DO I need REALLY GOOD house batteries if i NEVER boondock ?

[hertfordnc]

I am advising a friend who lives in his Mid 90's HR.

He's on a very tight budget and needs to replace the batteries.

He is always connected to shore power and occasionally runs the generator.

He thinks he needs to buy $500 worth of AGM golf cart batteries.

I'm thinking one cheap, marine deep cycle would be perfectly adequate. THe only issue would be longevity but in a typical year the battery may never go through a discharge cycle.

Is my logic sound?

[hertfordnc]

Branson N Tucson wrote:
Scary, mid 90's. Hope he is not still driving.

Hah!, No he's only in his late 70's works full time for the VA. The Coach is a mid 90's Holiday Rambler.

[Branson_N_Tucso]

Scary, mid 90's. Hope he is not still driving.

[Dale_Traveling]

A basic start battery is all he needs. Buy a new one for the chassis/engine and move the current engine battery to the house loads. Repeat in four years, or more if possible.

[noteven]

A good place to buy high CCA starting batteries (for the generator needs) is a heavy duty truck dealership.

In fact, they might have a decent used one that would work for $free.99 - often one battery will fail causing trouble and a truck will replace all 3 or 4 at the same time rather than pairing up a fresh one with old ones.

[ferndaleflyer]

Wal Mart has your battery

[JRscooby]

Does he have a toad? Buy a battery that will fit it, use to start gen, or lights for lunch stop.

[theoldwizard1]

If the only thing the battery is used for is to start the generator, don't waste your money on an RV/Marine battery. A regular car battery is adequate.

[2112]

Wal-Mart has a group 24 marine for $75. That would solve his problem. I've had good luck with their DC series batteries over the years.

Use one of his old batteries for the core exchange and sell the others at a recycle place for $15 each.

[pianotuna]

Hi,

Even a 12 volt motorcycle battery would be good enough.

[wanderingaimles]

I lived in Hertford years ago, and the occasional power failure from Hurricanes or even T'storms would darken us for a day or occasionally two. IF that is still the case, I would go with a pair of GC batteries just as backup for those occasions as cheap insurance.

[dodge_guy]

Yes that will work.

[Ivylog]

CA Traveler wrote:
The battery only needs to be good enough to start the gen.

Yes one battery is enough and it doesn’t even need to be very good .. use the boost switch to help start the generator.

[Dutch_12078]

We ran our generator for 7 days while the area was recovering from a windstorm a few years ago. Our "house" battery was a single Walmart MAXX Marine Group 29 maintenance free. Worked fine...

[wa8yxm]

Two thoughts. First no, if you always have shore power you don't need a kilobuck of batteries. If you can get at 'em and feed 'em a bit of distilled a pair of standard lead acid flooded wet GC-2's is more than enough
or a group 31 (in Maintenance free or AGM)

However second thought
Digger O'Grady and his marvelous backhoe did a lovely job on one of the high voltage primary lines into the campground where I was camped.. I spend a couple days on generator/battery

Storms did the same at another CG

Three More had underground lines fail.. One while I was absent, that one was "Selected sites" so all you needed to move (About half a dozen sites including 2 of my favorites) another it was the main feeder to ALL the park, and another to about 1/3 the park. That all park one I did not have a generator (PUP days)

Heck, underground feeder took out power to the next building in my apartment complex a week ago tomorrow. 16 and a half hours

I have battery backup for SOME stuff here. .Not sure I could power the fridge for 16hours though.