2000 Itasca Horizon 34BD Power Inverter

[TTitans1]

Need a little help here once again. We own a 2000 Itasca Horizon 34BD Class A motorhome which we live in most of the year. It has been parked and connected to a 20 Amp 110V outlet for 2 years and was working fine until I asked an electrician to wire up a 30 amp plug so that I could possibly run the A/C system this year. He came out and wired a 30 amp plug but he connected it to 220V instead and I believe he fried the Shoreline power converter box. After he realized what he had done he and a mobile RV mechanic bypassed the power converter box so that we would at least have AC power and not have to stay in a motel while waiting on a new box which I ordered. My confusion is that when he initially did this I had no AC power so I was looking at my power management panel in the RV and I did not see any of the lights on for the battery charging system on the bottom of the panel so I pressed the POWER INVERTER button and immediately had AC power and the lights for the battery charging system on the panel lit up. I do not remember having to press this switch after losing AC power (from blowing the 20 amp breaker and then resetting it ). Is this an indication that he may also have fried the power inverter? The RV guy seems to think so but I think that it shows that the inverter is working. Also since he bypassed the inverter I can't really test it until we get the new Shoreline switch in, Can someone clarify this for me? Also don't know if this had anything to do with it or not but now my furnace does not work either.

Thanks in advance

[TTitans1]

Don't know how many watts my solars are ( there are two but I don't have the manuals ) The charger I bought is a 10 amp charger and it has already charged the batteries up. Is there somewhere I could find the info on the panels themselves? One is fairly small maybe 18 X 24 inches and the other is probably twice that. They usually do just fine keeping the batteries topped off but I have never had the rig unplugged for any length of time and so the inverter has kept up the charge on them.

[Canadian_Rainbi]

TTitans1 wrote:
I also have three batteries for the coach so I am going to get a charger for sure. Does it matter which battery I connect to? Should I leave it on since my inverter/charger is not currently hooked uo to charge the batteries? I have cranked up the RV twice now in the last two days as it seems the solar panels I thought would keep the batteries topped off are not able to do that (maybe because it is cloudy )?

What do you think?

We have 420 Watts of solar panel and even in Mexico sometimes have to revert to the Xantrex charger, so unless you have some pretty awesome panels they won't be supplying enough. Most people (including me!) tend to expect too much from their solar panels.

What size charger did you buy--how many Amps?
If you can, connect the charger to the same terminals that the main battery cables are connected to. In the short term, connecting to one + and one - will be fine.

Once you get the House batteries charged you should connect the charger to the Chassis batteries to top them off. There will always be some drain from them--smoke detectors etc. On ours, they (the chassis batteries) also power the slides which takes a lot of current. Then put it back on the house batteries.

[TTitans1]

That is correct. Unless I start the coach in which case the motor will recharge the batteries but I just went and bought a battery charger and connected it to the coach batteries as a few others have suggested.

[enblethen]

The model you posted indicated it was an inverter/charger. In that case the batteries are not getting charged, they run down and you have no 12 volts DC.

[TTitans1]

I think the inverter was inverting DC (from the Batteries ) to AC. He bypassed the transfer switch and that disconnected the inverter so it is not connected to AC at this time to charge the batteries. Waiting on a new Shore Power Switch and we will go from there. RV tech said he checked the output of the inverter while it was connected to 110 AC and was not getting anything but I don't know if he was checking at the right place at the time. He layer found a manual online for it but that was after it had already been bypassed.

[DSDP_Don]

This post is getting confusing again. If the transfer switch was fried by the electrician and everything else was working, including turning on the inverter and it was inverting, why is there now talk of other issues and battery chargers.

If the electrician fried the transfer switch, ALL he had to do to get you operational, while the transfer switch was on order, was to connect the shore power to the output side of the transfer switch. After that, everything in the coach would run as normal. The transfer switch is ONLY there to transfer power between shore power and generator.

[TTitans1]

Already spent 3 nights in a hotel before they could get to it. He suspected inverter was bad but I told him we could wait until shore power switch was replaced to be certain.

[enblethen]

I wonder why he did that, unless he has found an issue with it.
keep your receipts so the electrician can pay for damage.

[TTitans1]

Tech says inverter is bypassed at this time.
Thanks

[enblethen]

Connect the charger to the coach batteries.
The chassis battery may or may not charge from the coach system. You may need to run the rig to get the chassis battery back up.
If the tech connected it up correctly, the inverter charger should be working unless there is a problem with it or the DC fuse.

[TTitans1]

I also have three batteries for the coach so I am going to get a charger for sure. Does it matter which battery I connect to? Should I leave it on since my inverter/charger is not currently hooked uo to charge the batteries? I have cranked up the RV twice now in the last two days as it seems the solar panels I thought would keep the batteries topped off are not able to do that (maybe because it is cloudy )?

What do you think?

[Canadian_Rainbi]

I too would suggest that you get a charger now. Drawing your batteries down that much will shorten their life, especially if they don't get a really full charge immediately afterwards. However I would recommend a larger capacity charger, say around the 40A range. A 6A charger will take days to recharge seriously depleted batteries.

We have a 2002 Itasca that originally came with I think 3 group 31s, though they may have only been group 27s. When we had got it there were 4 group 24. We replaced those 2 years ago with 4 GCs. We also carry a 2/10/20/30/40A charger which has been extremely useful over the years.

We changed out the converter to a Xantrex Prosine 2.0 Inverter/Charger.

[enblethen]

I would get a charger. A 2/6/ start type would do. Harbor freight, Walmart or auto parts store. It maybe a while before everything is corrected. Charger would be cheap compared to replacing food in refer.

[TTitans1]

Thanks, I have the troubleshooting manual for the inverter from Xantrex and will have the electrician do the testing as I don't have the meters and it is raining so I can wait until it clears out tomorrow. Don't have a battery charger but may consider getting one if this is going to take very many days and so far electrician has not paid for this but we are going to be talking about it when I see him again.