House power mystery

[retiredtraveler]

My wife and I purchased a HR Endeavor this spring. On our second trip out we got a beep-beep from the front and a low dc reading on the fridge. This was while on shore power. I started the engine and things came back to normal. I did this 2-3 more times on that trip to keep the house running. I brought it back to the dealer and he replaced some "Magic box"
We camped several weeks during summer/fall and everything was normal.
The last few weeks the coach has been parked on our neighbor's property. No shore power. This Sunday I wanted to do some work inside that required 110 volt. Cranked up the generator, no problem. Monday was fairly chilly and since it was going to be below freezing at night I decided to run the furnace for a while. We turned on some lights inside and I went to start the generator. Lights dimmed and the beep-beep again. Started the engine and let the furnace run for a while. Tried the generator again, same result.
This morning I moved the coach to our driveway and plugged it into shore power thinking maybe the house batteries were low. After 4 hours I unplugged and tried again,, Beep-beep.
Thinking the charger was not working I checked the voltage at the batteries while plugged in, 13.9v. I unplugged and checked voltage on the batteries, 12.7v.
Any ideas to a newbie from you old timers?
Thanks in advance
Keld

[tinkerer]

Being that I own a farm and have a large shop I do my own work on my coach. I have had some problems and I always have the tendency to try to make a big problem out of a minor problem. As I look at the problems I have fixed just about all of them have ended up being minor problem. There are repair people out there who make easy money by putting on an act that that the coach owner has major problems when in fact the problem was minor. But in the end they can sell the customer a lot of unneeded parts and service.;)

[retiredtraveler]

Mchero,

It was whatever controls the charging. When it was bad the house batteries were not charging from shore power. I had to run the engine to keep them charged. Interestingly enough the 110v system was working ok, just the batteries were not charging. That is when I earned that the beeps from the dashboard means low house batteries.
I hope this makes sense
Keld

[mchero]

Retiredtravelers2013
I think some of us would like to know what the "Magic Box" was.

Thanks for the post.

[retiredtraveler]

Sprig,
I feel pretty stupid for overthinking this whole thing.
Maybe this will teach others the lesson: Check the connections.
DW is very happy everything is working and it did not cost us $300 for new batteries.
Again thanks to everyone who tried to help.
Keld

[Sprig]

wny_pat wrote:
...12 volt deep cycle lead acid batteries should measure 12.6 to 12.8 volts when fully charged with charger not operating! How long it can hold that 12.7 vdc is the question!!

In a nutshell, the above is the simple answer, provided enough time is given to fully charge the batteries (and odd intermittent connection issues don't prevent the batteries from charging fully).

It just doesn't always appear that simple when you end up being the one with the apparently weird symptoms.

Glad the OP got it figured out.

[tiffinboy]

retiredtravelers2013 wrote:
Mystery solved!
I had DW turn on lights. No difference in battery reading. Then she tried to crank gen set. Still no different reading in voltage, but sparks flying from cable between batteries.
Cable was totally loose at one end. Tightened and gen set started right up.
Thanks to all who helped and note to me: Check connections.
Keld

good to hear.Thats what Tinkerer told u yesterday was most likely the problem so cheap fix

[retiredtraveler]

Mystery solved!
I had DW turn on lights. No difference in battery reading. Then she tried to crank gen set. Still no different reading in voltage, but sparks flying from cable between batteries.
Cable was totally loose at one end. Tightened and gen set started right up.
Thanks to all who helped and note to me: Check connections.
Keld

[tiffinboy]

retiredtravelers2013 wrote:
Again thanks to everyone.
This morning I checked the batteries after being unplugged. I got 12.6 volts.
The plan is that when DW comes home in an hour or so to turn on some lights and see if batteries drop. If not then try to start genset. If it drops a lot I guess we have bad batteries. If not it is time to clean all connections.
Does that make sense to anyone?
Keld

yes as if u read my post to u that's exactly what I told u to do?
try starting gen set while unplugged and measure batt volt drop off

[retiredtraveler]

Again thanks to everyone.
This morning I checked the batteries after being unplugged. I got 12.6 volts.
The plan is that when DW comes home in an hour or so to turn on some lights and see if batteries drop. If not then try to start genset. If it drops a lot I guess we have bad batteries. If not it is time to clean all connections.
Does that make sense to anyone?
Keld

[tiffinboy]

retiredtravelers2013 wrote:
My wife and I purchased a HR Endeavor this spring. On our second trip out we got a beep-beep from the front and a low dc reading on the fridge. This was while on shore power. I started the engine and things came back to normal. I did this 2-3 more times on that trip to keep the house running. I brought it back to the dealer and he replaced some "Magic box"
We camped several weeks during summer/fall and everything was normal.
The last few weeks the coach has been parked on our neighbor's property. No shore power. This Sunday I wanted to do some work inside that required 110 volt. Cranked up the generator, no problem. Monday was fairly chilly and since it was going to be below freezing at night I decided to run the furnace for a while. We turned on some lights inside and I went to start the generator. Lights dimmed and the beep-beep again. Started the engine and let the furnace run for a while. Tried the generator again, same result.
This morning I moved the coach to our driveway and plugged it into shore power thinking maybe the house batteries were low. After 4 hours I unplugged and tried again,, Beep-beep.
Thinking the charger was not working I checked the voltage at the batteries while plugged in, 13.9v. I unplugged and checked voltage on the batteries, 12.7v.
Any ideas to a newbie from you old timers?
Thanks in advance
Keld

Iam almost 100% certain you need to replace your house batterys.One quick check to do before u replace is try and start the gen set and take a battery reading at the same time while not plugged in.The voltage will really drop off if the batterys are dead

[I_rv]

i had similar problem i found battery cables slightly loose at inverter/charger,you could see blue on cable end from resistance heat build up. good luck

[Matt_Colie]

Keld,

You have a lot of good advice here, but a little bit needs to be more specific.

Even if you bought the HR new off the lot, that does not mean that everything was done properly and all of you symptoms point to either a bad house bank or bad connections to a house bank.

Do you have a hand held - stand alone VOM?
If NO, go get one. It needs to be able to read to 0.1 volts at ~12.
Disconnect from shore power.
Put your head in the battery box, put the probes right on the battery posts (not the cable connections and there is a reason).
Now, have DW crank the APU (genset).
If it does crank, well, it is tough to diagnose what is working....
Does the battery voltage disappear? (Like go real low?)
=> The bank isn't charged or is defective. Try charging for a day and then try again. It can take a day to recover a really dead bank.
Does the bank voltage stay or drop just a little when the APU doesn't crank? (This is directly on the battery posts.)
=> Then you need to disassemble and clean all the connections to the batteries. And, then try the test again.

I used to work on boats before the depression and I saw this sort of thing all the time. Usually cleaning the battery terminals was a quick, but not cheap fix (if I was getting paid for it).

Matt

[tinkerer]

The first thing to check is the connection on all of the house batteries. Not long ago I posted about a similar problem with a Discovery. As usual I expected the worst but a Fleetwood technician set me straight. I had a bad connection on one of the house batteries.;)

[wny_pat1]

Just check and see how much the batteries have gone down tomorrow before discharging them any more. If they are not holding the charge, then you have problems. Have you checked the electrolyte? What about checking them with a battery hydrometer. That will tell you real fast if they are bad!!!

My coach stays plugged in all the time. If it isn't plugged in, there are parasitic devices that draw power all the time. In the cold temperatures (17 last night) they would become discharged very quickly. The coach has a 4 stage microprocessor-controller charger that knows more about keeping the batteries up than I do