Forum Discussion

Mizzouri's avatar
Mizzouri
Explorer
Mar 14, 2016

Battery Minder

My motor home has 6 house and 2 chassis batteries. I would like to use a battery minder to keep them full while they are in storage. I have electricity available at my storage site. The question is: If I connect the minder to the first battery of the six will that work for all the batteries. Same question for the chassis batteries? There seems to be a thoughts that only the battery that it is connected to will be charged. Thanks in advance.
  • accsys wrote:
    If it were me, I would just plug the MH into the available power using whatever adapters are needed. The converter or inverter/charger (depending in what your Meridian has) will keep your six house batteries charged. Check your manuals and see how your chassis batteries get charged from shore power. If they receive nothing from shore power, you need to get an Amp L Start that will charge the chassis batteries by providing a bridge from the house batteries whenever the chassis batteries drop below the house battery charge allowing your charging source to charge both banks. A battery minder/tender is a very low amperage device and will not do what you need.


    +1

    My RV has a controller that uses the converter/charger on the coach batteries but will switch over and charge the chassis battery when needed. Yours might do the same.
  • This is the best answer. If your converter is too obsolete to do this, replace it.

    accsys wrote:
    If it were me, I would just plug the MH into the available power using whatever adapters are needed. The converter or inverter/charger (depending in what your Meridian has) will keep your six house batteries charged. Check your manuals and see how your chassis batteries get charged from shore power. If they receive nothing from shore power, you need to get an Amp L Start that will charge the chassis batteries by providing a bridge from the house batteries whenever the chassis batteries drop below the house battery charge allowing your charging source to charge both banks. A battery minder/tender is a very low amperage device and will not do what you need.
  • How you connect the BatteryMinder (my favorite!) depends on the voltage of your batteries and how they're connected. Searching for "battery minder connections" I ran across the information below:

    Series-Parallel Connection with a 12 Volt 1 Amp BatteryMINDer


    Multi Battery Connections with BatteryMINDer Chargers

    Take a look and see if your scenario is mentioned there.
  • If it were me, I would just plug the MH into the available power using whatever adapters are needed. The converter or inverter/charger (depending in what your Meridian has) will keep your six house batteries charged. Check your manuals and see how your chassis batteries get charged from shore power. If they receive nothing from shore power, you need to get an Amp L Start that will charge the chassis batteries by providing a bridge from the house batteries whenever the chassis batteries drop below the house battery charge allowing your charging source to charge both banks. A battery minder/tender is a very low amperage device and will not do what you need.
  • Allow

    One Ampere charging capacity

    Per 6-cell RV Battery

    And 2-amperes per six cells of non car jar type batteries such as golf car. Two amperes is marginal but it will work for newer L-16 battery pairs. Slop enough antimony on the negative plates of any battery or combination and all these figures get tossed out the window.
  • you can get one that looks like a small black box, it is more amps. it sells for around $45, if you put the black connector on the neg of number one battery and the red on the pos of the furthest pos post of the number six battery it will charge across all of them
  • When all the batteries connected parallel will charge with single charger, I would vote against the idea for storage.
    Over the years I had few incidents when battery minder malfunction and killed the battery. Then would one battery develop internal short - it will take whole bank with it.
    Those things don't happen too often, but suck when they do.
    Disconnecting the clamps turn out the best for me.
    Car batteries will hold the charge for 6+ months, while golf cart batteries will power after full year with no problem.
    So I would hook up a charger just few days or few hours before planned trip.
  • I think it will attempt to charge all connected batteries, but depending on the brand/model it may or may not work. For example, my "battery minder" is a "Battery Tender" brand and it can only charge up to two 12-volt batteries at a time.