Community Forums

gatorv · 10-19-2012, 03:08 PM

Yesterday after picking up coach at storage went to turn on inverter for backup camera and it was already on. Wierd, always park turn off everything and both main power switches and never had a problem for 3 years. Any1 ever had a inverter turn itself on? Batteries were not completly dead but very low . 5.6 volts each. Does any1 know how long to get the batterys back to normal. the red battery low indicator won't go to yellow, been several hours. any advise or comments. batterys are 3 years old.

Barbaraok · 10-19-2012, 03:34 PM

New batteries. That's the only thing you can do.

Barb

rsha · 10-19-2012, 03:41 PM

Recommend that you open the battery disconnect and place an external battery charger on them. Alternate between high rate of charge and trickle charge for a few hours. Sat 5 minutes high and 15 minutes low charge rate. After 2 hours place them on trickle charge ( 2 amp) until the come to full charge.

EngineerMike · 10-20-2012, 08:52 PM

rsha- 2amp trickle probably won't budge the battery bank (at least 440ah).

Gator- Barbara may be right, if the batteries were down that low for an extended period it may not be possible to bring them back. Rsha's method may help but you'll need higher charge rate, at least 10amp for low charge rate to move the needle any.

rsha · 10-20-2012, 09:07 PM

The 2 amp rate is to allow the plates to cool after the high rates. The high rates generate a lot of heat and can cause the plates to warp enough to short. The is better than 50-50 chance that the battery's are bad.

bluepill · 10-20-2012, 09:19 PM

Possible that the extreme low voltage caused the inverter logic to get crazy and flip on. I would make sure that you have fully charged and healthy batteries before trying to diagnose a possible inverter problem.

gatorv · 10-21-2012, 09:57 AM

Thanks for all the good info.
I disconnected all the batteries and let them sit overnight.
In morning I checked each battery for a dead one or low voltage. All had 5.7 volts. They never went completely dead so I think I'm OK.
I plugged the coach in and set the power share mode on the control panel to 5 amps.
This caused the charger to charge at a very slow rate. I never knew you could do this.
It took two days but so far all is good. I'm going to add a House battery disconnect to my other two main battery switches and cover all bases. Thanks for your help. Gator

Old Scout · 10-21-2012, 11:49 AM

Its good to be cautious with things like this but am not sure the numbers are adding up here. Not sure which inverter your 99 has but am pretty sure it is the freedom combi--which is an intelligent charger. Among other things, I think your inverter/ charger has a temp probe to monitor bat temps. Guess I would continue to monitor the bats anyway but the temp probe should derate the charger if the bats show any signs [ie high temps] of over heating. Assuming you have 4 house bats, thats about 220ah [at half discharged] of capacity to recover. Setting the inverter/charger at 5 AC amps means the charge is derated to accommodate sharing a shorepower supply of only 5 amps. Not sure what the charger is puting out [in DC amps] at this setting but it cant be much. At the 5 amp setting--think this is going to take awhile.