House battery charging & discharging

If your solar panel isn't installed with a diode, it will discharge the batteries at night.

To determine how well your battery is being charged by the generator it would really help to know what converter is in your rig. Depending on the model of Dutchmen it could be under your bed. It is probably a Magnetek/Parallax which will only charge your battery very slowly.

You should not have a big issue running the heater all night.

Have you been maintaining all of your batteries by checking water levels, battery cable connections, hydrometer tests, voltage test on the posts of the batteries.

If your answer is no, you very likely have bad batteries and in any case a 2009 probably has tired batteries anyway.

Hi Wendy,

Do you have the owner's manual for your RV?

For a nice explanation of solar, try this link: Golden rules of solar

Wendyshieh wrote:
thank you so much for all the great suggestions you gave me.

My RV is 2009 Four Wind Duchman, I brought it new in 2010. The house battery came with it, never replaced. I left out one important thing though, which is I hired a company to install a solar panel on top of the roof along with two extra batteries in 2011, on sunny day( I live near San Diego, we got great sun power), it was good but I wish I had two solar panels with 4 extra batteries, but on cloudy days, I got very little electricity, that was the reason I turn to house battery to keep me warm at night.( temperature dropped to 30-40 degree). I never figure out what is the real supplier behind it, is it the solar? or generator? or combined?

The Solar company since moved away and I don't have any contact with them. I was wondering.... because of the solar installation, does the solar batteries took over the house battery function? or they work together to supply the 12-volt appliances inside the coach(light, heater, fan....)?

How do I find this out without going to a RV-shop? I am keep it up with my reading of the RV material and I do appreciate all your help and suggestions, what a group of RV lovers with big hearts!!

Wendy

This is something that you can figure out by yourself if you have time and patience, but you might be better off going to an independent RV repairer (even check craigslist) to get some input. Don't have them fix it for you, but have them talk you through the system and how it works.

There's definitely something going on, but without knowing how your systems is set up it is hard to know where to start. So I would start by making a diagram of your electrical system. Feel free to post it here, I'd be interested in seeing it. If you aren't sure what something is, take a picture of it and post that.

You possibly have
- generator
- alternator(s)
- batteries
- solar panel(s)
- charge controller (+ inverter?)
- solar panel controller
all connected in some configuration and then wired into your RV through some sort of a fuse/breaker panel.

Yeah a night long fan is pushing it unless you have a larger battery bank. Usually if boondocking in the ---BOONDOCKS--- and nobody is around, I'll get up in the middle of the night and crank on the generator. I leave it running for about an hour, then cut it off. Usually this is enough to keep things charged up. Also do consider installing several solar panels on your coach roof to help trickle charge when the generator is off. You'd be surprised with what just 1 amp can do.

If you are running the generator five hours into multiple batteries you should easily make the night if all is working correctly. Have you measured the battery voltage when charging? Have you had the batteries tested?

thank you so much for all the great suggestions you gave me.

My RV is 2009 Four Wind Duchman, I brought it new in 2010. The house battery came with it, never replaced. I left out one important thing though, which is I hired a company to install a solar panel on top of the roof along with two extra batteries in 2011, on sunny day( I live near San Diego, we got great sun power), it was good but I wish I had two solar panels with 4 extra batteries, but on cloudy days, I got very little electricity, that was the reason I turn to house battery to keep me warm at night.( temperature dropped to 30-40 degree). I never figure out what is the real supplier behind it, is it the solar? or generator? or combined?

The Solar company since moved away and I don't have any contact with them. I was wondering.... because of the solar installation, does the solar batteries took over the house battery function? or they work together to supply the 12-volt appliances inside the coach(light, heater, fan....)?

How do I find this out without going to a RV-shop? I am keep it up with my reading of the RV material and I do appreciate all your help and suggestions, what a group of RV lovers with big hearts!!

Wendy



Warmly,
Wendy

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What year is your RV? Some early model RV's have very poor charging systems. We had an 89 Fleetwood that only charged the rv battery at 3 amps.

Wendyshieh wrote:
I run the generator for 5 hours during the day( from 11am to 4:00pm) hoping I would have enough power to kick off the heater at night to keep me warm. No, by 7:00pm, my coach battery is very low. Generator won't even start, I need to start the coach car engine to start the generator.

Is this ok?
Does my coach battery is bad?
Unable to store power?
How long do I have to run the generator?
How do I prevent the coach battery discharged so quickly?
Thanks for your input in advance.

Wendy,

You asked five questions and were very short on providing specific information.
1 - Maybe....
2 - Maybe....
3 - Possibly
4 - Depends...
5 - Don't run the lights or heat.

More about:
1 - Without knowing what you house bank is and how old it is, there is no way to give you a meaningful answer.
2 - You can take to a auto parts store and they can try to test it, but their test is for starting load and not total capacity and that is your real issue here.
3 - You can determine this to some extent on your own. Leave the coach on shore power for a day so the house bank is charged, then if you have a volt meter - installed or portable, read the voltage and turn on the heat. When the voltage gets to 11.5, you are done.
4 - If the battery is down to 11.5 or less, and you do not have a smart converter/charger, it could take a day (yes - 24 hours). If you have a very large (a relative value) converter/charger and the house battery is still pretty good, you could get it from dead (5% charge) to 90% in as little as six hours.
5 - You will have to find out how much power different things draw and decide what to leave off and even then, you may not be able to overnight with the heat going.

I suggest that you find out what your battery capacity is, how much load the things you run are and then do some more reading on caring for batteries.

Matt