About 6 weeks ago, I noticed (with my inexpensive 12V meter mounted in the face of the kitchen counter) that my converter wasn't charging above 12.5V when plugged in to shore power (it had always been 13.8 volts). I did extensive research online and in this forum and replaced it with a Progressive Dynamics PD4655 upgrade for my Parallax converter from
bestconverter.com. For anyone considering it, they are a great company; very attentive and quick.
Then I thought, I need to keep a better eye on things, so I bought a
Victron BMV-700 Battery Monitor. It lets me see the charge rate of the converter, what percentage of power I have left in the batteries and a whole lot more that I don't even use (yet).
Finally, I took a look at my pair of three year old group 24 batteries, which, by the way, were NOT a matched pair, having purchased the second one after I bought the trailer, and me not knowing they SHOULD be matched. After reading all the information on the forum regarding true deep cycle batteries and 6V in series vs. 12V in parallel, I made my way to Costco and bought 2 of their golf cart batteries.
We had our first trip out after all of the changes this past weekend and what a difference. My 12V batteries barely lasted a night and I would have to charge them for several hours the next day. We would have to run the generator to watch TV until about 9pm to make it through the night.
With my new system, we watched about 4 hours or so of TV with our 19" flatscreen and DirecTV DVR receiver, ran the overhead fan (for white noise) and the furnace all night, and I still had 83% of my charge left this morning. Fired up the Yamaha EF3000iSEB and it was back to 100% in about an hour.
Sorry this is so long - just excited to share.
2018 Grand Design Imagine 2250RK
2018 Toyota Tundra 5.7L
