Battery not staying charged

For a new battery to die in 24 hrs something is draining your battery. I would fully charge the battery with a portable charger disconnected from the house, verify that it is fully charged by letting it rest over night and you read 12.6 volts or better. Connect a cheap HF mutimeter between the neg lead to neg post on the 10 amp scale with the pos side connected to the pos terminal. Post how many amps it is drawing.

MrWizard wrote:
Make sure you have it connected correctly

I don't think I've ever seen a 12 V system wired with blank and white.

Your message is potentially confusing because the normal colors for DC power are RED and BLACK, where the black is negative (chassis ground) and RED is positive.

If you have a Wfco converter, it died. Every one does, most sooner, some later.
Wfco is the worst converter ever made. and they still make them, and the MFGs still install them. And Best Converter will still sell you one if you let them.

It's unlikely you have an inverter..
Only one battery in your fiver, you most likely have a converter charger
And yes they can die/malfunction
A volt meter checking at the battery without the trickle charger will tell you what the converter is doing..good bad or ugly

Thank you, I will double check the battery but I believe it's hooked up correctly. Last year I had some flickering and I believe it was the inverter/converter wining a high pitch noise up and down.

This season I haven't heard that so I will check that. Maybe it's not working correctly and charging the battery.

In the meantime I have a trickle charger on it to get me through til I figure this out.

Thanks for the suggestions. I will check each one.

Paul n Ann

As stated above the battery disconnect switch must be turned on to connect the battery to the 12 volt circuit so it can be charged.

Also; the 12 volt circuits would work when plugged in to 120 volt AC since the converter by-passes the disconnect switch. However; the battery is not being charged.

Did you change out the battery yourself? You may have wired it back-words so the converter/charger would automatically shut down.

make sure your frig IS NOT SET ON !12VOLT. frig should be on gas or electric.

Make sure you have it connected correctly
If the wires at the battery are One white and one black
The WHITE one is the Negative ground
And the Black one is the Hot Positive/plus

A battery connected backwards will be killed by the converter giving it a reverse charge

In addition to the other good suggestions:

For the battery to charge, the battery disconnect switch must be ON.

What kind of a 12 V load do you have; that is, how many 12 V things do you have running ? Lights, TV, fans, water pump........

It might be possible to use more 12 V power than the converter can put back but I think that would be rather unusual.

Your 2012 RV should have the multi-voltage smart mode charging. If it is not smart mode then the the constant 13.6VDC that it uses may be over charging your battery and perhaps boiling out the fluids over time.

A good check is to read your battery voltage at their terminals when not connected to shore power which should read 12.6-7VDC if fully charged.

Then plug into your 30AMP shore power service and you should see a jump in DC charge voltage to 13.6VDC. If this doesn't happen then you have some sort of disconnect between the battery terminals and the DC OUTPUT of the converter/charger.

This could be a bad converter - blown REVERSE POLARITY fuses - bad connections - blown inline fuse/circuit breaker close to the battery terminals - bad BATTERY DISCONNECT switch...

Once you are sure you are getting normal DC Charging VOLTAGES then you can look for other problems on why the battery is being discharged.

You will probably notice you may have additional DC CABLES connected to your battery that are running things even after you may operate your battery disconnect switch.

You probably are also aware if the battery gets discharged below its 50% charge state and not re-charged to 90% or 100% charge state right away it will start doing internal harm to your battery - even if it is brand new. A battery only reading around 12.0VDC at the terminals is real close to being at the 50% charge state. This should be read with a multimeter and not the DC PERCENT VOLTMETER most RV units comes with...

First thing is to determine if your on-board converter/charger is indeed charging your batteries when connected to shore power 30AMP service...

Roy Ken