House Battery Swap For Lithium

Joined
Jan 11, 2025
Messages
2
Location
Fort Collins
Hey everybody, me and my husband recently purchased a 2015 Thor Tuscany 45AT and read up that lithium batteries might be a better way to go for our coach. I was wondering if anybody has done this and if so is it as easy as just swapping the batteries or do we have to upgrade our equipment as well? Any help would be greatly appreciated.
 
There are dozens of people on this Forum that have upgraded to LFP (LiFePO4) batteries, probably no two installations are the same.

With the current price of LFP batteries they are cheaper than most AGM and even a lot of Flooded Lead Acid (FLA) batteries, so it definitely a smart choice when changing out the house batteries. And remember, 100 AH of a 100 AH rated LFP battery is usable as opposed to 50 AH of a 100 AH rated lead acid battery.

Your converter/charger will take a very long time to fully charge LFP batteries (if at all) and when it does, and goes into float mode, the LFP batteries will slowly drain to about a 60 to 70 % State Of Charge (SOC). Many people do the LFP upgrade and then just buy a separate lithium compatible charger to top them off when needed until they are ready to upgrade to a lithium compatible converter charger.

The other charging source of the alternator is also something to look at. Large LFP battery banks can overload the alternator and cause it to fail early due to overheating. That can be mitigated with a DC-DC converter or a LI225 BIM. Something to think about.

So that's a quick primer on a LFP upgrade. Go from there and do some research and come back and ask questions as you need to.
 
There are dozens of people on this Forum that have upgraded to LFP (LiFePO4) batteries, probably no two installations are the same.

With the current price of LFP batteries they are cheaper than most AGM and even a lot of Flooded Lead Acid (FLA) batteries, so it definitely a smart choice when changing out the house batteries. And remember, 100 AH of a 100 AH rated LFP battery is usable as opposed to 50 AH of a 100 AH rated lead acid battery.

Your converter/charger will take a very long time to fully charge LFP batteries (if at all) and when it does, and goes into float mode, the LFP batteries will slowly drain to about a 60 to 70 % State Of Charge (SOC). Many people do the LFP upgrade and then just buy a separate lithium compatible charger to top them off when needed until they are ready to upgrade to a lithium compatible converter charger.

The other charging source of the alternator is also something to look at. Large LFP battery banks can overload the alternator and cause it to fail early due to overheating. That can be mitigated with a DC-DC converter or a LI225 BIM. Something to think about.

So that's a quick primer on a LFP upgrade. Go from there and do some research and come back and ask questions as you need to.
Awesome post chief! Cheers from Keys!
 
Last edited:
We have a 2015 Tuscany 4580 and we put lithium batteries in about three years ago. We were fortunate enough to have technicians from Britten Stop by and do the installation. They have worked great. Apparently they had to do a little adjustment to our solar to work with the lithium. Other than that. It only took a few hours and they were very helpful
 
Keep in mind that Lithium batteries don't work well in the cold weather.
If your battery compartment is located outside the heated space, get self-heating batteries.
Lithium batteries also last about 4 times as long as AGM or FLA, so in the long term are far less expensive.

I just installed lithium and use a 60A DC-DC charger to charge them off the alternator and they are also charged by solar. Make sure you get some kind of monitor so you can keep an eye on what they are doing. It's not necessary but they give lots of useful info. Some brands of batteries are smart and you can just plug the monitor in the battery, in my case I got a shunt that my monitor plugs into.
 
There are dozens of people on this Forum that have upgraded to LFP (LiFePO4) batteries, probably no two installations are the same.

With the current price of LFP batteries they are cheaper than most AGM and even a lot of Flooded Lead Acid (FLA) batteries, so it definitely a smart choice when changing out the house batteries. And remember, 100 AH of a 100 AH rated LFP battery is usable as opposed to 50 AH of a 100 AH rated lead acid battery.

Your converter/charger will take a very long time to fully charge LFP batteries (if at all) and when it does, and goes into float mode, the LFP batteries will slowly drain to about a 60 to 70 % State Of Charge (SOC). Many people do the LFP upgrade and then just buy a separate lithium compatible charger to top them off when needed until they are ready to upgrade to a lithium compatible converter charger.

The other charging source of the alternator is also something to look at. Large LFP battery banks can overload the alternator and cause it to fail early due to overheating. That can be mitigated with a DC-DC converter or a LI225 BIM. Something to think about.

So that's a quick primer on a LFP upgrade. Go from there and do some research and come back and ask questions as you need to.
Where is the DC-DC installed? Thank you.
 

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