Trickle charging my Motorhome

Hello All,
I should have mentioned that I do not use a trickle charger, but rather an Interstate battery maintainer. My batteries are now over 8 years old (ALL, chassis and coach)

IISCHABOD: Mine does have that Bird thing in there, in fact, your set up looks identical to mine. I do not think I have a smart converter, I think when plugged in to shore power, it will overcharge, not sure, but I have always felt that way, maybe I should just keep it plugged into shore power?

Thanks all for your help

Rick

You may not have to do this at all if you have a Bird like I have on my 2006 Fleetwood Tioga, just by plugging it in it will maintain the charge on the chassis battery as well as the house batteries.


Many of Fleetwood products came with them.

To find it look under the step where the batteries are, like here
at red arrow.


Here is a close up of it.



If you have one it will keep everything charged and will not boil your batteries, mine is plugged in all the time when at home, and other than checking them about once a month I have never had to put water in them.

You have raised a REDFLAG mentioning water present under your batteries.

The 13.6VDC is right at the level that causes battery fluids to boil out. You really should be using 13.2VDC for long term trickle charging. If you can only use 13.6VDC then what you should do is to watch your battery fluids levels real close. Once a week at first to see if you are losing fluids.

If the fluids get below the cores internal battery failure may happen.

Keeping your batteries re-charged using the smart mode chargers will take care of all of this for you. I would still check the water levels anyway haha.. I can't afford to replace my batteries...

Roy Ken

Hi Rick,

Well, that's great--except for the "battery water". Is the trickle charger intended for long term charging? Some of them are not--and the battery water scares me.

I've gone solar so my house bank charges the chassis battery using a trik-l-start.

Why don;t you just plug it in and let your on-board converter do it?

I used a volt meter, 12.3 volts no charger, 13.5 with charger installed on chassis. there is also battery water under the House batteries occasionally when being charged.

Rick

Hi Rick,

How do you know the house batteries are being charged?