110 outlet power with generator off

New to travel trailers and the forum but my new Heartland 32 BUDS has what appears to me to be a problem. With no shore power (generator or pole) should the 110 outlets be producing juice? They do when my generator is hooked up but I was gonna put in a battery bank so we don't have to run the generator at night to watch tv or power up our phones, iPads, etc, however if no power comes to the outlets no sense in doing that? All the fuses in the panel are good as are the two on the converter. Also the GFCI has been reset. Also the other items such as water pump, radio, lights still work just not the outlets.

Do I need an inverter? Is this a dumb question that none of these operate this way? How do I get power to the outlets without my generator or hooking to a pole? Any help would be greatly appreciated. On the upside in trying to find the "problem" I located the converter behind the electric panel!
 

cookie

Administrator
Staff member
Hello Kevanshell and welcome to this great forum. Lots of great information here.

Your receptacles are all 120 volt so you will need shore power, generator or an inverter installed.

The items that you mentioned, water pump, radio and lights are 12 volt. Meaning they get power from the battery or converter.

If you want power for charging phones or watching RV you will need to install an inverter and maybe add another battery.

You will get more opinions I'm sure.

Peace
Dave
 

danemayer

Well-known member
Hi Kevanshell,

If you're plugging your shore power cord into the generator, then when you get the additional batteries and inverter, you may be able to take the same approach and just plug the cord into the inverter to power the outlets. If hardwired, you'll need a transfer switch so only one power source is connected at a time.

You'll probably want to be very judicious about how much you try to run off battery power. If it's just a TV and phone chargers, that won't draw too much. But a toaster or coffemaker draws between 10 and 15 amps at 120V. That's 100-150 amps of 12V battery. They'll run batteries down pretty quickly.
 
Hi Kevanshell,

If you're plugging your shore power cord into the generator, then when you get the additional batteries and inverter, you may be able to take the same approach and just plug the cord into the inverter to power the outlets. If hardwired, you'll need a transfer switch so only one power source is connected at a time.

You'll probably want to be very judicious about how much you try to run off battery power. If it's just a TV and phone chargers, that won't draw too much. But a toaster or coffemaker draws between 10 and 15 amps at 120V. That's 100-150 amps of 12V battery. They'll run batteries down pretty quickly.


Thank you you all for the replies, and most importantly the answer! I have a 3000 watt inverter I've never hooked up so I may try to use it but probably not until much research and "figuring" on how to best go about it.

I love it that my generator is a hoss and powers this place easily, but the constant roar, especially in the middle of the night, leaves me begging for a better solution. Now all I have to do is figure out how many batteries in parallel I need to run this place and the number of solar panels to keep them topped off!

kevanshell
 
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