Trickle charging my Motorhome

Hi Rick,

How do you know the house batteries are being charged?

I used a volt meter, 12.3 volts no charger, 13.5 with charger installed on chassis. there is also battery water under the House batteries occasionally when being charged.

Rick

Why don;t you just plug it in and let your on-board converter do it?

Hi Rick,

Well, that's great--except for the "battery water". Is the trickle charger intended for long term charging? Some of them are not--and the battery water scares me.

I've gone solar so my house bank charges the chassis battery using a trik-l-start.

You have raised a REDFLAG mentioning water present under your batteries.

The 13.6VDC is right at the level that causes battery fluids to boil out. You really should be using 13.2VDC for long term trickle charging. If you can only use 13.6VDC then what you should do is to watch your battery fluids levels real close. Once a week at first to see if you are losing fluids.

If the fluids get below the cores internal battery failure may happen.

Keeping your batteries re-charged using the smart mode chargers will take care of all of this for you. I would still check the water levels anyway haha.. I can't afford to replace my batteries...

Roy Ken

You may not have to do this at all if you have a Bird like I have on my 2006 Fleetwood Tioga, just by plugging it in it will maintain the charge on the chassis battery as well as the house batteries.


Many of Fleetwood products came with them.

To find it look under the step where the batteries are, like here
at red arrow.


Here is a close up of it.



If you have one it will keep everything charged and will not boil your batteries, mine is plugged in all the time when at home, and other than checking them about once a month I have never had to put water in them.

Hello All,
I should have mentioned that I do not use a trickle charger, but rather an Interstate battery maintainer. My batteries are now over 8 years old (ALL, chassis and coach)

IISCHABOD: Mine does have that Bird thing in there, in fact, your set up looks identical to mine. I do not think I have a smart converter, I think when plugged in to shore power, it will overcharge, not sure, but I have always felt that way, maybe I should just keep it plugged into shore power?

Thanks all for your help

Rick

IAMICHABOD, Sorry I got the name wrong in the prior post, that is a hard one to remember.
I just read on the BIRD, that is a cool little divice, I do have one, you have had no trouble with your batteries plugged into shore power for Weeks at a time? I thought I read here on the forums that you had to install some special board to the converter to have it charge correctly from shore power for extended amounts of time?
Thanks all for your help and a special thanks to Iamichabod

Rick

Hi Rick,

A lot depends on what make and model of converter you have. Some are great and some are not so wonderful.

Rick
I have had mine hooked up all the time 24/7/ year round for the last 2 years or more with no problems, I know of no special boards but it has worked without fail with no problems.

I did change out my converter to a smart one a while back to get rid of the cheap WFCO.

Like These

Not only are they smart they also protect against low line voltage also high voltage protection.

I changed out mine with this one

PD 9245c

It is a direct swap out, just plug and play,4 screws and all done, one of the easiest mods that I did.

They are cheaper on EBay Like Here

Hope that this helps, got a lot of other neat mods for this RV too..
Gary