battery charge

[Wandering_Storm]

Just covered my winnebago view. Checked the coach batteries and they are fully charged with water fine. I put a trickle charger on my engine battery and am wondering if that charger will help the coach batteries. Any info will be welcome... Thanks John McD

[roadrat2]

If you have a three stage charger/ converter , it will monitor and float the coach batteries. The newer smart Chargers will not cook the batteries. We just installed a 55 W power max in our coachman. Found it new on eBay for 110.00. Easy enough to install if you already have a converter on board.
The truck battery has a nifty knob that completely isolates it. We connect a smart charger to it once a month for a day.
FWIW, we leave our boat plugged into a three stage charger all winter and have never had any issues.

[time2roll]

Wandering view wrote:
Just covered my winnebago view. Checked the coach batteries and they are fully charged with water fine. I put a trickle charger on my engine battery and am wondering if that charger will help the coach batteries. Any info will be welcome... Thanks John McD

Check the voltage right on the battery terminals.
13.2+ is fine.

[tatest]

A trickle charger probably does not have enough excess voltage to get through a solid state battery isolator, if that's how yours is triggered to connect. But more likely, it simply will not connect the house batteries to the chassis batteries except when the engine is running, or at least ignition turned on.

No definitive answer because there are several different isolator solutions, with different levels of sophistication. Some are manually switched (often from ignition switch or a boost switch) and others look for a particular condition in the 12-volt circuits that says the alternator is providing charging. Trickle charger voltage is not usually high enough or applied in the right place.

If you want to keep a maintenance charge on the house batteries, it is best to put them on their own (smart) maintenance charger, like a battery tender. Winnebago recommends they be disconnected for this purpose, at least for my 2004 Itasca.

I also would not leave them permanently on the converter Winnebago installed as my charger. That one is just the right voltage to boil them dry over time.

[Capt_Storm]

Wandering view wrote:
Just covered my winnebago view. Checked the coach batteries and they are fully charged with water fine. I put a trickle charger on my engine battery and am wondering if that charger will help the coach batteries. Any info will be welcome... Thanks John McD

The truck and house batteries are almost always isolated from each other. Now if the truck is running both should charge.
If you were to charge the truck battery and you have a boost switch switched to boost ,both would charge.But from what I understand those "boost" switches are only momentarily.

In my RV I have installed a switch that activates the solenoid that connects the two batteries . I use that switch every now and then when my rig is plugged into 120 from the house. That way my truck battery gets charred off the converter also. I'll do that like 2 twice a month for two days in the off season. Then I unplug it again so has not to worry about overcharging the batts.

[pauldub]

The trickle charger on the engine battery won't do anything to charge the house batteries on most motorhomes.

[ScottG]

Oldme wrote:
We keep ours at hone a battery tender all the time.
This is a small unit I lug into the dash.
Came from Wally World on-line for around $20.00.

For the past 2 years we have had no problems
and all batteries have been ready to go at anytime.

That's the way i'd do it!

[Oldme]

We keep ours at hone a battery tender all the time.
This is a small unit I lug into the dash.
Came from Wally World on-line for around $20.00.

For the past 2 years we have had no problems
and all batteries have been ready to go at anytime.