Dry camping battery charge?

[Poppie]

I have a Honda 2000i but have not yet used it with our new 22fb . We will be doing our fisrt dry camping in a couple of weeks and would like to know the best way to use this generator to charge my battery? Do I get the adaptor cable and connect it directly to the battery post or do I use the trailer 30 amp cord with the 110 adaptor plug and have the generator push the power through the trailers converter?

Thank you

[clubhouse]

I use the trailers converter via the shower power cable and 30-15/20amp dog bone.

[dewey02]

X2 on using the TT converter. I believe your 22fb has a 3 stage converter which will recharge your battery pretty efficiently.

[RoyBraddy]

I too suggest you use the Generator 120VAC to run your trailer and let the smart mode converter/charger charge up your battery. It can do this is a three hour generator run time if you are at a place where use of the generator is allowed long enough to do this. Most camp ground areas on the East side of the US have generator run time restrictions in place. Most folks like to have at least 220AHs of battery capacity when camping off the power grid.

My OFF-ROAD camping is done using 255AHs of battery capacity and have changed out my older single mode converter/charger to a smart mode charger. I installed additional batteries and 4AWG battery cables. We also replaced the high current automotive incandescent lamps for LED BOARDS.

Our biggest drain is of course from 4PM to 11PM and then we have to deal with the normal parasitic drains with the trailer 24/7. We camp doing very much the same as we do at electric sites but of course no air conditioner or high wattage microwave use. We light up our surroundings and watch OTA HDTV, run our computers, check in with the kids, pay bills, some surfing of the internet, I get to play with my Ham radio some. Our cooking is mostly from the Propane fired Grill. We usually heat our hot water on the gas stove and do stand-up bathing at the sink when camping off the power grid.

All of this was planned to drain my 255AH capacity battery bank down to it's 50% charge state by 8AM each morning. Then I can connect my 2KW generator to the 30A shore power cable using a RV30A-15A adapter and let the on-board smart mode recharge my 255AH capacity batteries in a quick three hour generator run time. Some places only allow 2 hours of generator run time in the morning which makes have to do this all over again during the evening allowed generator run time but takes less time to get up to the 90% mark as the batteries are almost charged anyway..

We are very successful now doing this method of keeping our battery charged up over the past few years. We can do 12-14 50% to 90% charge state cycles on our 255AH capacity system but then have to do a full 100% charge mode which takes around 12 hours of generator run time. The batteries will lose their performance curve big time if you don't do this after the 12-14 charge cycles. Running the generator for 12 hours of course isn't allowed at most camp grounds so this is usually when we head for the house.

Just keep in mind all of this may take some planning on your part . When we just showed up in the beginning and thought we could just camp off the single battery as long as we wanted to it got dark on us around 10PM. Sort of dead in the water as they say...

For us its all about having good PLAN Bs....

Roy Ken

[clutch]

Just plug it into your trailer. We used to boondock a lot and would run a tank of gas through the generator every evening. Our small Honda would easily run around 8 hours on a half gallon of gas. It kept the batteries up, the refrigerator would switch over to power and we could watch movies. When we went to bed we would just let the generator run until the tank was empty. It was very quiet.