6 volt vs 12 volt charging

Let me make the charging issue very very very very easy for you.

You used to have a 12 volt battery bank
You now have a 12 volt battery bank

NO DIFFERENCE (well one slight difference, it's much larger)

The only difference is that it will take your converter (Same converter) longer to charge them than it did the older, smaller battery bank,

In fact.. THERE ARE NO SIX VOLT BATTERIES IN RV's. only 12 volt

In your case (Two six volt batteries in series to make one 12) each battery once installed is 1/2 of a 12 volt battery,, it magically becomes a six volt when you remove it, but again is half a 12 when installed.

What you have there is a big (4d or 8D) 12 volt battery. Electrically that is.

If nothing else, you now know, for sure, the fuse protection works!

Figured out my mistake. Did not mark wires. If I have no mind I must label stuff. Just like 120 VAC circuits the black is hot (+) and white is neutral/negative (-). When you hook them up backwards and turn the switch on, something is going to pop. Luckily, I am only out 3 30amp fuses on the converter. Fuses are evidently to protect us idiots from ourselves. Thanks y'all for your help. david

Common for the fridge and converter to share a breaker. I would split them if you have an empty slot in the 50 amp panel.

Thanks for the help, folks! A couple answers, then something for me to check tomorrow. I do have a 50 amp RV. My home storage is a dedicated 30 amp circuit off my tool shed. So I assume my converter is designed to handle up to 50 amp service. Second, I regularly saw 14.2 or so when charging the 12 volt batteries. Normal voltage was 13.4 or 13.6 I did have a 15 amp fuse blown in the inside fuse panel. But it was #13 to the refrigerator. Seems like that fuse blows nearly every time I disconnect the batteries and hook-up again. Anyway, It's too cold and nearly dark now to do the in-depth checking I need to. I reset the "converter's" breaker in the main box, and tried to check the 50A line fuses on either side of the shut-off switch. Tomorrow, I will disconnect batteries and take wires off line fuses and check them. With AC if you check both sides of a blown fuse you read say 120VAC, if the fuse is good you read 0 On my DC setting I read 0 on both fuses. Again, I will check tomorrow with fuses disconnected.

I did have 6.5 on the new batteries, each, and 12.7 hooked together before install.

Sorry for the edits I am reading the voltage at the battery terminals and a meter plugged into a cigarette lighter type fixture inside the RV. Same reading.

If you do need a larger charger, check this website.

http://www.bestconverter.com/

Check your wiring. If you have #8 wire between converter and battery, it should be fused at 40 or 50 amps, and you can get that large of a converter. If the wire is larger (or easy enough to replace) you can go with #6 wire and a 65 amp converter/charger.

The 220 amp hour golf cart batteries can accept 50 amps at a time (and your RV might be using the additional 15 amps) and quickly charge from a generator. If you normally charge at a RV park, then a 45 amp unit can charge for hours at the 25 - 35 amp rate, and fully charge overnight. Yet if you normally dry camp,and would be using a generator, then the 65 amp converter/charger can save generator run time, gas, and noise!

Fred.

Let it charge a couple of hours, and then check the voltage again.

Probably after 4 hours of charging, then the voltage should be high enough to be over 13.2 volts.

If your voltage is below 12.8 volts, check for a blown fuse between the converter and the battery. It might be the pair of fuses right on the converter/charger. Check the voltage at the converter output. If you are getting 13.2 volts there, and only 12.6 at the battery, then the circuit breaker or fuse between the converter or battery fuse box and the battery wire might be tripped, or a fuse blown.

Good luck finding the problem.

Fred.

What converter do you have? Check the main fuses.

BTW if you have never seen 14.2 volts you need an updated converter anyway.

I don't think your 30AMP converter has high enough DC AMP available for the batteries to use. If you didn't change out your in-line fuse or breaker you probably only have 30AMPs of protection still in place between the converter and the batteries.

My three 12VDC batteries demand around 54AMPs DC CURRENT when first hit with 14.4VDC in boost smart mode charge. Then they start tapering back as the three batteries start taking on charge. After about 20 minutes or so my DC CURRENT demand is around 8AMP DC CURRENT

A fully charged 12VDC battery is around 12.5-6VDC which is what you are reading. You need to look at the DC voltages again coming out of the converter with shore power on. You may have blown the in-line fuse or tripped an in-line circuit breaker between the converter and the battery switch...

With my three 12VDC batteries in parallel I use a PD9260C 60AMP Converter...

With your two 6VDC batteries in series they can looked at as one large 12VDC battery.

Just something to check before saying your converter has bit the bullet.

I don't know where you are reading the 12.6VDC from but sounds like you are reading a fully charged 12VDC battery and the converter unit which should always put out 13.6VDC when on shore power except when it is in smart mode charging seems to be OFF LINE or failed.

My batteries are so important to me when camping off the power grid I have installed a three panel BATTERY Monitor Panel which has two 12VDC VOLTMETERS (one for each of my battery banks) and one in/out 0-75AMP DC current meter. These are direct connected at the battery bank and this is where I monitor my battery's condition


Just my take on the problem
Roy Ken

Sounds like one of the new batteries is not up to par and is dragging the other one down.

Disconnect from rv and let set for a couple of hours, then disconnect from each other. Measure the voltage of each battery individually. I bet one of them is less than 6 volts.

Ron