house batteries

[busshawg]

What source are most of using to keep your house batteries charged up, besides a gen set.

[Blacksheep]

2500 watt heart inverter with built in charger

Ace

[usbusin]

2500 watt Trace sine-wave inverter with built-in charger and solar panels with a Trace C-40 controller.

[buddydawg]

I am using Xantrex Prosine 2.5 Inverter/Charger

[busshawg]

have you had any problems with your solar usbusin? That is a direction I was thinking of as well

[bcaddel]

I have a 1000 watt heart inverter with built in 3-stage charger that seems to work great. I use a Link 1000 Inverter & Charge Control Battery Monitor to keep tabs on everything.

[luvrbus]

If you don't have a inverter charger a Iota charger works just as good for around 150 dollars but with out electricity from a generator or shore power nothing will work except solar.   good luck

[Stormcloud]

I use a 3500/6000watt inverter made offshore. I use a Progressive Dynamics multi-stage charger to keep the batteries up.
Excellent charger, available in a variety of capacities. I leave mine plugged in all the time.

PS Get the charge-wizard with it, if you get one.

Solar is planned for future (3-4 years)

Mark

[gus]

Plain ole Battery Tender when parked, but alternator when driving.

[Melbo]

Magna 4024 with charger when on shore power and the alternator when driving.

Melbo

[usbusin]

have you had any problems with your solar usbusin? That is a direction I was thinking of as well

On our bus we had (6) 80 watt, 4.71 amp Solarex solar panels (28.3 Amps / 480 Watts max. solar charging) and a Trace C40 3-stage, 40-amp controller.

On our truck conversion we have  a 2500 watt Trace Sine-Wave Inverter with a Trace C-40 Controller and 240 watts of solar panels. (Would like to get one more solar panel as 240 watts is marginal for us in the winter in Arizona).

We had 14 years of service on the solar system on our bus and we have 7+ years on our truck conversion.  Absolutely no problems.  Get good equipment and it will pay for itself.  The C-40 controller is a 3-stage and that is what you need for proper battery charging.

You can go to the two blogs shown at the bottom to see the bus and truck conversion specs.

Hope that helps. 

[DSweet]

We are using a 45 amp power center that has 3 charging rates and a
desulfating cycle.  Seems wot work well, keeps our 4 6 volt golf cart batteries
wel cared for.  The plus side is that it doesn't boil or over charge the batteries,
unlike the older power centers.
Blessings,
David

[chris4905]

Not sure I understand your question.....keep them charged up WHEN ?

While going down the road? 
I have the high amp DD alternator charging both the house and starting batteries at the same time.  They are connected to the alternator with a heavy duty relay.  When activated by a switch (can only be activated with the engine running) on the dashboard, the relay ties both sets of batts to the DD alternator.

While parked hooked to 120V landline?
3,000W Prosine inverter, with a 3 stage charger, charges the 24V house batteries.  For the set of 12V house batts I have a 3 stage portable charger hooked to the batts and plugged into a 120V duplex in the bay.

I can run all 120V appliances off the inverter when dry camped (which is usually only a couple days max) and when it's time to recharge we run to our next destination and the DD alternator is charging the batts.

Hope this helps,
Chris Christensen
1974 GMC 4905 w/ 6V92 & V730 auto

[white-eagle]

we've got an inverter/charger for when plugged in, connected to the starter batteries to use the alternator when moving, and soon, 2 solar panels setting in the garage waiting on me to figure out how to mount them on the roof and get a wire down to the batteries.

[busshawg]

Thanks for the great responses, lots of info. I am planning on doing a lot of dry docking , so what I'm getting from this is that I should probably go solar, thanks again

Have fun