Needing help, evacuated, battery dead

[Woodsie8_]

Sorry, longer post;
I am in Oregon with fires. No electricity for 5 days now. Used generator on RV chassis to run freezers in my home for 3 days (about 4 hrs a day) via extension cords. RV house battery went dead and now can’t fire up generator. Water pump, lights, etc, won’t come on.
Now investigating the following option without going overboard.

1) Another free standing generator for home freezers when there is a power outage. Seems over kill if I can plug into RV and use RV generator but obviously that only worked for 3 days, because nothing to keep RV house battery charged.
2) Solar panel on RV, to keep RV battery charged (to fire up generator) but will it be enough charge to run things in RV and start generator, to either boon-dock or plug in home freezer in outage?
3) Some kind of fully charged portable 12V battery charger that I can attach to house deep cell battery to replenish it and then recharge it with cigarette lighter d/c connection (chassis battery) with rig running
4) I am older, not sure if I can pull start a generator and if I get an electric start, I will still need electricity to keep it’s internal battery charged.
5) The only things I need to keep going in the house is the frig and deep freeze. I can go without the water heater. If in the winter, it would be nice to have heat but I could go into RV with propane heater but not sure if it needs battery.


It seems crazy to buy another generator when I have one in the RV, but if I need to use battery for more than 3 days, that did not work.

What would be the wisest choice? I have a 20’ RV, not a lot of room to haul another generator. May take a long time to charge one of those battery chargers with a cigarette lighter d/c connection.

FRUSTRATED BECAUSE I managed to keep food frozen and stay in the RV for 3 days without a problem. Now probably will have to toss food, dumping water in toilet to flush, and using my little solar lights to get around at night with.

Furthermore, let’s say this doesn’t have anything to do with freezers and I want to boon-dock longer than 3 days. Is there a reasonable solution that I can both keep freezers going in a power outage and boon-dock for an extended period Of time?
Thanks for your thoughts!

[Woodsie8_]

time2roll wrote:
The generator should be connected to an on-board charging system to maintain the RV battery. Possibly that system has failed. A portable battery charger would work.
Solar might be of little help if you have smoke in the air.

I am wondering if I was using more juice than generator was making. Would I put the battery charger in the house battery? I don’t have one that does not need plugged in but fir the future.

[time2roll]

The generator should be connected to an on-board charging system to maintain the RV battery. Possibly that system has failed. A portable battery charger would work.
Solar might be of little help if you have smoke in the air.

[Lwiddis]

“2) Solar panel on RV, to keep RV battery charged (to fire up generator) but will it be enough charge to run things in RV and start generator, to either boon-dock or plug in home freezer in outage?”

“Running things” needs a battery or batteries....amp hours. Recharging batteries from solar panels requires adequate solar watts. Standard is one solar watt per battery amp hour. More if in a shady area.

[rexlion]

Sounds like you have a Class A, B, or C (some time of motor home). What about your starter battery on the RV? If you start your engine, it should begin to recharge the 'house' battery via the converter. Or, just to get you going again, are there any neighbors who can give your battery a jump?

A solar panel of about 100W, if you can get decent sun (not too smoky), should keep a typical house battery charged. I'm also wondering whether the generator, once it's running, could power a battery charger (the kind you'd plug into shore power) besides your freezers.