advice/comments for my rv solar system?

[thastinger]

when sitting on the side of the house...what should i be doing? we use it about once every two months.

Buy an RV (120V 30A) to household adapter and plug it into your house.

[jimindenver]

First thing is to make sure the batteries are properly charged. You can do this by connecting to shore power and letting the converter do it BUT not all converters are created equal. A good 3 stage converter will take care of your batteries and even equalize them. A crappy converter will cook your batteries dry in the heat and under charge them when its cold. Be on either extreme and temperature compensation is a good idea for any chatging.

Once you know they are charged up, you could

allow the panel to keep them up and it should be able to cover the parasitic drains, I would disconnect from the trailer and leave it on the solar anyways as bad weather could allow the batteries to drain and be damaged.

disconnect the charged battery from the trailer and bring it up once a month to cover self discharge. Make sure you charge it up right before the next trip. Starting out in a hole is always bad.

leave it connected with a decent converter and have it always ready.

Even though our solar can easily handle the parasitic loads, I bring our batteries home in between trips for coddling.

[tolbert]

First thing is to make sure the batteries are properly charged. You can do this by connecting to shore power and letting the converter do it BUT not all converters are created equal. A good 3 stage converter will take care of your batteries and even equalize them. A crappy converter will cook your batteries dry in the heat and under charge them when its cold. Be on either extreme and temperature compensation is a good idea for any chatging.

Once you know they are charged up, you could

allow the panel to keep them up and it should be able to cover the parasitic drains, I would disconnect from the trailer and leave it on the solar anyways as bad weather could allow the batteries to drain and be damaged.

disconnect the charged battery from the trailer and bring it up once a month to cover self discharge. Make sure you charge it up right before the next trip. Starting out in a hole is always bad.

leave it connected with a decent converter and have it always ready.

Even though our solar can easily handle the parasitic loads, I bring our batteries home in between trips for coddling.

there is nothing on the trailer that needs the battery connected when parked on side of house? dont care about propane detector as propane tanks are shut off and d/c'd.

[jimindenver]

not really. Nothing will work but many put a disconnect switch in just to make it easier to disconnect them in between trips. Just remember to put them back in a day before to let the fridge get cooled down. You can cool it with propane or if on shore power, 120v. Either way it will take the better part of a day to get it there.

[jony101]

being from the san diego area, its perfect solar power area, even in the winter. I googled 21 foot trailer to see what we're talking about.
If i can put a 240 watt solar panel on my small astrovan, easily 2 of those panels fit on top of such a large trailer roof. To me its a crying shame to waste all that space. if i could put another 240 watts on my roof, i would. No matter what anyone else here says, you can never have too much power. Especially in san diego, the investment wont be wasted with all the sunshine you get.
Your battery bank is on the small size but as long as you dont use too much power at night you will do ok, i use to run a 12 volt fridge with a 120 watt panel and 75 ah agm battery, i'm talking 24/7 just from solar. But I since upgraded to a larger 145 ah agm and my beloved 240 watt panel.
You said you plan to run your 2 panels parallel to the mppt, from my experience mppt requires high voltage for best performance. You panels parallel will be 18 volts to mppt, if they were in series, they would be 36 volts. there might be some lost of amps in the process with parallel. if i were you i would read up on it to see if your taking a hit on output, with 200 watts max that you have, you want to get every amp out of them.
One thing definitely to get is a DC 90V 30A Amp Volt Combo Meter, you connect it between your mppt and the battery. its got big LED's that you can read from across the room. In the daytime it tells you how much volts/amps are going into the battery. At night it tells you the battery voltage so you know when its time to cut the power usage. I leave mine connected 24/7 the power it consumes is insignificant. My mppt has a built in LCD screen but its too small to read and you need to be next to it.