best practices for long battery life
I cannot get more than 3 years out of my battery on my TT. Original battery was an interstate. It was replaced under warranty going into its third year. The replacement lasted two years. I then trie...
Forum Discussion
profdant139 wrote:
So without getting into any more technical stuff, a word of advice for the OP -- many of the folks giving advice on this thread are true experts, who are essentially professionals when it comes to caring for batteries. I would follow their advice to the letter, if my life depended on it.
But it doesn't.
Most of us on this forum (and in the real world) are recreational battery consumers. Don't let the best be the enemy of the good, as the saying goes. If you try to adhere to all of the best practices described above, you will make yourself crazy (and you will spend money on a new converter).
Instead, just do a half-baked job, like most of us do (including me). Keep the battery charged up as much as possible. Make sure you have big enough batteries to do the job -- group 24s are pretty small. Get a multimeter (ten dollars?) and learn how to use it (easy -- go to youtube). Check on the state of charge pretty often -- try to keep it above 12.1 volts.
If you want to move up a notch in terms of battery care, get a cheap hydrometer -- it is a big eye dropper that tests the specific gravity of the battery water. It can give you a heads up when one of the cells is going bad -- that cell will have a lower reading than the others, and it is time for a new battery.
I boondock 90 days a year -- lots of heavy battery use -- and I get five years out of my Napa Marine Deep Cycle batteries. That is good enough for me.
No, I don't equalize. No, I did not replace my WFCO converter with the hottest version. My off-season battery charger is run of the mill, rather than a real smart charger.
Yes, I check my battery water. Yes, I use a hydrometer. Yes, I check the voltage. Yes, I do not let my battery get below 50 percent. (That was an expensive lesson, too slowly learned.)
I fully understand that my semi-sloppy behavior is not optimal and that it is upsetting to a true expert to see how I maintain my batteries. But camping is just a hobby -- I am not maintaining batteries for a submarine, where one false move is fatal. So I refuse to be a slave to my batteries. Adequate performance and battery life are, well, adequate. This does not have to be rocket science.
Great post, Dan!
I just about do the same, except for one small difference - I use a couple of top notch Group 31 12 volt AGM batteries wired up in balanced parallel so I can really "set it and forget it" regarding my RV batteries. I dust them off maybe every one or two years.
I've had a stock single fixed voltage 13.8 volt converter in my RV for years. The AGM batteries like 13.8 volts for both charging up - or floating when at home between trips. I run the batts down to around 12.1 volts before either A) firing up a little tiny generator to charge them through the stock converter, or B) traveling to another campsite at which time the main engine alternator charges them. I can tell when they're fully charged from an ammeter I permanently installled inside the RV years ago - current going into them shows as 0 (zero) when they're fully charged.
K.I.S.S. is the name of the RV battery game ... but unfortunately I did have to figure out how to pay for those expensive AGM batteries one time.
