Best winter storage procedure for Crown deep cycle batts??

I've had good luck using a larger Battery Minder on my 2 T-105s. Little water loss and fully charged in the spring.

Storage options for lead acid batteries.. Depend somewhat on "how long" and "How old" and "how cold"

If you have power to the RV's storage position and a good 3 stage converter charger. Simply plug it in and leave connected.

Else:


New batteries for just a few months. FULLY CHARGE and disconnect all wires connected to the NEGATIVE terminal (NOTE with six volt pairs that's the most negative, ignore the jumper wire)

Longer.. Consider hooking up a battery maintainer.

Expected lows below -40 Remove (Tie all wires connected to the Negetive terminal together, likewise tie all wires hooked to POSITIVE together.. that way you remember all of 'em come spring)

Insulate the positive wires (Saran Wrap multi layers)

Take batteries inside, set on scrap wood to protect whatever surface is BELOW the scrap wood from any acid and hook up a battery minder.

Fully charge them then remove the battery cables and forget about them until spring. I have done this with my two batterys for 7 years now and they are still going strong.
They have not discharged each other yet so they must be identical. :B

Prilbeck,

I see an issue that I have not seen mentioned. Any Group 31 battery is going to be a 12V jar, so must be that you have 2 in parallel. They are not identical. If they came off the line sequentially, they are by now not identical. This means that if you leave them strapped together and to their devices, one will discharge more than the other and that will take both down if you leave them with no maintenance charge power.

That all being said, in the PD92XX, and the Bogart 2030, you have a good system. If you can leave the PD powered up, then leave everything alone. As said, in the spring you might need a little water. If you can't leave the PD powered up or there is a good chance it may not be for more than a week, disconnect both from the external connections and from each other. That last is essential.

Matt

Almost all of the loss of electrolyte in a battery occurs when you get over 2.2V per cell or 13.2V. Assuming you don't have any loads that cause the converter to switch to charge mode very much you should be okay.

But as Drew said, you'll probably be fine with disconnecting them because the cold temperature reduces self-discharge to practically nothing.

Or maybe you can go with an option similar to how I take care of all of my unused or lightly used equipment over the winter. Top the batteries off once or twice over the winter with a portable charger.

After a winter of storage plugged in with a PD 9200 series converter, my (Sam's Club) GC2 batteries needed a total of about a cup and a half of electrolyte between the two of them, as I recall. Either option you list should be perfectly fine; take your pick, flip a coin if you need to.