Battery charging

[Devil Dog]

I was curious to see what y'all thought about this. My 06 Georgetown sits for extended periods of time. I have it stored at relatives house. I don't want to use their electricity to keep the batteries charged so I bought a solar charger that plugs into the cigarette lighter. However, here is my problem. The chassis battery is not the one dying. It is the coach batteries. I shut the coach power off with the switch inside the door when I leave it. The solar charger plugs into a cigarette lighter. Any way to make this work? Thanks. I enjoy reading the forum and learning new things. Merry Christmas to you all!

[Devil Dog]

I was curious to see what y'all thought about this. My 06 Georgetown sits for extended periods of time. I have it stored at relatives house. I don't want to use their electricity to keep the batteries charged so I bought a solar charger that plugs into the cigarette lighter. However, here is my problem. The chassis battery is not the one dying. It is the coach batteries. I shut the coach power off with the switch inside the door when I leave it. The solar charger plugs into a cigarette lighter. Any way to make this work? Thanks. I enjoy reading the forum and learning new things. Merry Christmas to you all!

[BounderFreddy]

I would think you could get a solar charger and just pigtail connect it to your house battery(ies) when storing it.

One of our sponsors may have something like what your wanting.

[Loren]

Devil Dog,
On an older class C we had I used one of those small solar panels to keep the chassis battery up while stored. Made little wire hooks to hold it flat against the drivers window so the low winter sun would hit it [this window faced south when parked].
On our current rig I have added a couple of 12 volt [cigar lighter] outlets connected through a fuse directly to the house batteries; the disconnect switch would not cut these outlets out of the circiut. You should be able to use something like this to plug your solar panel into, as long as the panel is in direct sunlight during most of the day, and is large enough to overcome the phantom loads your coach puts on the batteries.
I see you are in Yuma. My wife has cousins there that we will be visiting next month. Wishing you and your's Merry Christmas.
Loren

[Digital Boy]

As you have discovered, the 12V socket is wired to the chassis batteries. My coach has a factory installed 5 watt solar panel on the roof to trickle charge the chassis batteries (I have 2).

I'm pretty sure that it would take a much larger solar panel wired into your coach battery(s) to help keep them charged.

Have you checked the water level on the battery cells? I suppose that over time the battery(s) will lose charge anyway.

I think you should reconsider plugging your coach into your friend's house. The amount of electricity to keep up your coach battery(s) is insignificant.

Before we became fulltimers I stored our coach on a pad next to the house in Florida. I had a 50 amp connection. The coach was always plugged in. The air conditioners (2) were set to 80 degrees and kept on. The refrigerator was always on. I have 4 coach batteries and a 2000 watt inverter that was always on. In the 4 years we had this setup we never noticed any significant increase in kilowatt hours.

[full-timer]

If you're going to use the solar charger with the lighter plug. There should be a lighter plug in the cabinet where your tv video connections are. I think this one works on the house batteries.

Joe