cmb wrote:
jayspi wrote:
We have one 12v marine deep cycle battery in our 5th wheel and we just realized it's pretty much shot. We boondocked for the first time the other night and the battery was dead by the next morning, even though we only used it to run lights for a few minutes and to switch on the water pump when we needed it.
Hmmm, that seems excessive. Are you using incandescent lights? If you turn every battery operated device off, how much current is drawn from the battery? (Hint: It should be zero.)
I know embarrassingly little about all of this, but I'm pretty sure they're incandescent lights. They're the ones that came with the RV and they do run very hot.
Also not sure how much current is drawn from the battery, but we don't run anything that should draw current except the lights and water pump. I also think the fridge uses a little when it fires the propane, but that should be minimal.
That said, we've known for a while that the battery is shot, I just didn't realize how bad it was until we boondocked for the first time. The first time we used it to bring out the slide it dropped to 2/3 power immediately. Also, a circuit breaker tripped while we were gone the other day and when we got back the battery was dead. We were just gone a few hours, and we only had a couple of lights on. Point is, I don't think something is draining it, I think it's just shot. The previous owner did 0 maintenance to this RV.
