Quick question


Per my 99 smb manual, it says if I have an inverter, I have to turn it on to charge my "extra" battery. How long can I leave the inverter on for? I'd like to have it on for a few days to fully charge my house batt.

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2012 Ram 1500 Express
2001 Honda CRF230r
2000 SPORTSMOBILE
1997 Jeep Wrangler Lifted / Locked
1997 Mercedes C230
1994 Mercedes SL500

The van needs to be plugged into "shore power" to charge.

You should be able to leave your inverter on for days to allow charging the batteries.

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Ray
Beastie 3: 2002 7.3 EB Cargo: Agile TTB, CCV High Top, Custom Walk Through, Lots of stuff added. www.BlingMyRig.com

Haha I figured that much out on my own! I do appreciate the help. I'm officially on the grid!

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2012 Ram 1500 Express
2001 Honda CRF230r
2000 SPORTSMOBILE
1997 Jeep Wrangler Lifted / Locked
1997 Mercedes C230
1994 Mercedes SL500

The inverter makes 110V power from the batteries. The charger uses 110V from your house to charge your batteries. I leave my charger on all the time when in storage. This was recommended by SMB North.


David

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Savanna 2020 Sprinter EB 3500XD 4x4 lithium

And you've probably figured this out already, but some inverters are inverter/chargers (all in one), whereas others are "just" inverters and then you would have a separate "just" charger. Kind of sounds like you might have an inverter/charger.

I don't want to scare anybody because most of the time leaving the charger is fine. But if a battery in the loop goes bad (batteries banked together) you might risk a fire. It happened to me and luckily I caught it before the battery melted down, blew, or caught fire. The battery was so hot I could not touch it. My inverter/multi stage charger set to the charge mode puts out up to 100 amps. A battery temp sensor is on one battery but I was charging 4 (2 house-2 starting) and one of the starting batteries failed. Acid spewed all over and the next morning the smell tipped me off something was going on. The problem was I was getting weird reading off my gauges well in advance I now know what to look for. I was seeing over 40 amps charge when after a few hours the amp gauge should have dropped down to a few amps. The next morning it was pumping out over 70 amps! Even smart chargers can be fooled into thinking a battery needs a charge and a bad battery can make the charger react this way. There are a host of ways to deal with it but basically you just need to monitor the charging when possible. The issue is rare but I'm overly cautious these days.

BTW some inverters can be set up to supply a maintenance charge but when set that way if a battery goes bad & is is banked with another that's not isolated from the other in some way, the bad battery will take the other or others down to nothing in a hurry as the charger can't keep up. Just another reason to always monitor the charge. AGM batteries can stay fully charged in normal weather for a month or longer provided there is no load applied. I always plug in while on the carport but am set to maintenance.

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2006 Ford 6.0PSD EB-50/E-PH SMB 4X4 Rock Crawler Trailer

Sportsmobile 4X4 Adventures..........On and off road adventures

I keep the van plugged into the garage when I'm at home and I have a 1.5A float charger that is plugged in from the 110v outlet in the van to the always-on cigarette lighter hole in the dash to keep the starting batteries topped off. The whole thing is on a timer in the garage that only delivers power for 4 hours a day. That keeps both systems from overcharging and helps insure against a middle-of-the-night fire.

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2002 E350 7.3 PSD
Quigley 4x4, EB50 floorplan