Griff, I do appreciate all your feedback.
When I got my RV I didn't know much about converter/chargers. I had spent some time studying multi-stage charging and chargers. I had tons of trouble with the 1991 BMW I bought. It was a lean sale so I didn't get any info from the previous owner. And I didn't get the alarm keypad. The battery was always dying on me (I work at home so I didn't drive it much). After a few years of dealing with this I finally figured out the alarm was always going off, but the horn wire had been cut. So it was getting about a 2 amp draw ever couple of seconds. Talk about a parasitic drain! The alarm itself was well hidden so it took me some time to find it and pull the fuse.
OK, I am telling that story because between that and trying to keep from burning up the RV house battery, I spent quite some time learning about charging vehicle batteries (and about draining them).
Griff, you may remember making a remark about the jury-rigged switch in one of the pictures I posted awhile back. This switch does just what you suggested. It switches the charger in the converter out of the circuit and connects an external multi-stage charger. I don't switch it while anything 12v is on. Right now I don't have any sensitive electronics in my system so the multi-stage charging voltage doesn't affect anything. Actually, the only 12v things are all incandescent lights. I would like to replace these with LEDs and this is why I am concerned about the higher voltages.
I lot of RV LED light bulb purchasers write in their reviews that several of the LED bulbs they purchased burned out either right away or in a few days. They attribute this to poor QC or shoddy manufacturing, but I do expect many of them burn out due to high voltage.
I also note that some of the more expensive LEDs state that they handle something like 10-16 volts. I assume since this is listed as a feature (and they cost more) that others cannot handle such a wide voltage range.
Other more expensive electronics that might be affected include TVs, DVD players, laptop computers, etc. If any of these use a transformer to convert 120VAC to 12VDC you could eliminate these and plug them directly into the RV's 12VDC circuit (provided it was regulated). Of course, you could use an inverter, but there is a large loss of battery power to convert from 12VDC to 120VAC then back to 12VDC. You sure don't want to risk burning any of these items up because of unregulated voltage.
I do doubt that newer charger/converters have voltage regulation because all the stand-alone 30 amp voltage regulators I have seen are $150 and up. This would add considerably to the price of the converter.
