Coach battery life for storage

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Humanaquarian

Humanaquarian

Well-known member
Joined
Feb 25, 2018
Posts
98
Welp, the Midwest decided to extend our winter a bit so my beloved RV  sits in storage for longer than I hoped, due to rain and temps. How long can it sit before the battery is drained with the avg temps somewhere between 30-50 degrees?
If I decide to go run it down the highway, what is a good range to recharge it?
I should add that the battery is one year old.

Thanks as always!
 
Hard to generalize. You'll have the chassis (starting) battery and probably one or more house batteries. Assuming you don't have power available to put on a battery maintainer(s) of some sort, be sure the battery switch(es)  are turned off, or disconnect the wire from the negative terminal to eliminate parasitic loads.

If I decide to go run it down the highway, what is a good range to recharge it?
Click to expand...

If the starting battery is dead, how would you start it? Why not remove the batteries, take them home and put on charge?
 
Standard lead/acid batteries self-discharge at a rate of about 5% per month. If there are any parasitic loads attached to the battery, that rate will be correspondingly higher. I don't know how long your battery has been sitting, and I don't know if you've totally disconnected it, or just turned the isolation switch off, so I can't guess how far it has discharged. FWIW, factory-installed battery isolation switches don't completely disconnect the battery from the coach.

Since I don't know how long, or how completely the battery has been disconnected, it's equally as difficult to say how long you'd have to drive to fully recharge it via the alternator. It would be best to plug the coach in as soon as possible, and let the converter/charger charge it.

Kev
 
Coach battery, not the house. I ran it for over 1000mii before putting it up.  I definitely turned the house battery switch off-not too concerned on that. Dont want to hop in my baby and hear the dreaded rrrrrr click!
I?m thinking it will be ok. It will sit for about 3 weeks, no big drains on the coach battery, not alarms, just a radio.
 
Historically, radio memory was well known for discharging batteries. I don't know about the current generation of radios.
 
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