Coach batteries Minnie Winnie 22M

[CantTakeit]

Hello all. Just looking for advice on best batteries for coach. I have a 2019 Minnie Winnie 22M, and the coach batteries recently died. The current batteries are NAPA 24 DCM Marine/RV
Dual Purpose. Just looking for suggestion as to whether I should replace with the same, or is there a better recommended option. Thank you very much.

[Eagle5]

Hi CantTakeit,
My NAPA 2019 Minnie Winnie 22M coach batteries are still working well. I plan upon replacing them with the same when the time comes.
Eagle5

[Morich]

The coach battery decisions are often best if we look at how we each use the RV.
If you plan to do a lot of camping without power connections, it may be worthwhile to go for the longer lasting but more expensive options.
That top end option can lead to going for lithium batteries and changes to how they are charged and connected. That can lead to lots of study on how, lots of effort to get it done and a bunch of money!

But there are lots of folks who do not plan to camp without power and find the standard setup works quite well and with lots less thought, effort and money involved!
My wife and I have worked our way up from the lowest form of camping with the least money involved but with lots of effort when we did go!
But we now do not plan to ever camp more than a few hours as "stop-overs" without having water and electricity as minimum requirements.

We have not used commercial parks more than five times in the last 20 years and use state and federal parks like the Corps of Engineers parks almost exclusively. The only times we were in commercial parks was as hosts or wanting to stay at a very specific spot where we were willing to go with the lesser camping for the distance to events.

We found just the lower cost batteries from any store that listed them as "deep cycle" were good for us.
But that is where newer folks need to get some better ideas of what they like before going too far in any direction. A good safe option until I found what I really did like is a sealed battery like an AGM as slightly higher than some but way less invested than lithium as they do not require any changes to the basic RV wiring/equipment.

[Bnystrom]

On the other hand...

If you plan on boondocking or otherwise being away from hookups, an upgrade to lithium batteries will serve you well. Where the prices of lead-acid batteries continue to rise, the price of lithium batteries has fallen to the point that they're cheaper than AGM batteries and are getting close to the price of flooded batteries, for a given Ah capacity. Lithiums are much lighter, much smaller, require zero maintenance, last longer, and their overall cost is lower long-term, if not immediately.

All that said, depending on the age of your rig, you may need to upgrade the converter (or inverter-charger, if you have one) to one that's lithium-compatible (higher voltage), in order to charge the batteries fully*. If you install a 200 Ah or larger battery bank, you should install a DC-DC charger, which will both protect your alternator from possible excessive amperage draw and provide the required voltage to fully charge the batteries. You should be able to get your batteries, the converter, and a DC-DC charger for around the price of AGM batteries alone. However, this is not just a drop-in solution, so if you're not the DIY type, you have to factor in the cost of having everything installed.

In June, I upgraded our '10 View DL to 600 Ah of lithium batteries, a 75 amp converter and a 60 amp DC-DC charger. I also added a 3000 watt inverter, so we have AC power without running the generator. We can boondock for a few days without the need for recharging, using the lights, fans, water pump, instant pot, toaster, etc. If need be, we can run the AC for a couple of hours on the batteries alone. Granted, this is more than many people need or want, but it suits us well, as we boondock more often than not.

*You can used lithium batteries with a converter that's only designed for lead-acid, but it will only charge them to ~80% capacity. It won't harm anything.