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[rlyoung1952]

My wife and just purchased a 2022 Montana High Country 295RL. This is our first 5th wheel. My biggest problem purchasing it was trying to buy a hitch to haul it. I believe that my hitch will be in this week.

Question for the group has anyone added second battery? Do I only need a second battery and a set of cables to connect it in parallel?

I will be towing it with a 2020 Chevrolet 2500 Duramax. Is anyone else towing with this configuration? Any problems?

[jsb5717]

Welcome aboard! You don't need a 2nd battery unless you're going to be trying to do some camping without shore power. There are others who can better inform you on battery configs for boondocking if that's your interest. If you are mostly plugged into shore power, as we are, then one battery will work. Our dealer installed 2 batteries when we bought ours.

Personally, I would have got a 1 ton to haul that rig, which is about the same weight as our trailer. Make sure you are calculating based on loaded weight, not empty weight, which will be over 14K lbs. Hitch weight could approach 3k lbs.

But you've picked a very nice floorplan and have come to the right place. You could also consider joining the Montana forum.

[sourdough]

Some questions; which fridge did you get, res or LP/electric? Do you only have 1 battery now? Do you boondock or stay in rv parks with power?

[rlyoung1952]

I normally camp with power. I have the residential refrigerator. Since I am not sure how much power it will use. I am concerned during the summer when I turn the refrigerator on at my storage facility will one battery power it through the night. Also will the 200 watt solar handle it during the day.

[Gary R.]

Hello and welcome to the forum!

Congrats on the new Montana too!

Have fun and stay safe!

[spicercars]

Welcome from northern MN.

[jxnbbl]

Originally Posted by rlyoung1952

I normally camp with power. I have the residential refrigerator. Since I am not sure how much power it will use. I am concerned during the summer when I turn the refrigerator on at my storage facility will one battery power it through the night. Also will the 200 watt solar handle it during the day.

My uneducated experience is that it will be difficult on cloudy days. This assumes that you are still only with on lead acid battery, with this 200w power. My only experience was the last trip of the year where I knew we would be a good 5 days without power. So I installed 2 of the 3 170W panels, controller and 2 AGM batteries. We were positioned in the middle of a field and it was sunny 4 of the 5 days (cloudless). The only real energy draw was the fridge. I monitored the batteries daily and everything worked great, but I also monitored them on cloudy days, sites with partial shade, etc and just noted the differences. Anyways I'm glad I upgraded the battery supply and installed 2 instead of 1 panel.



Will fool with this more next spring when I'm out of storage and experiment with 1,2,3 panels (by covering them and unplugging them from the port).

[TimC]

Originally Posted by rlyoung1952

I normally camp with power. I have the residential refrigerator. Since I am not sure how much power it will use. I am concerned during the summer when I turn the refrigerator on at my storage facility will one battery power it through the night. Also will the 200 watt solar handle it during the day.

I’m not all that experienced with residential fridge power use, but based on some quick reading I just did sounds like it’d probably use 2 or so kWh every day. It’s hard to say how your battery would do without knowing what type and how big it is, but I would doubt it’ll handle running a residential fridge. If you happen to have a 300 AH lithium, then you could probably run it over night. But if it’s a battery the rig came with it’s probably a cheap lead acid battery (unless you optioned for lithium). You could maybe get a couple hours running the fridge before draining the lead acid below 50%, and maybe 3 to 4 before completely killing it.

On the solar, if the 2 kWh per day estimate is correct then you would need 10 hours of 100% output from the panels to recharge. That’s just not going to happen. So, your solar wouldn’t be sufficient either.

Of course, this could change a lot if I’m way off on how much power a residential fridge uses. But, I’d be shocked if it were low enough draw for a single 12v battery to power over night. And, if I am wrong then I guess I’m going to figure out how to fit a residential fridge in my camper.

I’m a huge supporter of solar and lithium installs, but if you’re just needing to occasionally run your fridge off battery my opinion is you’re better off just using a generator or just not running the fridge off battery. Doesn’t seem worth the cost to me just to be able to run the fridge occasionally. Then again, I’m a guy who spent way too much putting a good sized system in my camper.