External battery charger

Yes. 10 to 40 amps is best. 5 amps minimum. Not really a long term solution.

When not in use, I use a Battery Minder on my RV battery, mainly because the converter that came with my rig is a single stage battery boiler.

Yes.

You need to check the output of your converter/charger unit. When on shore power or generator it should read at least 13.6VDC. If it is a smart mode system then it could be in one of the smart modes and my unit might read up as high as 14.4VDC..

If the converter/charger is not not reading those higher DC voltages then it may have tripped its 120VAC Breaker in the power distribution panel or actually failed. You will also see the connected battery 12VDC voltages on the output of the converter/charger but these voltages will only read 12.6-7VDC if the battery is fully charged...

Just keep in mind the converter/charger setup is designed just for your batteries and will do the best job keeping them charged... I do have the Black & Decker vec1093dbd 40A smart mode charger I got back in 2008 for my portable charger to use.

You may also have some blown fuses between the converter/charger unit and your battery terminals as well. There will be two large rated fuses labeled REVERSE POLARITY at the converter/charger fuse panel and should also be an in-line fuse very close to the battery terminals. One of my batteries went bad on me with a shorted cell one time and blew those fuses when the converter/charger was applying charge voltages... This all happened back in 2008 when I was using a single mode 13.6VDC charger setup. Apparently it boiled out my battery fluids...

Now I use a Progressive Dynamics Converter/charger PD9260C which is a 60AMP setup with smart mode charging. No problems since then with my three other batteries since installing that unit.

Check breakers and those three DC fuses I identified before giving up on your converter/charger unit.

A new replacement converter/charger unit is easy to replace with only the AC wires and two DC wires to change over to the new unit. My converter/charger sits in the bottom compartment of the 120VAC/12VDC power distribution center.

If you do have to replace the converter/charger unit be sure to go with the smart mode units and not try to use the WFCO products that are known throughout the RV community of not working properly giving you smart mode charging voltages.. Most of us like to use the Progressive Dynamics and IOTA smart mode converter/charger products...

Roy Ken

Yup. You might get some hum on the radio or lines in the TV picture but it wont hurt anything.

Yes you can do that.