Quote:
Originally Posted by MartyinSC
There is another option - bring the battery home with you. No need to worry about freezing, keep it in your garage. Charge/trickle/test/and even load as necessary. Once I was in Iceland for a year. I kept my motorcycle battery on a trickle charger, plugged into a 120VAC timer set to one/hr/day. Just some ideas cheaper than solar.
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With our previous trailers where the batteries were mounted on the tongue and easy to remove, I brought them home each fall and put them on a Battery Tender maintainer. Worked great, but annual removal is NOT an option with our 5th-wheel.
I have four 6-volt batteries in the front storage compartment. They weigh about 55 pounds each. They are installed in a single, heavy-duty plastic box and fit inside the box with no room to spare. (The dealer actually designed a very nice setup including plastic lid with vent hose to the outside.)
See if you can picture how removal would go. I would bend over 90 degrees at the waist and stick my head and arms in the compartment. Then struggle to lift 55 pounds straight up with my arms fully extended. And I'd have to repeat that 3 more times! Let's see - what's more expensive? A cheap solar system or back surgery?
I'd move the trailer to a storage site with electricity before attempting to remove the batteries.