Batteries-Winter

[9999EJ]

New owner of a 2015 SA. Coach has been winterized and will be parked in my yard on asphalt. While waiting for the cover to arrive, someone mentioned that I should remove the "house batteries" to prevent them from freezing since we reside in Connecticut. Should they be removed and should the engine battery be removed as well? What about a battery maintainer.
Thanks,
Ed

[dennis45]

This question has been asked many times and the answer is, No, fully charged batteries will not freeze.
Now, keeping them charged is the trick. If you have a means of plugging into shore power, even an extension cord into a 15 or 20A breaker will suffice, the batteries will stay charged by the converter in the coach. Leave all disconnect switches in the On position and turn the Inverter off. Check the water levels in the house batteries every couple months and you're good to go.

If you don't have access to shore power, the best and simplest method is to remove the Negative cable from each battery bank. House and Chassis that is.
By removing the negative cables you completely isolate the batteries so there is no parasitic load that will cause the batteries to run down.
There are switches available to do this but simply removing the cable from the post works also.

[viewfinder]

In addition to the above I would add that chassis battery grd be disconected even if you can get power to your unit. I think you will find that the converter does not charge the chassis battery. A Trik-L-Start will fix this.

jim

[dennis45]

Originally Posted by viewfinder

In addition to the above I would add that chassis battery grd be disconected even if you can get power to your unit. I think you will find that the converter does not charge the chassis battery. A Trik-L-Start will fix this.

jim

I'm not sure what an SA coach is (acronyms are not my strong suit) but I would be Very Surprised that a 2015 class A coach would not charge both battery banks while plugged in to shore power. "Don't fix it if it ain't broke"

[CBTraveler]

Our 2015 QBH has the inverter hard wired to the coach batteries. There is a small constant drain on the coach batteries even when the battery switches are off. Same problem with our previous Winnebago MH. On the Wbgo we had a heavy duty manual switch added to completely disconnect the inverter. The QBH is new to us and I plan to have a switch installed.

[dabrooks]

Originally Posted by dennis45

I'm not sure what an SA coach is (acronyms are not my strong suit) but I would be Very Surprised that a 2015 class A coach would not charge both battery banks while plugged in to shore power. "Don't fix it if it ain't broke"

The easiest way to find out if the chassis battery is being charged is to check to voltage when the coach is unplugged and then plug it in and recheck. If the battery is being charged it will show a higher voltage. Our 2013 Tiffin did not come with a trickle charge for the chassis battery. I had to add one.