RV Furnace Run Off Solar ?.

[shadow]

I always hear (read) that its not a good idea to run your rv furnace over night off of the house battery
because your battery will be dead in the morning.

The one thing I`m wondering about, and never hear anything about is running the rv furnace off of
your solar battery`s ?. Is this possible ?.

The solar battery`s recharge faster than the house battery, and if you do have solar on your rv, this
seems like it would work better to me ?.

Thoughts and opinions on this would be appreciated.

 

[gadgetMe]

The key to running a rv heater is to have enough battery reserve to make it through the night,

I do it all of the time, usually in temp around freezing or a little lower, I have 950 amp hours of battery capacity
The fan in the heater is the energy hog. Some will use lp heaters to overcome the electrical usage when in cold weather


All solar does is charge batteries,

Cheers

 

[John61CT]

The solar battery`s recharge faster than the house battery

I never heard of a "solar" battery different from House.

Why would you have a separate one, why not expand the House bank and charge it from any source available?

 

[tx2sturgis]

One or two nights won't normally be a problem.

It's camping in cold temps and running that RV furnace for a long weekend, or a week or so...NOW you have a problem if you have not been charging the house batteries and KEEPING them charged. Lead acid batteries lose performance in really cold weather too, and charge much more slowly.

If you have nice sunny days, a 100 watt panel will usually be able to balance that amount of depletion.

But, if you are parked in shady areas, or its been cloudy for several days, you will probably need another source of power to charge the batteries. Usually a generator or shore power.

Add in the DC power required to operate the control circuit for the RV fridge, the lights, the water pump, and maybe a TV, and again, you need to balance that amount of usage. So now maybe 200 or 300 watts of panels will be needed. Or maybe more, depending on your usage patterns.

 

[skyl4rk]

We turn off the heater at night and use plenty of blankets. In the morning, reach out from under the blankets and turn up the thermostat. When warm enough, turn off the RV heater and make coffee (producing heat). By then, hopefully the sun through the windshield is warm enough.

We have a small van and don't go camping much in sub freezing temps, so this works for us.

 

[Gideon33w]

RVs are designed to chiefly operate when connected to shore power/utilities.
You can mod the factory setup to run off an off-grid setup.
You can build a setup better designed for running off-grid.
Anything else is a big compromise. Either poor performing or expensive.