Charging a Battery Bank

full_mosey wrote:
RobWNY;

I believe you will find the Deka/Duracell battery to be faithful and forgiving.

I used an 8A24 Deka for five+ years. It was my first AGM and it suffered badly due to my ignorance. I discharged it often at its C1 of 79AH, or around 79A and recharged it often between 25 and 50A. Only near the end did I learn about the 30% limit which is was 23.7A. The battery was exposed to parking lot temperatures as it was installed in my van in summer conditions of 130F ambient. Very few RVers have any clue about their battery's temperature. I do now.

My charging advice is to leave the WFCO connected. The WFCO can be relied on for only 13.6V which will be safe at least at any temperature. As a supplement, you need a, possibly portable, charger that defaults to 14.4V when initially powered up as would happen when starting a genny. In summer heat you can charge early in the day.

I rely on a solar system with temperature compensation to supply the 14.4V each day. Temperature compensation manages battery temperature by reducing Volts if needed.

Get the batteries. You will be fine.

I too am reluctant to spend your money. :W I'm also hardly the "expert" that others here are but I think full_mosey's approach is probably what I would do myself, partly because Lifelines are so costly & therefore hard to justify unless one dry camps a lot, regularly subjecting those batteries to deep discharges. This spring when I assess whether to upgrade from my current but aging G27 flooded I'll be faced with a similar issue - what to upgrade to and what charger to use to best maintain it. :h My current CTEK portable charger does do 14.4 volts properly but it's connected directly to the battery, not 25' away as is my trailer's WFCO which never delivers 14.4 volts to the battery. The CTEK is just a 7 amp charger though so if I invest in a larger AGM, or pair of AGMs, I need to address my charger issue as well. The PD9260 looked like a good alternative except it doesn't offer temp compensation so I'm still leaning to a CTEK 25 amp or NOCO 26 amp portable since I'm not concerned about genset run time. Either would handle a pair of 6 volt AGMs as well but with a 25 / 26 amp limit would obviously take more genset time to restore those to 90% than would be the case with a single G31 ... not an issue for me but could be for you. Both offer temp compensation which Deka insists is necessary for proper care of their AGM batteries and I'm hardly qualified to disagree. That Parallax ParaMode which offers 14.4 volt bulk AND temp compensation seemed like just about the ideal answer to all these concerns but there's not much point if it's not reliable as full_mosey suggests might be the case. Big help, huh? :W