Foretravel Owners' Forum For owners and Fans of Foretravel Motorcoaches September 10, 2025 ...

House battery charging

October 04, 2022, 08:54:53 pm

Totally drawing a blank...
When plugged into shore power ( I have only 15amp available) does that automatically charge the house batteries or do I have to have the inverter on, which is off at the moment
I have a battery charger on the start batteries so they are ok

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Re: House battery charging

Reply #1 – October 04, 2022, 09:09:44 pm

The converter/charger charges the house batteries on ours. It depends on the rating of your converter/charger or all in one unit in some cases. Ours was originally a 60 amp charger but I replaced ours with a 45 amp unit. It rarely gets used as the solar normally charges the house batteries. I have a jumper so the engine batteries are the same voltage as the house batteries.

Our three inverters are completely separate from the charger.

Pierce

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Re: House battery charging

Reply #2 – October 04, 2022, 09:25:48 pm

So if that is correct I must have to turn on the converter (magnum2812) for the house batteries to charge,right?

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Re: House battery charging

Reply #3 – October 04, 2022, 09:35:18 pm

Peter,

I Have the ProSine control panel, similar to but not the original to my coach.  On that control panel I can select to have the charger active and the inverter disabled.  Often when in storage that is how I configure it so that if the shore power fails for a long period the house batteries will not be completely drained. 

Check yours out and you can probably do the same. 

Richard

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Re: House battery charging

Reply #4 – October 04, 2022, 09:36:16 pm

On the Magnum 2812 you need to turn on the charge circuit to have it charge. The inverter doesn't
need to be on. The green charge light needs to be on for it to charge.

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Re: House battery charging

Reply #5 – October 04, 2022, 09:50:03 pm

Normally your Magnum will use 120v shore or generator source to create correct 12v power to charge house batteries. In the absence of shore and generator, Magnum reverses and uses 12v source to create inverting 120v.

If the Magnum has charge turned off, it will not charge house. If Magnum has inverter turned off, it will not invert. Most leave both of these switches on all the time, allowing Magnum to automatically switch between charging house batteries and discharging (inverting) house batteries.

Magnum will operate with 15, 30 or 50 amp sources. There are Magnum settings to manually let Magnum know what amp source you are connected.

15-amp source will work fine without notifying Magnum amp source if house batteries are not discharged. As discharged batteries could draw more than 15 amps from source, tripping source breaker.

Watch Magnum display panel to watch 12v and 120v amps being used at one time to be sure batteries are being charged.

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Re: House battery charging

Reply #6 – October 05, 2022, 07:32:36 pm

What inverter do you have?  That makes a difference in how it operates. I have the charge on mine turned on and the inverter part turned off so that if the shore power goes off it will not run down the house batteries. This is while in my yard and not living in it. When we were in it all the time then I left both turned on because I could turn off the inverter if I needed to if no shore power for extended time.

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Re: House battery charging

Reply #7 – October 06, 2022, 02:19:17 am

I have the magnum2812.
Peter

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Re: House battery charging

Reply #8 – October 06, 2022, 10:02:22 am

Sorry I wrote it wrong. It's a 2812

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