AMP Draw Issues

[bankerae]

Good morning Folks! I am hoping someone can point me in the right direction...

We have a 2005 Keystone Outback 26RS travel trailer and did our first dry camping last week. When the heat quit about 1:00am I knew something was not right 🙂

I just did an amp draw test and here is what I came up with:

Using a VOM meter set on the 10amp setting

with the power cord unlplugged and testing through the negative battery cable with everything turned on I was getting a .65 amp draw reading... after taking each fuse out one at a time here is what I found:

The 15amp fuse tied to the LP leak detector (may be powering other items too?) was pulling .08 amp

The 15amp fuse for the fridge (the fridge was turned off, however when I would put the fuse back in it would let out a loud beep) was drawing .54

When I tookt he fuse out for the fridge and the LP leak detector I was left with .03 amp draw

So there's the data, just not sure what it all means!

Thank you in advance for your help!

[time2roll]

13 is too vague for diagnostics. Could be 13.0 or 13.9 of which different answers would be given.

[Chris_Bryant]

Sam Spade wrote:

Chris Bryant wrote:

bankerae wrote:
After being plugged in all night the battery is at 13 volts right now

Back to this- that is WAY too low, it should be above 13.8 volts. Your battery is not being fully charged.

Chris: You not awake yet this morning ??

13.0 is perfectly normal IF he really is reading only the battery after the charger has been unplugged or turned off recently.

And 13.6 is a very common "float" voltage IF the battery is fully charged.

Nah- I was ASSuming 🙂 that the OP meant the battery read that while on shore power- "plugged in all night ... at 13 volts now"-
13 is actually high for a battery at rest- all surface charge.

[Sam_Spade]

Chris Bryant wrote:

bankerae wrote:
After being plugged in all night the battery is at 13 volts right now

Back to this- that is WAY too low, it should be above 13.8 volts. Your battery is not being fully charged.

Chris: You not awake yet this morning ??

13.0 is perfectly normal IF he really is reading only the battery after the charger has been unplugged or turned off recently.

And 13.6 is a very common "float" voltage IF the battery is fully charged.

[bankerae]

Let me clarify on the inverter / converter statement: I plug it in and it charges the battery 🙂 So I think I meant converter in my previous statement

I took the battery in for testing yesterday and although it showed 100% charge it did not pass the load test. I now have a new battery. I'm going to charge it for a couple days and then do some testing. It sounds like according to the responses here the amp draw with everything turned off is normal, so hopefully it was just the battery

[horton333]

mike-s wrote:

MEXICOWANDERER wrote:
... a Dr Mengele grade converter

That's the most inappropriate and insensitive thing I've heard in a long time. There's absolutely nothing about the Holocaust from which a joke can be made.

X2

[All_I_could_aff]

Just for reference, my furnace draws 4.5 to 5 amps while running. Even on a 20 degree nite with low wind, it ran about 1/3 duty cycle... 5 minutes on, 10 minutes off

[mike-s]

MEXICOWANDERER wrote:
... a Dr Mengele grade converter

That's the most inappropriate and insensitive thing I've heard in a long time. There's absolutely nothing about the Holocaust from which a joke can be made.

[MEXICOWANDERER]

6-months is about normal if the battery depletes to 0.0 volts when no master shutoff switch can chop every last milliamp of drain. Combine that with sucking the battery down overnight until it wrinkles with a high draw furnace fan and wait there's more! Under feeding the battery the battery with a snotrag converter all combined adds up to exactly what you are reading in the OPs plea. Not enough battery - a Dr Mengele grade converter and no way to stop bleeding down the battery adds up exactly to this grade of woe. No single fix will cure this.

[ktmrfs]

bankerae wrote:
The one thing I forgot to add is that it drains very quickly when sitting. When we returned home the battery went dead (from a full charge after being on a 30amp hook up) within 2 hours. I was thinking of adding a second battery to help us get through the night for the furnace but knew I should figure out this issue first. Any previous camper we have had has never had an issue with the battery draining this fast. Any idea what would be causing the draw coming from the fridge?

for a battery to go dead that quick either the battery is bad, or the charger is bad. to discharge even a single 12V battery in two hours means a significant draw, on the order of 30 or more amps. not very likely.

Or you have the typical WFCO converter which contrary to the spec's will take several days to get even close to a full charge into a single battery, and even at that NOT a full charge. they almost always charge at 13.6V constant voltage mode, not the 45A constant current mode, which gives very very low charging current. Getting them to do the 45A bulk charge is usually an excersise in futility.

[CJW8]

You stated twice that your battery was charged by the inverter. An inverter does NOT charge the battery. A converter charges the battery. There are some high end inverters that have a built in battery charger but they are not very common as standard equipment on most RV's

Since you checked the connections and found them good, I suspect you either have a bad battery or it is not getting fully charged.

Another possibility is you have a converter and a whole house inverter. In this case, the inverter is powering the converter and the converter is charging the batteries that are being drawn down by the inverter. Perpetual motion doesn't work and will quickly draw down a set of batteries. If you indeed have an inverter, turn it off before proceeding to take it out of the equation.

You also keep giving test results but unless I missed it, you have not answered questions asked such as what make and model of your converter? Someone else posted the "12 Volt Side of Life" link. I suggest you read it and part 2 as well as it is very helpful.

[road-runner]

FYI, a 6 cu ft Dometic fridge that I measured pulled 360 mA. with the gas valve on, 100 mA in "auto" (gas valve off), and 50 mA. in "gas only" (gas valve off). I never thought to measure it turned off. Could that interior light be stuck on?

[mkirsch]

A .65A draw is not going to discharge your battery in only 2 hours.

Parasitic draw is absolutely NOT your problem.

13.0V *IS* correct for a fully charged 12V battery. It would only be 13.8V immediately after being disconnected from the battery charger, and then only for a short time until that surface charge dissipated and it stabilized at 13.0V.

What is the voltage when it is "discharged" after two hours?

[Cydog15]

Chris Bryant wrote:

bankerae wrote:
After being plugged in all night the battery is at 13 volts right now

Back to this- that is WAY too low, it should be above 13.8 volts. Your battery is not being fully charged.

But if that is resting voltage after removing power for awhile, its about right. True, 13,8 when connected or you will not see good charge. Sounds like a WFCO converter. Get one if the PD 4655MBAs if its a 8955 that seem to be in the majority of campers.

[DrewE]

It very much depends on the fridge. There's no real need for it to be consuming power when off; on my (Dometic) fridge, I'm pretty sure that the power button does cut 12V power to the fridge controls. (Oddly enough, it does not cut power to the interior light in the fridge for some reason.)

There may be other things on your fridge DC circuit that are consuming power. Is your TV antenna amplifier turned off, for example?

If your battery is indeed being properly and fully charged and is running out in a couple hours with a 650 mA load, you have a bad battery. It's not unknown for new batteries to be defective, though thankfully it is the exception rather than the rule.

[Chris_Bryant]

bankerae wrote:
After being plugged in all night the battery is at 13 volts right now

Back to this- that is WAY too low, it should be above 13.8 volts. Your battery is not being fully charged.