Batteries

Here's what I do. When the 5er comes home and is plugged into shore power or for that matter, when hooked up at a campground, the batteries stay on for 24 hours to get a good charge. After that I shut them off. Period. I have a volt meter attached to the battery bank so I'm looking at the charge of the batteries often. I have never had any problems doing this. I have stayed at campgrounds for at least a month, when we do stay at campgrounds, which isn't often. There is nothing in my 5er that doesn't work because of this. My slides go in and out and the jacks go up and down. With them shut off there is no parasitic drain on them to worry about and they don't get boiled dry, just in case there is something not working with the converter. That's the way I do it so shoot yourself. By the way I've been doing this on a number of TT and 5ers over 35 years of using them. Stay safe.

dwolach wrote:
Thanks for all the ideas. Should I shut the batteries off while hooked up to shore power?

No. Battery should be on.

When I tried to close the slides without shore power, my fridge panel showed 'Low D C'. Checked the battery. It was not charging. Found a tripped breaker in my converter. Flipped it on and battery was charging again at 13.31 Volts. Figured all was good. Next time I closed the slides off shore power same thing happened. No open breaker this time. Started truck with umbilical plugged in. Battery again showed 13.3 volts charging. After fully charging again the battery went flat at 10.7 Volts.

I replaced the battery. All is good again.

I think you have a similar problem. Buy a battery.

dwolach wrote:
Thanks for all the ideas. Should I shut the batteries off while hooked up to shore power?

Always leave batteries on when plugged in! Your converter needs a place to "put" its power when you are plugged in. Just be sure to check water level every few weeks. Your converter may be bad too if fuses are good and battery is ok. Do your lights get brighter if you turn on the breaker for the converter? You should see a difference. How old are your batteries?

dwolach wrote:
Thanks for all the ideas. Should I shut the batteries off while hooked up to shore power?

Always leave batteries on when plugged in! Your converter needs a place to "put" its power when you are plugged in. Just be sure to check water level every few weeks. Your converter may be bad too if fuses are good and battery is ok. Do your lights get brighter if you turn on the breaker for the converter? You should see a difference. How old are your batteries?

My converter has two fuses on it that protect it against things like someone accidentally reversing battery cables. When out batteries were dying while hooked up to shore power, I pulled them and found them blown, keeping the converter from charging them, thereby running them down as the lights and heat still were running off the batteries.

dwolach wrote:
Thanks for all the ideas. Should I shut the batteries off while hooked up to shore power?

Some 12v items may only work off the batteries, so disconnecting them will disable those functions. On my FW, if I shut off the disconnect, the batteries won't charge at all. Learned that the hard way.

Lyle

If you have a smart charger / converter you should not need to "shut off" the batteries. Heavy draw items like the jacks and slides may require more amps than your converter can provide on its own. Good luck.

Thanks for all the ideas. Should I shut the batteries off while hooked up to shore power?

Both. Check voltage at the batterys, without converter/charger on. Check again with it on. Check the AC into the trailer. Without that, nothing happens. Assume nothing.