Making use of what I already have

TomW · 03-11-2018, 01:09 PM

New owner of an older MW, 1999 30V, and wanting to boondock this summer for a week or two or three. I have a little Honda 1000 that runs like a champ as well as a battery charger. Why not use the gennie plus BC to bring my batteries up, rather than invest in solar? Our electrical needs are pretty light, charging phones, tablets, LED lights, and fridge electronics about covers it.. I'm thinking an hour a day with the generator would keep things charged up, and I'm avoiding the cost and effort of installing solar.

Anyone see a problem with this idea?

Gene36542 · 03-11-2018, 01:43 PM

Depends how large your battery bank is... and how thirsty your refer is.

TomW · 03-11-2018, 02:33 PM

I'm not running the. Fridge on batteries, just the fridge electronics will use a little juice. My fridge is a norcold that runs on 110 or propane. My batteries have a little over 200 amp hours of capacity, so I'm thinking I'm good to go with the generator and battery charger.

Matterbery · 03-11-2018, 03:13 PM

May need to do a test run at home before getting out on the road, and then you can adjust the time for recharge by gen or getting a potable solar panel that could be used during the day.

workinrvers · 03-11-2018, 04:11 PM

your idea will work just fine. You mention the "effort" of putting in solar. I'm thinking that I expend the energy one time for a few hours putting in solar and I'm done .....forever. Your way means I have to get the generator and battery charger out of storage, check fuel and fill if low, check oil, start up and hook up, I would be the guy that has to do this everyday because I just don't trust that it will still be there if I leave it outside (even locked with a chain) when I return.
Just a couple of my thoughts but your way would work perfectly well, there is certainly more than one way to recharge a battery. :-)

TomW · 03-11-2018, 04:42 PM

Thanks for all the thoughts....a test run is a good idea.... and Phil, you are right, it's not the easiest, but it's the cheapest for me and that's the plus. Maybe next year I'll get solar, especially if we spend more than a few weeks boondocking.

BobC · 03-17-2018, 08:33 PM

From my perspective, the peace and quiet of solar is worth the price. I have a Honda 2000i that we used with our travel trailer along with solar. The solar met all of our needs except for a few minutes a day when we ran our microwave. Also, when it was cloudy and rainy we had to run it for a few hours to charge.

Quiet as they are, even Hondas can't compete with solar.

neub · 03-18-2018, 08:20 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TomW

New owner of an older MW, 1999 30V, and wanting to boondock this summer for a week or two or three. I have a little Honda 1000 that runs like a champ as well as a battery charger. Why not use the gennie plus BC to bring my batteries up, rather than invest in solar? Our electrical needs are pretty light, charging phones, tablets, LED lights, and fridge electronics about covers it.. I'm thinking an hour a day with the generator would keep things charged up, and I'm avoiding the cost and effort of installing solar.

Anyone see a problem with this idea?

I have boondocked with a friend for years that does exactly as you are proposing but Max found he needed to run his 1000 a couple hrs per day, otherwise everything was fine.