RV Batteries

Need a voltmeter to verify charging. 13.2 to 14.6 is charging. Steady 12.6 or less is not charging.

If it is a WFCO... get a different brand. Progressive dynamics, Boondocker, or IOTA.
You do not need anything big... 35 to 45 amps is fine plugged in with a single battery.

When you are driving to and from the parks, what are you running?

My first guess would be that you are running high power things off the house battery with an inverter while you are driving (residential fridge, air cond, etc.). That could substantially drain your battery just on the drive.

Another possibility is a phantom drain. When I had some work done on my engine, the new choke was accidentally hooked into the house battery - it was pulling power 24/7.

Those are both pretty easy to resolve. If they aren't the problem, then I'd look at your converter. It may be that the converter isn't converting the shore power to DC power - so your 12v system is running off the battery even though you're plugged in.

Or your charger isn't charging the battery when you're plugged in. The onboard battery meter will show a full charge when you are on shore power even if the battery is dead. So unplug and immediately check the battery - if it is low as soon as you unplug, then it's not charging properly.

If you have a multimeter this is pretty easy to check. Measure the voltage at your batter while not plugged in. Next, plug it in and make sure the voltage goes up. If it doesn't, your converter is no working or is not connected properly.

I always check my charge rate when hooked up to power, and when I have the meter on the battery the amount of charge goes up when the inverter kick in, so you could check to see if yours at least varies the amount of charge between no load and then after leaving the lights on so your inverter kicks in to charge it.

Grapehound wrote:


I had a battery guy tell me that the trickle chargers cannot charge the heavy plates in the deep cycle batteries so you have to plan to recharge them on a big charger...or even by just keeping your RV plugged in.

Well, first off, maybe there's a misconception of what a trickle charger is, but I have always maintained my boat batteries with a "trickle" 2 AMP charger. Never an issue.

Something must be wrong with your inverter. The rig we just got rid of had a cheap battery installed 3 years ago when we bought it. We kept the rig plugged into shore power 24/7 and the battery operated fine till day we got rid of it.

Re: Questions.

Yes, we were plugged in to power all weekend so I am sure we ran mostly off AC to DC power the whole time. The battery did not die, everything was fine all weekend. Plenty of power, since we were plugged in. It's just that when we got home, and I connected to the big charger to see how the batter was doing, my battery was no longer showing 100% charge; it was down to about 25% charge, which makes no sense. I may need to just have the RV power system (charging system) evaluated.

I will also take this new battery in to have a diagnostic done. Not sure about "specific gravity."

And yes, I need to show more attention to the wife. That's for sure.

What is the specific gravity showing?

Charging while towing is usually more maintaining than charging, as the charge is pretty slow. I'm thinking your converter could be the issue, as it should do a good job charging, while camping/plugged in, and at home plugged in. Some converter/chargers do work better than others.

BTW...may want to take better care of wife, as that can get much more expensive than getting new batteries. :)

Jerry

Is your converter putting out power? If your plugged in to power pole your converter should provide most all your 12volt needs and charge your battery when that demand is low.

you were plugged in to 120 v the whole camping trip and your battery "died"?????? something is drastically wrong. and it is not just the fact they were marine DC batteries.

bumpy