Quote:
Originally Posted by Redapple
Good Morning Folks,
Observations after day 1:
Picked up trailer yesterday and got it home
Tows great
All systems work except the front lift jack(Stromberg Carlson 3500).
Worked fine at the dealer while plugged in. Got home and it kept tripping its internal circuit breaker, had to remove the cover and lower manually. Need to investigate, dealer say bring it in. Day one...not off to a good start.
Second, ran fridge for about 4 hours and heater for about 10 minutes. Did not plug it in last night and batts show 2/3 now.
Is that normal? My rv I could go days and batts were fine. Trailer is a Norcold vs Dometic in rv 12cf vs 6.
Other than that it looks good so far
Battery set up is two gc2 6v batts.
Any thoughts?
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In warranty failures:
Yes, They are rarely tested and controlled as well as cars and trucks. Don't forget to test everything else including summer things, like AC and black tank flush. Be alert for signs of leaks both inside and out.
Your idea to test 12 volt performance and learn your new RV's systems is a great one.
Battery capacity:
Different systems behave differently. It would be good to have a better quality battery monitor so you can see the load on the batteries. They can easily be different with different systems.
Water heater control board
Furnace control board
Refrig (a lot)
Propane detector
Inverter idle current
etc.
Battery voltage matters. It is totally different under different conditions. State of Charge (SOC) meters that show only fraction of charge are extremely limited.
Static voltage (neither charging nor discharging for a while) will reveal the SOC of your battery. 1/3 after one night may mean appliance is drawing load, battery was not fully charged, defective battery, or other issue.
You can not easily tell from a fractional SOC meter found in many TT's. You must wait about 4 hours for the battery to stabilize after stopping charging to get reasonable readings.
A battery under load will read voltages lower than static. The greater the load, the lower it will read. A battery being charged will read higher than static. In this case it will read the charging profile of the battery charger.
A high quality battery monitor will try to compensate for the different conditions. Some are better than others at calculating actual SOC. Many need to be calibrated or set up to give correct readings.
Find out the amp hour (AH) capacity of each 6 volt battery.
Find out current draw (amps).
Divide AH capacity of one 6 volt battery by current draw.
Equals approximate number of hours until batteries are dead.
Linear Mode
