Dead Batteries??

[randyxa]

Good morning folks,
We hooked up the RV to shore power and now all batteries are dead.

We had just taken it out of storage, batteries were about 1/2 charge.

We tested all the appliances, AC, fridge, ran the gen for a bit, etc.and all was good.
Nothing was left on, both battery disconnects were in the "on" position for charging per the manual, we hooked up the shore power, made sure I had voltage and the next day both house batteries as well as the chassis battery were dead.

any help or input would be greatly appreciated.

[Skip426]

Welcome to iRV2.

Sorry that one of your first posts is about problems with your RV.

Could you add the year of your Fleetwood RV to your post and info on it's equipment .

Is it equipped with a converter/charger for the batteries ; OR ; an inverter/charger ?
Do you know the chargers location ?
Do you have a voltmeter to start testing the charging system ?

[randyxa]

thanks for the welcome, info should be there now, I must not have hit "save" on my signature line.

yes, it has an inverter/charger, it was working fine last fall. We only had it for a month before it got stored for the winter so we didn't get much use out of it.

yes, I do have a multimeter.

[Gary RVRoamer]

No simple answers - you will need to do some more diagnosis. Plug the coach in and check the voltage at the batteries. Should be 13.6 or so, the output voltage of the charger. Since your batteries are "dead" they are probably much lower than that, but start checking other points between the batteries and the charger.


What does the display for the charger say, both the remote and the indicator lights directly on it (if any).


The 2000 Pace did not have an inverter/charger as standard equipment, so yours must be an upgrade of some sort. (A converter/charger was standard). What make/model inverter/charger is it?

[randyxa]

I would be very interested in knowing where you got the info that the Pace had a converter/charger. I have tried finding info on my unit with little success.

I guess I had just assumed it was an inverter/charger as that seemed to be the norm.

I did receive 2 very large binders with my unit with manuals on lots of stuff but I found nothing at all regarding the charging unit or how it works etc, other than to have the disconnects in the on position when hooked to shore power.

The original owner was pretty meticulous in his record keeping and one thing I did see in all the work orders was a continuing issue with the disconnect switch not working. 3 work orders regarding this in 6 months.

I should also mention that the batteries were not "dead" but were almost totally drained.

I do appreciate the feedback I have received so far, this seems to be a very good group of folks here and I am glad I joined the forum.

[anakin]

The house battery disconnect does not disconnect everything. The smoke detector and propane gas detector are left connected and will drain the battery over time.


Several people have added their own disconnect system including physically disconnecting the battery cables.


My storage location has 110V 20 amp connection. I leave mine plugged in when not in use.

[fagnaml]

Four years ago during the first use of my 2007 Damon Astoria I had the same problem of house batteries getting "drawn down" even though the were new while staying in an RV park. A nice, long time motorhome owner advised that new batteries were likely not the problem but asked if I had checked the Progressive Dynamics brand converter to see if it was performing OK. When we both looked at the coverter, we found all three, 30 amp blade fuses had burned out, probably from a voltage surge the previous owner experienced. The three blade fuses were replaced, the converter performed as it should and never had a battery problem again.


So, a suggestion is find your converter and see if it has blade fuses and if so, are those fuses in good shape. The Progressive Dynamics converter I had looked similar to this one --> https://www.amazon.com/Progressive-D...M2J46D536YMBXN