Winterize, batteries and the great white north

[Doug-Terrie]

Sadly our motor home fun must come to an end. With new batteries in my new to me motor home I want to do the best I can for my beloved. Unfortunately I won’t have inside storage and we get mighty cold up here in Michigan. I want to be able to start the generator each month so I will have to leave the batteries in the coach.
If I keep it plugged in to charge the batteries will I be okay?

[NLOVNIT]

Not knowing what coach you have (take a moment to add that info in a signature via the User CP > Edit Signature) I can only tell you how ours works.

Our generator is started by the chassis battery. The chassis battery is the same type of battery that's in a car. A car can stay out all winter & doesn't need anything to allow it to start that car. Same goes for it starting a generator. All we do for the chassis battery is to be sure the water levels are topped off when we winterize.

If you're referring to house batteries, when we winterize, we're sure they are topped off. Our coach stays plugged in all winter & we check on the house battery water levels about every 6 weeks because there are parasitic draws on them.

FWIW, once we're winterized, we don't start anything (engine or genny) for nearly 6 months. I'm of the opinion that, unless we're willing to take the coach out for a run to get it up to operating temp for at least half an hour & are able to run the generator under full load for the entire time we're taking the coach out, it'd do more harm than good to start things up. Our coach hasn't been out on salt-brine sprayed roads either & I'm not going to start. It won't come out until all that is washed away by Spring rains.

You'll probably get lots of opinions. That's just my 2-cents worth.

Lori-

[Ray,IN]

What Lori said X2, with one exception; Onan says to run the generator at 1/2 load for 2 hrs a month.
A fully-charged battery will not freeze solid enough to be damaged, the acid solution may get ice crystals in it but not freeze solid. Since you will have it plugged into 120VAC all winter, do as Lori said and check liquid level on a regular schedule unless you have a "smart charger", which usually has 3 stages to greatly reduce loss of liquid.