Aux battery
Hi, I just inherited a new to me camper but it doesn't have an aux battery. can someone tell me where on the converter to hook up the battery. is this an easy diy project or do I need an rv tech to do...
Forum Discussion
RJsfishin wrote:
I can't imagine buying an RV converter in the last 5 yrs that will not charge a battery. All the later converters are nothing more than a glorified battery charger. They don't know.....or care if their load is the the RVs 12v electrical system, or charging the battery,.....its all the same thing.
This is an interesting point. Providing a stable voltage that will supply all your 12v electrical accessories and properly charging a battery are not the same thing, since the latter, in order to do the job properly should have a program that adjusts the charging voltage and therefore current over time to optimize battery charging - just supplying a fixed voltage only gets you part way there; the voltage probably won't be high enough to fully charge the battery; but if you just have a cheap supermarket charger that does have a high enough voltage it will boil your battery dry if left unattended. That is why an intelligent charger uses a multi-stage program to get the battery up to full charge, then hold it there (using a lower voltage). So if buying a converter now I'd want to make sure it did have at least a 3-stage charging program to look after your battery properly (I think many do have this feature now).
But I would also make sure I had some way of checking the state of charge of the battery using a meter since both over-charging a battery and letting it go flat will both kill it quickly.
Steve.
