easy way to turn off charging to house batteries while keeping rig plugged in?

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easy way to turn off charging to house batteries while keeping rig plugged in?

December 20, 2021, 11:46:58 pm

Is there an easy way to turn off the charging of the house batteries while keeping the rig plugged and keeping the battery cables connected?

We've got some cold weather rolling in, and will be camping in the next weeks, so we haven't bothered to winterize the rig. We keep it plugged in w/ a space heater in to keep it above freezing.

I don't want the house batteries being charged, because I have a battery conditioner I want to connect to it to try to recover my goof of running the water down.

I supposed I could just pull the cables from them, but I hate to have the hot cables hanging in the compartment least the bump and short on something.

Thanks in advance.

Sean

Re: easy way to turn off charging to house batteries while keeping rig plugged in?

Reply #1 – December 21, 2021, 12:22:53 am

Flip off the converter breaker in the load center. The batteries will not be charged by the converter, and all 12V items will be run off the batteries. If you have solar, that will still charge the batteries unless you remove the solar fuse. If you wish to power everything from the converter, but have ALL battery charging stopped, then leave the converter on, but remove the jumper connecting the two batteries. If a battery switch was installed, it will do the same thing.

Steve

Re: easy way to turn off charging to house batteries while keeping rig plugged in?

Reply #2 – December 21, 2021, 08:48:10 am

My 1988 MB was aired with duplex outlet and converter on a standard breaker. I replaced the standard breaker with a duplex breaker separating Duplex outlets and the converter.

Re: easy way to turn off charging to house batteries while keeping rig plugged in?

Reply #3 – December 21, 2021, 09:14:00 am

Sean, from reading your earlier post about your batteries, and now your current plan of trying to restore them to health, and then going camping in the winter months.....to me, it sounds like a problem waiting to happen. Perhaps I am wrong if you will be able to be connected to shore power at your destination.

My experience is that camping in winter conditions often requires more battery usage for lighting and heating. Trying to do that with compromised batteries could ruin your trip...forgive my OCD nature of trying to avoid problems on the road...

Steve K.

Re: easy way to turn off charging to house batteries while keeping rig plugged in?

Reply #4 – December 21, 2021, 10:24:25 am

I added a switch to be able to turn off the battery charger portion.
At one time i had a 2000 watt inverter setup to run the RV on shore power using my solar., it would run the charger when the batteries were low. Adding the switch allowed me to turn the charger off.

Re: easy way to turn off charging to house batteries while keeping rig plugged in?

Reply #5 – December 21, 2021, 03:01:02 pm

We winter camp in PNW in the snow Jan to Mar. When we go to ski areas where you can plug in with a reservation etc, we don't worry about our four 12v batteries since if we can not charge them with our 450 watts of solar we can turn on the charger to keep them maintained. When we camp with out plugging in and temperatures are teens to twenty's we can count on about two days of 12v power for lights and heat etc. When we end up with solar we can extend that time but usually it's not much. We have now added a wave 6 and wave 3 heaters to the mix to extend our time but have not really checked that out fully yet. We have found that solar here in the PNW may not be enough when it is cold and storming, so figure 12hrs to 20hrs per battery for heat etc.

   Karen~Liam
   98 ~ MB
   NinA

Re: easy way to turn off charging to house batteries while keeping rig plugged in?

Reply #6 – December 21, 2021, 05:53:42 pm

Quote from: Karen & Liam - December 21, 2021, 03:01:02 pm

. We have now added a wave 6 and wave 3 heaters to the mix to extend our time but have not really checked that out fully yet. We have found that solar here in the PNW may not be enough when it is cold and storming, so figure 12hrs to 20hrs per battery for heat etc.

The Waves will considerabley increase your dry camping time in very cold weather, the pair of them should keep the interior comfortable. We have two Wave 3s that do a good job when it is zero out, so well that we only carry the second Wave when we expect very cold conditions.
The Wave 6s are powerful and require a distance between them and anything flammable. Expect you cat to get so close that she will almost be hot enough to catch fire, cats love heat when it’s cold out.

Larry

Re: easy way to turn off charging to house batteries while keeping rig plugged in?

Reply #7 – December 21, 2021, 06:31:30 pm

We first bought a wave 6 a years ago and found it to be hotter then we preferred so we run it at a lower setting.
That's why we bought the wave 3, its just right. Nina found her way right away to the wave 6
last winter right after we got it and fired it up. And Yes she did singe her fur a little the first time.

Karen~Liam
98 ~ MB
NinA

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