Interior Lights stopped working after battery drained-how long to recharge?

[WrigleysBraveWin]

Accidentally left the lights on and when we discovered the battery was totally drained - no RV interior lights and can't start generator and no shore power to hookup .... so I thought let's go for a spin ....

So we took RV out and got some food letting RV run for about twenty minutes before we did "pretend camping at local WalMart" while we ate food, tried lights but no luck so we drove home and still no lights ....

How long do I need to charge up before I can get power back - should I hook to home battery charger? I did check circuit breakers and they seemed ok and not tripped.

[Rickf1985]

You should have a switch on the dash to be able to charge the batteries from the alternator while running. You could have started the engine and then hit the switch and started the generator and then just let that charge the batteries. But if they are that dead they will most like never hold a full charge again. It will take a solid 10-12 hours of charging to bring them up.

[Rickf1985]

I also notice you have mismatched batteries in there, that is never a good idea since one will always be stronger than the other and consequently the lower of the two will always be dragging the better one down. That alone can kill the batteries in a few days. Your best bet is to get yourself two new deep cycle batteries. And get true deep cycle, deep cycle starting batteries.

[WrigleysBraveWin]

Rick,

Would this be a good time to invest in lithium batteries or can you even flip over?
If not, do you specific battery brand to recommend.

Also, by default, the RV Batteries are charged on this Coach when driving and I did try to start generator with engine running but no luck, makes me wonder if I have an underlying issue?

Thnaks for your help!

[Rickf1985]

Once batteries get drawn down to a certain point they rarely come back unless they are new and yours do not look new. I do not trust lithium batteries, too many fire issues with them. I like the Odyssey AGM batteries. I do not have them because they are rather pricey but you get what you pay for. Another brand of AGM batteries is Optima. The AGM batteries are good due to the fact that they are an absorbed glass mat battery so there is no free acid and they do not need to be refilled as long as they are treated right. They do require certain recharge specs so if you are going to buy them it is good to do a bit of research on the battery and also on the charger you have or plan to get. Once it is all together as a set it will last a long time.

Lithium is an unstable chemical at best and the batteries in an RV are subject to high heat, vibration, deep discharge and sometimes a fast recharge. Not a big fan of keeping a bomb under me. Already have the propane tank.

[Rickf1985]

Without the engine running put a meter on the house batteries and see what they read and then with the engine running see what they are reading. They should be reading at least 12 volt and rising with the engine running if it is set up for automatic charging. If they started out below 10 volts they may be shot. You don't know how old they are either do you? They could be done for anyway.

[WrigleysBraveWin]

Good News is the house lights now work after charging overnight but haven't tried to start generator yet.

From my reading seems AGM is best Route to go and you just gave me confirmation, thanks.

Both of the existing batteries are "maintenance free" so they say on the label but neither has the date of purchased punched off and I don't see any receipts or paperwork so I have no clue on how old they are. But while researching I ran into InterState Battery useage chart and discovered whatever type of battery you get, unless so you have a huge bank of them, you cannot run all types of lights and radios like we were doing with our pretend camping.

[Rickf1985]

A battery is rated for so many amp hours reserve capacity. That is how many amps you can use in that many hours. You have to do the math to figure out what your usage is. There a lot of guides and calculators out there that tell you what each light and pump and radio uses so you can do the math. Most people nowadays convert all the lights to LEDs since they use a fraction of the wattage as the incandescent bulbs. And if you have an inverter that converts 12 volt to 110 AC, they draw a LOT of battery power! I think there is a post on the forum here called battery 101 that gives a lot of info, I will see if I can find it.

This isn't the one I was looking for but look through here, there is a lot of good info in it.

http://www.classicwinnebagos.com/forum/index.php/topic,3710.msg9753.html#msg9753

Then do a Google search for RV battery 101. You will find all kinds of info

[WrigleysBraveWin]

Thanks I do some research .....  good news is looks like it was a dead battery issue. Right now we are going to monitor and when we have in for service we will have them check. Meanwhile when time comes and we find the right fit we will know what path to take!

[DaveVA78Chieftain]

Please note that the stock converter in you rig is only designed to charge lead acid wet cell batteries.  It is not designed for charging AGM batteries.

[TerryH]

Also please note that your Monitor Panel will give readings that are generally far, far and away from true. They all depend upon sensors that have been shown definitively to be inaccurate. Tank level, propane level and battery power level.
Please do not use it for an expected true read out of what it purports to show.

[WrigleysBraveWin]

Please note that the stock converter in you rig is only designed to charge lead acid wet cell batteries.  It is not designed for charging AGM batteries.

Well that makes my decision rather easy, replace with Wet Cell ... Thanks!

[WrigleysBraveWin]

Also please note that your Monitor Panel will give readings that are generally far, far and away from true. They all depend upon sensors that have been shown definitively to be inaccurate. Tank level, propane level and battery power level.
Please do not use it for an expected true read out of what it purports to show.

Gotcha ......  Current readings seem to be in order and for now, except for the propane, this is the only Monitor i have.

[Rickf1985]

My propane monitor said full right up to the day I ran out and then it sort of said whoops and dropped to zero. There are aftermarket monitors out there that are very accurate. The tank monitors I don't worry too much about since you should have a pretty good idea of what is in the tanks from general use. The electric is the biggie and there are some really nice monitors for the electric out there. What Dave said is true of the stock system BUT, if you upgrade to a newer style charging system then you get much better performance overall. This is where it would be a good idea to call Randy at Best convertor. The way I look at it is this, if you plan to keep this unit for a long time then when you are going to replace the batteries you want to replace them with the best choice which is AGM so look into a charging unit that can charge the AGM batteries. Done and over with and then you never have to worry about that part of the system again. The chargers are not all that expensive and you could replace the charger first and do the batteries later to spread out the cost.

[WrigleysBraveWin]

For now I need to get more experienced with this Coach and the entire RV Camping process .... Back in the day, we were very accomplished Tent Campers and had Tent Camping down to a fine science but it took a few years before we had it nailed.

[Rickf1985]

Pretty much all the same thing, it is all about conservation of resources. Just in a more luxurious setting which does make it harder to do. You had to conserve you batteries in your flashlights and radios ad stuff tent camping. You also had to conserve your water there and I am sure you had a lot less of it, but it was not running with a shower and toilet. so basically the same thing but on a larger scale. Also remember that when using the generator you are sucking a half gallon per hour roughly out of your main gas tank. So on a nice hot summer weekend where you run the genny for 36 hour you just used 18 gallons of gas out of the tank. These are set up so that the generator cannot use all the gas in the tank, generally once it hits about a quarter tank the generator pickup will come out of the gas and that will be it for the generator. I always try to fill the tank close to where I am camping so I know that I have plenty of gas for any generator use and most of the ride home.

[Rickf1985]

Here is the electrical system monitor I was talking about. This is just one of many.

https://www.solar-electric.com/bogart-engineering-tm-2030-rv-battery-monitor.html?gclid=CjwKCAjw5PDLBRB0EiwAh-27MtbytRggjN81OL6X16SNOpk_uEeZzdbCDwTDeaxhzFeBkTumUwBLyRoC0P8QAvD_BwE