OOPS! Dry house batteries

[ezgoin]

Looks like I messed up. Checked my 2 6v house batteries and they were dry. Filled them with distilled water and hooked up shore power and letting the charge up now. My question is, WILL they charge up and hold it? Can I run my slides and other 12 volt items when on shore power even though they run off 12 volt? Or am I doomed to buy 2 new ones?

Thanks,
Bill

[RoyB]

We have used jumper cables from the truck start battery here to aid the batteries to run the SLIDES in my pulled trailer setup... I just nose the truck up to the battery bank location and hook-in my jumper cables... Just be sure to get the cables polarity correct... With your Motorhome setup I think you already has a built-in relay contactor to do the same thing...

You most definitely have driven a few nails in the batteries letting them run dry on fluids.... When this happened to my 12VDC batteries connected in parallel I right away ended up with a shorted cell in one of the batteries trying to recover from it. One battery would not charge higher than 5VDC or so and got very hot... Game over for that particular battery...

After catching this I became very aware to the maintenance of the batteries and watched them very close on a weekly basis.

I have lucked out and got a few more years out of the remaining three batteries and just now are planning for their replacement. These were all installed in 2009...

Roy Ken

[pianotuna]

X2

2oldman wrote:
This is a good excuse to get AGMs. No water worries, no problems at all... with the possible exception of overcharging. I'd be looking at your converter to see if it's overcharging.

[2oldman]

This is a good excuse to get AGMs. No water worries, no problems at all... with the possible exception of overcharging. I'd be looking at your converter to see if it's overcharging.

[lj2654]

Its a gamble as to how long they have been out of water......you will know soon enough if they don't charge....watch that they dont get too hot trying to charge....

[scrubjaysnest]

Maybe or maybe not, if your lucky you'll get another season. Just be ready to replace at any moment.
You 12 items should run when hooked to sure power as long as the converter can handle the load while trying to charge the batteries.