Cold weather and batteries. Pull them inside?
Hey All, Just curious how many of you bring your battery(s) in during the cold weather months vs leaving them on the camper. Last few years I've left them on the camper and plugged into the house. ...
Forum Discussion
ChuckSteed wrote:
A fully charged RV battery disconnected and removed from RV will STILL discharge over a period of time. Placing the battery on a maintainer will overall provide a longer lasting battery.
It's very temperature dependent. Though it depends on the exact alloys used in the plates, battery age and treatment during its life, a battery with no load stored at 32F will still be above 90% state of charge after 75 days and would still be out of the range where significant sulfation occurs for 200 days.
At 20F it will still be above 90% state of charge after 150 days and would still be out of the range where significant sulfation occurs for 400 days.
Contrast that with 80F where you are in the sulfation range after just 40 days.
The service life reduction you'd see from those charge levels is probably less than what you'd see from the mild abuse of a constant voltage charger over the winter.
I like to split the difference and top them off a couple of times during the winter. A key advantage to that strategy is that I can see if one is dropping between charges or taking a long time to recharge, which is a good early warning that I need a new battery.
