Dead house batteries
I went to start up my diesel generator Sunday afternoon. Completely dead, not a sign of life. I checked the house batteries and they read 9 something volts. Clearly something is draining them since th...
Forum Discussion
Parasitic drains like the O2 sensor, many other sensors for the varies things like fridge, heater, AM/FM radio, etc can easily drop your trailer battery voltage when just setting for a few days and not on some kind of trickle charge...
A single automotive incandescent light bulb which draws around 1A DC left ON can do it almost over night... The furnace heater fan draws 5-6AMPs DC and can really drain your batteries if it kicks ON overnite...
When your trailer is setting you need to have a DISCONNECT SWITCH for your batteries or just simply remove the NEG BATTERY TERMINAL that goes to the trailer frame ground.
Having a DC POWER MONITOR that sounds off a settable BEEPING alarm will be very useful for me. I would set it for 12.0VDC which is very close to being at the 50% battery charge state. Of course the problem with this you have be there to hear it I guess...
Another problem could be you have run down your trailer side batteries below their 50% charge state several times and not recharged back up to the 90% charge state in a quick manner which starts building up crud on the battery cells and may have shorted out one cell in the battery over time. The one or two times I have seen this happen to one of my batteries usually dropped the DC OUTPUT to around 5VDC. This would also make the battery case get very hot and boil out its fluids etc... You can smell the boiling out of the fluids - mine smells like rotten eggs... In my case this is GAME OVER for the battery...
Another problem you hear about a lot is the constant charging of the batteries over time when just a single 13.6VDC type converter/charger will boil out the battery fluids over time which will also start building up crud on the cells and eventually short out the cells. The standby charge should never be over 13.2VDC... We make it a routine to check the battery fluids on a regular basis especially if we are leaving the trailer sitting being on charge.
RV installed Batteries are your life line - we keep a close eye on ours...
just some of my thoughts.
Roy Ken
A single automotive incandescent light bulb which draws around 1A DC left ON can do it almost over night... The furnace heater fan draws 5-6AMPs DC and can really drain your batteries if it kicks ON overnite...
When your trailer is setting you need to have a DISCONNECT SWITCH for your batteries or just simply remove the NEG BATTERY TERMINAL that goes to the trailer frame ground.
Having a DC POWER MONITOR that sounds off a settable BEEPING alarm will be very useful for me. I would set it for 12.0VDC which is very close to being at the 50% battery charge state. Of course the problem with this you have be there to hear it I guess...
Another problem could be you have run down your trailer side batteries below their 50% charge state several times and not recharged back up to the 90% charge state in a quick manner which starts building up crud on the battery cells and may have shorted out one cell in the battery over time. The one or two times I have seen this happen to one of my batteries usually dropped the DC OUTPUT to around 5VDC. This would also make the battery case get very hot and boil out its fluids etc... You can smell the boiling out of the fluids - mine smells like rotten eggs... In my case this is GAME OVER for the battery...
Another problem you hear about a lot is the constant charging of the batteries over time when just a single 13.6VDC type converter/charger will boil out the battery fluids over time which will also start building up crud on the cells and eventually short out the cells. The standby charge should never be over 13.2VDC... We make it a routine to check the battery fluids on a regular basis especially if we are leaving the trailer sitting being on charge.
RV installed Batteries are your life line - we keep a close eye on ours...
just some of my thoughts.
Roy Ken
