Battery explosion

smkettner wrote:
The battery was low on water because it had gone bad.
Probably got low again in the 6 days and internal short/spark ignited the hydrogen/oxygen mix.
Get a new battery and verify the converter charging voltage and you are good to go.

That's what I'm thinking. Or, the converter charger has gone bad and it over charging the battery cooking all the water out of it in a short period of time. You'll obviously need to start with a new battery and then makes sure your charger is working correctly and not over charging it.

LEDGER65 - Just insure your 21FPS trailer is using a smart mode converter/charger that uses the three or four mode charging events when charging your battery when plugged into shore power.

These smart mode charging techniques will look after your battery automatically for you and help eliminate the boiling out of the fluids from overcharging etc...

Just helps you make your batteries last longer. You can do the same thing with a smart mode manual battery charger but why not just let the on-board converter/charger do this for you. Find the model number of your on-board converter/charger and enter this into google search and it will tell you what you have or list on here. The newer trailers maybe year 2012 and up usually have these already installed by the manufacture.

Sometimes it may just be a battery going bad on you - I always try to watch things more closely to catch things before they happen. might be able to save a few bucks from not having to replace a battery. Good planning makes for successful camping trips hehe...

I have several batteries on my setup and I use the PD9260C 60AMP model converter/charger unit to keep my batteries re-charged.

Roy Ken

The battery was low on water because it had gone bad.
Probably got low again in the 6 days and internal short/spark ignited the hydrogen/oxygen mix.
Get a new battery and verify the converter charging voltage and you are good to go.

RoyB - tell me more about the smart mode charging technology you mentioned..... Thanks.

Sounds like it was being over charged and possibly had a shorted cell. You used to hear about battery explosions all the time back in the 50'-60' where the standard way to charge automotive batteries was to hit them with as high of DC voltage you could find at a 100AMPS of current. They would get red hot in just a little bit of time and alot would explode. You could get an one hour or a two hour charge at a filling station back then. They even condoned it so much in those days they made steel battery cases to keep you from getting hurt haha...

I try to keep abreast of my batteries at all time watching them operate with a remote battery monitor panel system. When my batteries drop to just 12.0VDC I know they are at their 50% charge state and need re-charging. Some chargers will produce 13.6VDC continuous and this is right at the point of boiling out battery fluids if on for long periods of time. Once the fluid level drops below the top of the battery cores then the batteries will start drawing alot of current and may end up with a shorted cell and could get hot enough to explode. This is most likely what happened in your case.

I have caught one battery starting to get hot on me being charged so was able to remove it from the system before anything bad happened. It was also boiling out fluids.

Having on-board smart mode charging technology really helps in this situation...

Your situation may have been caught by more inspections but it could also have been a fluke thing. The fumes associated with boiled out battery fluids are highly explosive.

Just a couple of my thoughts...
Roy Ken

Thanks, that sounds like a possibility.

Batteries have hydrogen gas. If there is an arc, and the gas ignites, the case will rupture like a bo.mb. I suspect you might have been low on water again, one of the plates was exposed and an arc was generated. It happened to my wife one time when starting her car. She said it sounded like a shotgun went off under the hood.