Can someone tell me how to read this correctly

rainy029 wrote:
We are taking a trip for 10 days. We have never taken along a battery before. How do you read the lights on this monitor if we lose electric and have to rely on the battery? When the battery is hooked up the lights are the following colors... C-not lite up... G-Yellow...F- Red ... L-Red... The C is green when the truck is hook up. (We know this means it is charging) but at a loss on the other lights.

As stated by others, you should always have a charged battery hooked up to the trailer. I've never heard of someone purposely leaving their battery at home. :h

How to read the lights

The higher the reading (Altitude) the "Fuller" the item being measured (Be it battery or holding tank).

HOWEVER as you may know it's not all that good at holding tank levels

it's not all that good on teh battery level either. .You need to run off ALL OTHER LOADS (fans, Lights, etc) before testing with that panel

Better to use a good Digital Voltmeter and the charts others have posted above. and Measure AT THE BATTERY TERMINALS.

So far only one mention that the voltage (lights or meter) tells nothing about the state of charge during charging or several hours after charging. It takes at least three hours for the charge to "settle in" and drop the voltage to the chart values.

Volt meters suck,.....unless you are experienced at using them,....in your own RV, and then only at a given time w/ a given load. You can have a resting battery reading good-green-12.4-5 volts, but as soon as the furnace kicks on, will be in the red, and should have been recharged the day before already.
If you are inexperienced at using voltmeters, the best battery state of charge meter you can use, and rely on, is watching an incandescent light while someone turns on a faucet to fire up the water pump. Normally, if you see any lite dimming, you are on borrowed battery time, and know your battery will not make it till morning, especially if using the furnace.
OTOH, if there is no lite dimming, you will know that you are good for all nite an maybe the next day,...depending on your 12v usage.
Just stressing the fact that you must know the load on the battery before looking at a voltmeter of any kind.

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so by that chart - I'm not sure how effect this magnum generator auto start device would be.

C - Charging s/b 13.2 volts or above and indicating a charge going into the battery. 13.2 to 13.8 will be real slow. 14.2 to 14.8 will be much faster.

G - Good s/b 60% or better charged. Use the lights and furnace sparingly.

F - Fair is closer to 40% to 60% and time to use even more conservation and charge if convenient.

L - Low, time to restrict all 12v use and immediately recharge the battery.

Or many indicators prove to vary quite a bit. Get a small voltmeter to verify using the above charts.

BTW you should always have a battery connected when towing.

I like this chart more better.......:B

BurbMan wrote:

Then print this chart out and keep it in the RV, this will give you a much better indication of what kind of shape your battery is in:

so at what point should i start my generator & start re-charging my batteries.... 12.4 ? 12.3 that seems pretty high to me.