Is my water pump going bad?

What is the 20hr Amp Hour rating of the battery?

8a is piddly. I would not go to the bother. However, that Honda em500 will not handle a charger that puts out much more than that.

Manual

... only 3.3a / 400w continuous. That small of a gennie really limits your choices in charger... ~ 15a at best, provided it's power factor corrected.

Compare the ac current of the non-pfc se-200-15 to the pfc sp-200-15;

4.5a ac current

3.5a ac current

I hope to spend Saturday getting those measurements and specs. I am thinking I probably ran the furnace to too long on that first night. I do need to make sure my battery is performing optimally no matter what and that my appliances are good.

I found a Honda em500 generator in CL yesterday for next to nothing. I looked at it and it runs well. I saw you can switch the generator to DC and charge the battery with out going through a battery charger. The generator was missing the cord to do this. The specs on the charger say the max amps in DC mode is 8.3. Would it be worth tracking down the charging cord, or would that rate of charging possibly cause damage to the battery?

If your converter is from 1989 it should be replaced. Get a modern converter with three stage charging. I suspect that most of your problems are from an under charged battery.

Having said that though, I don't understand how it runs the furnace OK but not the water pump. Furnace fans are real power hogs.

Try this: Put your multimeter (on DC range) on the battery terminals and note the voltage. (It should be 12.6 or a bit higher if nothing is on) Then while keeping the test leads on the battery terminals have someone turn on the water pump. Note the voltage--it will likely have dropped some but not lots. Then do the same with the furnace.

Report the numbers back here.

mtnbbud wrote:
I bought the deep cycle battery at Walmart, so I know it's not the best.

Nothing wrong with the Walmart deep cycles. When I picked one up there a couple years ago, it was 100% the same case as the Interstate I replaced. It just had different stickers. There are only a couple major battery manufacturers that make all of them anyway.

I would say figure one night camping per battery. Figure out if your battery charger is working. If you don't have a meter turn on all the lights in the trailer. Then plug into shore power and see if the lights get brighter. If they get brighter the charger is doing it's job at least to the best of it's ability.

The furnace is the biggest power hog on the battery. if you don't run the furnace, or turn the temperature down the battery will last longer.

mtnbbud wrote:

westend wrote:
Do you leave the battery connected between uses with no charging present? If so, the parasitic draws from alarms, circuit boards, and entertainment devices will drain it within a week or two. The solution is to wire in a disconnect switch or remove a cable from a terminal. If the battery has been in this situation for a long time, there is a good chance that some sulfation has taken place and capacity has been lost.

Being new to a TT, I've been taking all the advice I can get. On the advice of my brother, I have been storing the battery in the back of my garage hooked to what I believe is this battery charger/maintainer. (My dad has assured me I don't have to unplug the battery from the charger after the battery is fully charged.) Before that, I started manually unhooking the wires from the battery when the trailer was in storage.

I did leave the battery hooked up in the trailer overnight when I got back from camping Sunday night.

I'm slowly learning. It's been a lot of fun and my wife is finally camping with me again after I could no longer talk her into tent camping like we used to do when she was younger :)

After doing some more reading, I'm starting to think running the furnace at night did run the battery down quicker than I expected. If that's the case, I'm toying with the idea of buying a small gas generator to charge the battery and possibly bring along my smaller deep cycle battery that I have for my electric boat motor as a back-up. I'll need to experiment with using the Mr Heater instead of the furnace also.

The charging regimen is a good one. Batteries like to browse on some sort of charge. In the future, you may wish to look at adding some solar to the trailer. It eliminates a lot of the fussing with batteries.
Your assumption about the furnace being a hog is spot on. Measurement with a multimeter will confirm the power consumption rate. At some point, you may also wish to get a float hydrometer. They are a true measurement of battery health.
Good luck with your 12V system, it sounds like you are off to a good start.

Good stuff. When you report back, be sure to list as much stuff as you can, including wire gauges and lengths, to and from the battery. This is important, as it has a significant impact on the efficiency of the system. Also, battery Amp Hour Capacity (20 hour rating), charger model and amperage, etc....

Thanks so much jrnymn7,

I'm truly a novice at this. I can probably look through the paperwork to get the specs on the converter. It's the original from 1989.

The coverter is having one know about. It converts the AC to DC when plugged into shore power, but it doesn't charge the battery. My dad talked me into plugging a battery charger/maintainer in a plug in next to the converter which is hooked into the wiring to charge the battery when plugged into shore power. This did solve that problem. I thought I should buy a new converter, but he assured me this would do the same thing for a lot less money.

I bought the deep cycle battery at Walmart, so I know it's not the best. I just had a couple of hours to look at it yesterday. I won' t have anytime to look at it tonight. I will be able to make some time this Saturday.

I don't think my dad owns the type of meter you're mentioning so I'll need to buy one of those. I'm going to copy and print your advice to reference when I have time this Saturday.

I was able to get a great price on the trailer. The interior is in good shape and there's no dry rot. I'm slowly getting everything figured out. I was having issues with the furnace until I pulled out the motor to discover the bearing grease was pretty much all dried up. I was able to figure out a way to take care of that so it spins freely once more. The fridge has been replaced and is practically new.

The person who owned it before me used it mostly with full hookups, but had used it when hunting also. I can get more specifics on the battery/ wiring/ converter this weekend.

I appreciate everyone's advice. I do want to be able to dry camp and I do need to make sure everything is taken care of before I make any plans for a multi-day trip without shore power.

You're still withholding information in regards to your electrical system, i.e; batteries, converter, wiring, etc.

You also need a few things for trouble shooting... an ac/dc clamp meter with a 2 decimal place voltage readout, a kill-a-watt meter, a log book, etc.

You need to find out what is going on during charging, as well as during discharging. The inexpensive equipment I suggested will put you on the right path to doing so. Without facts, it's anyone's guess what's really going on.

I recommend taking a day to do some logging. Discharge the bank using various 120v loads (noting the draw of each load, using the kill-a-watt, for future reference). Also, use some 12v loads, and note the amp draw using either the clamp meter, or a battery meter, if you already have one installed. Obviously, a battery meter will be more accurate with small loads.

Let the bank rest a while, say 1/2 an hour. Then take a resting battery voltage reading, and log it. Should be down around 12.2-12.3v or so, to ensure bulk charging.

Then fire up the converter and keep track of what it does, throughout the entire charge cycle. Measure voltage at the charger's output terminals, as well as at the battery terminals. Keep track of both voltages (and their difference) every 10-15 minutes, as well as the amps going into the battery.

At some point, amps will begin to taper. This is the transition from bulk/constant current mode to abs/constant voltage mode. Note, if there is a sudden drop in both voltage and amps at this transition, then your converter has dropped to "normal" voltage (~13.6v) at this transition. This is normal for most converters, but it also causes charging amps to drop considerably, thus extending charge time considerably. If, on the other hand, it holds voltage at the setpoint, then amps will begin to taper down from where they were at the transition from cc to cv.

These simple observations will help you in determining the overall efficiency of your electrical system, and will help with troubleshooting in the future. After all, it's impossible to know when something's not right when what IS "right" has never been established.

If you plan on doing a fair amount off grid camping, it is absolutely necessary that you get a grip on things ahead of time, otherwise you will be spending your camping trips trying to deal with why you have no power.

westend wrote:
Do you leave the battery connected between uses with no charging present? If so, the parasitic draws from alarms, circuit boards, and entertainment devices will drain it within a week or two. The solution is to wire in a disconnect switch or remove a cable from a terminal. If the battery has been in this situation for a long time, there is a good chance that some sulfation has taken place and capacity has been lost.

Being new to a TT, I've been taking all the advice I can get. On the advice of my brother, I have been storing the battery in the back of my garage hooked to what I believe is this battery charger/maintainer. (My dad has assured me I don't have to unplug the battery from the charger after the battery is fully charged.) Before that, I started manually unhooking the wires from the battery when the trailer was in storage.

I did leave the battery hooked up in the trailer overnight when I got back from camping Sunday night.

I'm slowly learning. It's been a lot of fun and my wife is finally camping with me again after I could no longer talk her into tent camping like we used to do when she was younger :)

After doing some more reading, I'm starting to think running the furnace at night did run the battery down quicker than I expected. If that's the case, I'm toying with the idea of buying a small gas generator to charge the battery and possibly bring along my smaller deep cycle battery that I have for my electric boat motor as a back-up. I'll need to experiment with using the Mr Heater instead of the furnace also.