House Coach Batteries Question

[jjmacaskill]

We will be storing our 2021 View V for about 2 months total before our next trip. Before I put it in storage I made sure the coach batteries were fully charged. I turned the house coach battery switch to off and also turned the inverter/charger disconnect switch to off. Should the house coach batteries still be charged after this amount of time? We are taking a long cross country trip and I want to make sure everything is ready to roll when we are ready to leave. Our current storage space does not have a 30v plug in. I will try and make it out in the next few weeks to check on things and I can run the generator and start the engine. Our storage spot is about 45 mins away which makes checking on things slightly tricky. Thanks for any responses, we are new to the RV life and still figuring things out!

[be happy]

Even though you switch the battery disconnect switch to "off" there are many components that will still draw 12v power. The only true way to disconnect is a blade type disconnect switch close to the battery.

[Winterbagoal]

Originally Posted by jjmacaskill

We will be storing our 2021 View V for about 2 months total before our next trip. Before I put it in storage I made sure the coach batteries were fully charged. I turned the house coach battery switch to off and also turned the inverter/charger disconnect switch to off. Should the house coach batteries still be charged after this amount of time? We are taking a long cross country trip and I want to make sure everything is ready to roll when we are ready to leave. Our current storage space does not have a 30v plug in. I will try and make it out in the next few weeks to check on things and I can run the generator and start the engine. Our storage spot is about 45 mins away which makes checking on things slightly tricky. Thanks for any responses, we are new to the RV life and still figuring things out!

What kind of coach batteries are they? AGMs, or Lithium? Do you have rooftop solar to charge them while it's sitting (in the sun?)? If so, you can just let the solar keep them up, and re-enable the coach battery switch and turn on your inverter.
Your chassis battery is more likely to go dead over that amount of time. You could disconnect it at the accelerator pedal location (if the 2021 models still have that?), or add something that charges it from the coach batteries, like a TrikLStart hard wired unit, or, do what I do. Plug in a charger/maintainer like the the Stanley BC8S into an inverter powered AC outlet, and the cigar lighter output end into an always hot 12VDC outlet that is powered off the chassis battery. On my 2018 24V, the outlet under the ashtray/cupholder is always hot and connected to the chassis battery. I just let the solar and the inverter do the work of keeping up all my batteries, when I can't be plugged in.
https://www.walmart.com/ip/STANLEY-F...-BC8S/38243757

[Morich]

There are small components like the CO2 and propane detectors, etc. which are often still connected, so it is possible the coach batteries are down but the larger problems may be the start battery as there are more drains there, like the radio, ignition,etc. and it may be down. But there is some hope as two months is not a long time storage.
Still not something you want to happen often as it does degrade the batteries a bit each time they go flat, so provisions need to be made to avoid this.
One is to look at keeping the converter or some form of charging on both or fully disconnecting both.
This is one style of battery disconnect which I like as it is small and to be added in between the negative battery cable and ground to act as a switch. you turn the key to disconnect/connect and take the key with you to prevent anybody else turning it on.
https://www.northerntool.com/shop/to...EaArovEALw_wcB
The option of charging does not need a full 30 amp as it requires very little power so if there is a 15-20 amp regular outlet handy an adapter to fit the 30 into a 15 can work fine for just the charger and small stuff, not to include AC!
We store here at the house using this but to avoid having two things to charge two strings of batteries, I added a "Trik-L-Charge" which uses electronics to sense when the start battery gets low and allows a small amount of coach battery to go one way to it without me doing anything. One way charging but only as it is needed.

[rprochnow]

Our storage has a 110 outlet intended for trickle charging.

We added lithium batteries to our 2021 View, so we have more charge in the coach batteries (at least 3KWh).

And, we added an AMP-L-START that provides a trickle charge from the coach batteries to the engine battery.

I did run a test to disconnect the engine and coach batteries, so I knew how that worked. The coach batteries are pretty easy - with the disconnect at the door of our 24D.

The engine battery is more difficult, requiring pulling out a battery connector from underneath the dashboard by the accelerator pedal. And there's fuse that should be removed from the chassis fuse box under the driver's seat (by the driver's door).

Instructions for disconnecting the batteries are in the Sprinter and View manuals.

But as long as we either have a 110 outlet connected OR the solar panels are getting power, we shouldn't need to disconnect the batteries while our RV is in storage (right now, we are using an enclosed, lockable, shed - without any sun - so we rely completely on the 110 outlet).

[AJMike]

We keep our RV in covered storage so there is no direct sunlight on the solar panels, but we still find that even the diffused light under the roof where our RV is stored is enough to fully charge our house batteries when the unit is in storage. In fact that diffused light is enough to charge the batteries as long as the battery switch is set to off.

We have stored the RV with the house batteries at 90% or so and a couple of days later they are at 100%, so roof solar should be more than enough to keep your house batteries charged as long as the RV is not in an enclosed and completely dark garage or storage unit.

[JoeC]

Originally Posted by be happy

Even though you switch the battery disconnect switch to "off" there are many components that will still draw 12v power. The only true way to disconnect is a blade type disconnect switch close to the battery.

These statements may not always be correct. In my RV (2015 Itasca Spirit 27qp), turning the battery disconnect switch to "off" isolates the battery bank from all of the factory installed loads. I know this because of the installed shunt battery monitor. The amount of power the shunt monitor itself consumes is less than 1/1,000 amp. Of course, if you added anything yourself, then all bets are off. For me, I added solar panels and controller. There is an isolation switch for the solar panels plus the controller does not draw power from its output connections. I can choose to isolate the battery bank but still keep it charged by solar.

[Phil G.]

Originally Posted by JoeC

These statements may not always be correct. In my RV (2015 Itasca Spirit 27qp), turning the battery disconnect switch to "off" isolates the battery bank from all of the factory installed loads. I know this because of the installed shunt battery monitor. The amount of power the shunt monitor itself consumes is less than 1/1,000 amp. Of course, if you added anything yourself, then all bets are off. For me, I added solar panels and controller. There is an isolation switch for the solar panels plus the controller does not draw power from its output connections. I can choose to isolate the battery bank but still keep it charged by solar.

I agree completely on the above!

Our battery disconnect switch disconnects all 12V battery power to the coach. The coach battery current shunt monitor I installed shows ZERO current flowing when the disconnect switch is turned off ... as should be the case.

[rprochnow]

Instructions for the 2019 Sprinter chassis (2020/2021 View/Navion) indicates using the disconnect to the right of the accelerator pedal AND removing a breaker from the panel beneath the driver's seat - to fully disconnect the engine battery.

Instructions are in the Sprinter and View manuals.