Sulfer Smell House Battery

[gjtrafl]

Yesterday had my dealer install a battery disconnect for the coach battery.

Brought the coach home and plugged it into my home's power supply. This morning I discovered a strong sulfur smell and discovered my house batteries were very warm and moist. I unplugged the RV immediately. Cells were virtually all dry.

Dealer seems to think installing the battery disconnect has nothing to do with my problem today. I have now added water to all the cells (all were dry) and I am plugging the RV back to my house power.

Any suggestions? One other point, last night by accident I hit the inverter power-on button. Turned it right back off a second later when I realized I hit the wrong button.

Seems hard to believe this battery problem isn't related to one or the other issue. Any ideas?

[naturist]

Batteries, once boiled dry, are forever ruined. There is no fix for them, you are going to have to replace them. Merely pouring water back in is a waste of perfectly good water.

I concur with the others: it is virtually impossible to cause this issue when installing a cut-off switch, absent outright fraud of the swapped-your-good-ones-for-somebody-else's-bad-ones sort.

[pianotuna]

Perhaps you might post a picture of the way the battery bank is wired?

[Old-Biscuit]

When was the last time YOU checked those house battery water levels?

Batteries boiled dry......
Converter (charging section) over charged batteries.....boiled the water/acid out and they are RUINED...DEAD......SHORTED.

You need new house batteries
You need to check the DC output of your converter (13.2 min/14.4 max) and that converter actually comes out of bulk charge mode (14.4)

Battery disconnect switch did not cause batteries to be overcharged and water to boil out.
Hard to install it wrong....it only gets installed on one cable -----positive normally but can be on negative.
Neither would cause your issue

Turning on inverter would have just placed a load on batteries....which were already damaged.

Edited for spelling :S

[midnightsadie]

I agree with beem some thing installed wrong.or batteries were dry in the begining.

[Snowman9000]

OTOH, coincidences do happen.

[beemerphile1]

A correctly installed disconnect would not cause this issue. On the other hand, you must verify it was correctly installed and the batteries aren't wired wrong.

[gjtrafl]

I know ZERO about batteries... but I do think in the end it will prove to be some issue with the new cutoff switch... a compatibility issue or something as you mentioned DREWE

[DrewE]

I agree with rockhillmanor; it sure sounds like something is not good with the converter. What model of converter is it? What voltage is it putting out?

Possibly it's in need of replacement, and just happened to die at about the same time as the work was being done. Possibly it's not wired correctly to use the disconnect switch (particularly if it's a very old design with a separate charging output).

[gjtrafl]

I feel good about the integrity of the dealership. I am sure they did take one out to give some working room for the coach battery.

I agree I haven't checked the levels in some time. But it still just seems too coincidental that the problem has surfaced now.

[WyoTraveler]

Was it a reliable dealer? The problem could have just shown up because you haven't checked your batteries often enough. OR, The guy working on your RV pulled out your batteries to mount the switch for safety and intentionally or unintentionally swapped out your batteries with someone elses RV, maybe his own.

[gjtrafl]

For the 4 days, the RV stayed hooked up at the dealership.... they were doing other minor things. The last day they hooked up the battery disconnect. So the whole time it was plugged up everything worked fine.

Still scratching my head on what to do next.

[rockhillmanor]

Check your converter output. A bad capacitor in the converter can cook your batteries. Been there done that took 3 repair guys to figure that one out. 😞

[gjtrafl]

Update...

I am pretty sure that the levels were not checked prior to the install of the cutoff switch. The coach batter is a gel battery. The house batteries are what I am having problems with and they are not gel batteries.

After topping off the fluids, and plugging back in, the problem started back within 30 minutes.

So I am back to square one now.