Coach batteries

[Gary RV_Wizard]

Hey all you long timers: How many batteries is normal for the house?

How long is a string?
Seriously, the "typical" new RV battery bank(s) varies widely with the RV size, cost, and intended usage. And motorhomes have both house and chassis batteries.

Small motorhomes have at least one house battery but two is probably more common in the mid-size models. Larger or more upscale models have anywhere from 4 to 8, but the count gets confusing because sometimes they use larger physical size & capacity batteries [such as a 4D or 8D] but fewer of them.

You really need to measure batteries in terms of capacity, either amp-hours (AH) or reserve capacity (RC) minutes. That "one battery" might be anywhere from 75-115 AH.

 

[Larry N.]

Hey all you long timers: How many batteries is normal for the house?

I don't know of a "normal," except perhaps for a single rig and its specific use.

Using a single battery might make sense if you always are hooked to shore power, but the more batteries you have (all else being equal) the longer you can camp off grid, which is why some rigs may have two batteries and some have even more- my Beaver had 4 HUGE 12V deep cycle batteries ~100+ lbs each), and my Ventana had eight 6V deep cycle batteries (roughly the same in both cases). Of course with all the juice the rigs used, including residential fridge, they needed those batteries to run for a night or two off grid, depending on weather, without firing up the generator.

But there have been some folks who can make it a week with just a pair of batteries, so a lot depends on your specific rig and your specific needs.

I see Gary has posted while I was typing -- good perspective.

 

[Kirk]

Hey all you long timers: How many batteries is normal for the house?

To add to what others have said, it is very common for a class C to have 1 or possibly 2 extra batteries under the hood opposite the chassis battery to supply the coach. If you never spend more than 1 night without outside electricity and always drive several hours between nights of dry camping, then you probably need only 1 or possibly 2 batteries, depending on the size of the battery(s). Another factor in this is what sort of things you are operating from the battery. If you use an inverter to supply the TV and other conveniences you will need more battery than if you minimize the electric use when without connections by conserving light and furnace use. In most RVs that do not have an inverter, the furnace is the largest user of battery power.

His thinking is if one fails, it'll take the other along within a couple months

That is true if you have 12V batteries in parallel but not so much true if you have a pair of 6V batteries in series. That is one reason that some of us prefer to use pairs of 6V batteries.

 

[John From Detroit]

For my class A it came with a pair of GC-2.. I added a 2nd pair and could have gone to 3 pair easily

 

[Adventurous Traveler]

Well, for one having two batteries connected to start gives you obviously double the backup power if you are boondocking, or even overnighting at a Walmart parking lot. To me, you would want as much battery as your rig can easily accommodate to allow for a larger margin of error of running out of DC juice.

See post 23 from Kirk.

 

[pheasant16]

Just back from shop. He figured the original tray rusted or leaky batteries destroyed it, and the current home brew is a result of previous owner seeing the price of a new slide out tray. New ones he showed
me ranged from 200-500 bucks, plus a couple hundred to install if they do it. He did check the batteries, said all was fine. His young tech was teaching the old guys new words while trying to get it out.