Harvest hosts

[Bob&Jan]

Jan and I are thinking that using the harvest hosts for one night stays could fun interesting and economical.
My concern is the residential refrigerator in our Montana High Country because these camping sites are dry camping with no hookups
How much power do we need to run the refrigerator and some small appliances.
I believe the factory installed inverter is 1000 watts. should we have a generator to keep the battery charged. How much power would we need without running two A/C s. The other choice is solar power.

I am sure there lots opinions out there let know what you think and how you solved this problem. I am looking for advice

Thanks

[chuckster57]

What type and how many batteries do you have? What appliances? Is the inverter “dedicated” to the refer, meaning does it also power outlets or the microwave/TVs.

[gearhead]

Depends on the time of year and your batteries. We have dry camped at Charlotte (NC) Dirt Track in November. Pretty cool at night. Wife ran the furnace and fireplace. We ran 2 Honda 2000's with a 6 gallon Berg long run tank with no issue. We have a Group 27 dedicated to the fridge inverter and another for everything else. Probably ran the gens 10 hours a day. You should be good running the gens during the day and off at night. If you're not running much else one gen might be OK.
I have looked at Harvest Hosts as well. Probably will join and cram the 2 Honda gens in the storage bay somewhere. I'm for about anything except a parking lot RV park.

[Bob&Jan]

I only have one battery. The owners manual is very generic to Montana’s and not very informative about specific models. It also appears that the inverter is dedicated to the refrigerator according to the generic manual. The coach does have a receptacle for a solar connection. If I decide to use a generator how do I connect it to the RV. You have probably figured out I am new to these new RVs the last travel trailer I had was a Layton 1994 vintage

[sourdough]

OP, for us the residential fridge which we chose when buying this unit eliminated any/all camping without full hookups. Use of solar, connecting/reconnecting generators, banging the battery(s) (fridge) all the time with up, down, no power just didn't make sense - that's what RV type fridges are for and the options they provide. Can one get by? Absolutely. Install a solar array and deal with all that entails - worthwhile if you want to be off grid all the time. For that occasional weekend? I can't justify it. Generators are great and I used to carry a 7500W everywhere I went because I did stuff. No longer; weight, inconvenience, noise, space. We just decided we like more simple.

[gearhead]

Originally Posted by Bob&Jan

I only have one battery. The owners manual is very generic to Montana’s and not very informative about specific models. It also appears that the inverter is dedicated to the refrigerator according to the generic manual. The coach does have a receptacle for a solar connection. If I decide to use a generator how do I connect it to the RV. You have probably figured out I am new to these new RVs the last travel trailer I had was a Layton 1994 vintage

I'm thinking you need 2 batteries, even if you don't dry camp. You should be able to fit 2. I've gone so far as putting 2 in a Tupperware type box. WalMart is your friend. Check if you have room in the Montana's battery area for another battery. I bet you do. Measure how much room you have and either get a battery box or WalMart Sterilite box as big as possible. Then look at the WalMart Deep Cycle Maxx batteries. Get 2 of the biggest that will fit in the box. You will have to buy 2 short jumper battery cables. One red, one black. Hook the batteries up in parallel. Google that if you don't know how.
If you get a generator just plug it in to the Montana elect cable just like in a RV park. You will have to get at least one adapter from say, 50amp to 30 amp.
Let us know how it works for you.

[tech740]

I know my inverter is dedicated to the refer. Not sure on all but I was told factory ones are. I have a purple Romex wire set that only goes to that outlet.