"8 D Battery" Anyone ever use one for house batt?
Gents,
Well, our Costco, 6V golf cart batteries (dated 8-11) just passed the 4 year old point and, based on a few things, I'm not sure they're holding up their end of the bargain for keeping charged and holding it. Now, I've been a pretty good one for maintenance and all that for most of my RVing life. But, I will admit, I've grown a bit complacent when it comes to my RVs batteries. It's one of those things, "out of sight-out of mind" things.
More than once, I've decided to check on them to see how things are and, I open the bay door where they're stored and, it looks like I'm cultivating GREEN FUZZ/CABBAGE at many of the terminals, YUCK!!!
It takes me a good hour or two to remove, clean every thing, including cables, cable ends and all that. Not to mention, that's very tedious job to do because if you get any of that on your cloths, you all know what it does. And, I've had to fill them several times when doing this process. In a couple of cases, they were down to around 11 volts or so.
And I don't want to hear about those multi-fill or, Auto fill gadgets because, THEY WON'T FIT. I've got right at 1/8 of an inch in clearance of the bay door frame when those batteries are slid out and back in, in their tray.
But, I always babied them back to life and, used them on trips. But, lately, it seems as though they don't have the STAMINA that they did when they were new. I hate running the generator in quite camp grounds just because I'm allowed to. But, sometimes their down to 12.0 in what seems a short time of using them. And that simply entails the use of a TV and DVD player for maybe, an hour or so. Sometimes they're higher after that time frame and, sometimes they're at that low voltage.
So, this brings me to now. I'm considering a few options here.
1. Just buy new 6V ones (4 of them at a local cost of $140.00 each plus tax)
2. Since we do mainly "hookup" camping about 60% of the time and, dry camping the rest, I might go back to 12 units 'cause that's what was in there when we purchased it four years ago. Not sure of that option yet.
And 3, I'm thinking, JUST THINKING at this point, about maybe going to an 8D battery for a single house battery. Those things have around 1150 CCA. Now, I know, nobody cares about CCA in house batteries. But, when I asked the Interstate Salesman about ampere hour capacity, which is what many Golf cart and RV house batteries are rated at, he didn't know.
I also know that, it would be the ONE and only battery while, if I kept the (4) 6 volt operation, if one went bad, I could just replace the one. Or, the same with a (3) 12V Deep cycle Marine setup.
But, I can't help thinking that you'd get this monsterous amount of time on an 8D before you'd need a re-charge. What say all you battery wizards out there in RV land???
Scott
Well, our Costco, 6V golf cart batteries (dated 8-11) just passed the 4 year old point and, based on a few things, I'm not sure they're holding up their end of the bargain for keeping charged and holding it. Now, I've been a pretty good one for maintenance and all that for most of my RVing life. But, I will admit, I've grown a bit complacent when it comes to my RVs batteries. It's one of those things, "out of sight-out of mind" things.
More than once, I've decided to check on them to see how things are and, I open the bay door where they're stored and, it looks like I'm cultivating GREEN FUZZ/CABBAGE at many of the terminals, YUCK!!!
It takes me a good hour or two to remove, clean every thing, including cables, cable ends and all that. Not to mention, that's very tedious job to do because if you get any of that on your cloths, you all know what it does. And, I've had to fill them several times when doing this process. In a couple of cases, they were down to around 11 volts or so.
And I don't want to hear about those multi-fill or, Auto fill gadgets because, THEY WON'T FIT. I've got right at 1/8 of an inch in clearance of the bay door frame when those batteries are slid out and back in, in their tray.
But, I always babied them back to life and, used them on trips. But, lately, it seems as though they don't have the STAMINA that they did when they were new. I hate running the generator in quite camp grounds just because I'm allowed to. But, sometimes their down to 12.0 in what seems a short time of using them. And that simply entails the use of a TV and DVD player for maybe, an hour or so. Sometimes they're higher after that time frame and, sometimes they're at that low voltage.
So, this brings me to now. I'm considering a few options here.
1. Just buy new 6V ones (4 of them at a local cost of $140.00 each plus tax)
2. Since we do mainly "hookup" camping about 60% of the time and, dry camping the rest, I might go back to 12 units 'cause that's what was in there when we purchased it four years ago. Not sure of that option yet.
And 3, I'm thinking, JUST THINKING at this point, about maybe going to an 8D battery for a single house battery. Those things have around 1150 CCA. Now, I know, nobody cares about CCA in house batteries. But, when I asked the Interstate Salesman about ampere hour capacity, which is what many Golf cart and RV house batteries are rated at, he didn't know.
I also know that, it would be the ONE and only battery while, if I kept the (4) 6 volt operation, if one went bad, I could just replace the one. Or, the same with a (3) 12V Deep cycle Marine setup.
But, I can't help thinking that you'd get this monsterous amount of time on an 8D before you'd need a re-charge. What say all you battery wizards out there in RV land???
Scott
