Foretravel Owners' Forum For owners and Fans of Foretravel Motorcoaches September 14, 2025 ...

Storage without shore power tips

September 10, 2023, 09:40:37 am

Due to life transitions we have temporarily moved Ginger our 2005 36ft coach to covered storage (60 days). Normally she resides inside with 50 amp service connected.  I have access to 110 20 amp at the new site but I am trying to not leave an extension cord out all of the time.  I could not find a way to power down our Samsung fridge short of unplugging it so I did the next best thing (I think) and turned the inverter off.  What else should I do to keep from killing the batteries?  There seems to be a lot of things that don't power down (12 volt) including the in dash radio (which doesn't have a power button).  If I plug it in over the weekends to 110 will that be sufficient to keep the batteries charged?

Thank you,
Don

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Re: Storage without shore power tips

Reply #1 – September 10, 2023, 10:46:11 am

Disconnect the batts

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Re: Storage without shore power tips

Reply #2 – September 10, 2023, 10:46:23 am

Disconnect both banks of batteries at the batteries and don't worry about it. Either the hot or ground cable.

Pierce

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Re: Storage without shore power tips

Reply #3 – September 10, 2023, 05:21:32 pm

If you are plugged into 110v it will keep your house batteries charged and you need some kind of device to
charge you chassis battery.

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Re: Storage without shore power tips

Reply #4 – September 10, 2023, 09:11:00 pm

15/20 amp 120 VAC is more than adequate to keep batteries charged, refrigerator in, etc.

Be sure to turn inverter OFF, so if power goes off, the inverter does not drain the batteries.

Go into inverter/charger programming and set "power share/power save" to 5 amps.  That 5 amps of 120 VAC will still charge the batteries at over 40 amps @ 14 VDC.

Make sure the chassis batteries are also being charged.

And, if in a humid climate, that is also plenty of power to run a small house-type dehumidifier.  Set it at 50% humidity draining into sink, shower, etc (gray tank).

Have had this same power and done exactly this for over two decades.

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Re: Storage without shore power tips

Reply #5 – September 11, 2023, 01:28:37 pm

You have to leave it plugged in or disconnect all the batteries.  If you don't, the house batteries will be toast in 60 days.  Probably the chassis batteries too.

Or, you could go out on a regular basis and plug in and charge the batteries.  It will be an hours long process.  You will have to figure out how often that would need to be.

Rich

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