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Old 11-13-2022, 11:34 AM   #1
Vatraveler
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Battery

We are camping in Missouri. Had an extremely cold night last night. We are on shore power but around midnight we heard a beeping sound coming from battery compartment. After one long beep some time later it was quiet. Both of our batteries went dead. My question is should we turn batteries off completely when on shore power to conserve them? Our is a 2021. Any advice??
 
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Old 11-13-2022, 11:47 AM   #2
BB_TX
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Never disconnect the battery(s) when on shore power. When on shore power the converter is charging the battery(s).
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Old 11-13-2022, 05:11 PM   #3
Daryles
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Your furnace uses about 12A DC from the batteries. If you have FLA (lead acid) batteries they are only usable to about 50% before doing damage to them (shortening their life).
So if you have two 100Ah FLA batteries (200Ah) only 100Ah is usable.
Drawing 12A for the furnace plus other draws let's say 16A total, your batteries should last about 6 hours from fully charged to dead.
If you don't have a battery monitor, you can use a multimeter to tell what state your batteries are.
If you don't have a multimeter you can look at the battery voltage on your Level-up control panel.
Your hydraulic system needs the batteries to operate. It draws about 80A when running the hydraulic pump. Your converter cannot put out enough power to run the hydraulic system. Your batteries are able to supply this extra current.
BTW where are you dry camping at on Missouri?
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Old 11-13-2022, 09:38 PM   #4
twindman
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You won't draw all 16 amps all the time. My furnace draws 10, maybe 12 amp. And when I camped with temps 40 or lower and NO hookups, it ran about 75% of the time, so that is around 8-9 amp per hour or 11-12 hours with no other draw. I wasn't educated at the time in the Big Horns of Wy at 8500 feet. I had the lights on late afternoon. Turned the furnace on at 7 pm and used a CPAP from 10/11 pm on. My single battery that time ran out at 5 am when my inverter (for CPAP) started beeping for low battery. (I bought 2 batteries after that.)

So if you are careful and only run the furnace with few lights in the evening, etc you should be able to go from 7 pm to 7 am. I would think.



I think you have a bigger problem tho. When plugged in your battery should never run down. So either the converter is not working and bad, or somehow it is disconnected. Get a volt meter (every rv-er should have one) and check the voltage on the battery. When the converter is running, it should read around 14-14.5 volts. When not running, it should be 12.5 or slightly higher.
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Old 11-14-2022, 05:26 AM   #5
Rick_2009_3400RL
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If you have the space, you can have a second 12v battery of the same type added in parallel to the first battery. (Do NOT add it in series as this would turn your 12v system into 24v and do damage!) This second battery will more or less double your available time drawing the same loads. Keep in mind that your recharging time will also double if you only keep one charger responsible for both batteries. By installing a battery charger/maintainer for each battery, they will both recover as normal.
As an additional handy tip, I installed a GLOW fuse in my hydraulic pump circuit. If it blows, a tiny LED lights up inside the fuse to let you know at a glance that it went bad.
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Old 11-14-2022, 05:33 AM   #6
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Quote:
Never disconnect the battery(s) when on shore power. When on shore power the converter is charging the battery(s).
I agree completely with my friend, but if I understand your original post, you were on shore power, so the problem is more likely with your charger/converter. With it working correctly, your batteries should not have gone down to "dead."

That is where I would start; not with more batteries, but to determine why they went dead. Those batteries may well be damaged, but new ones or additional ones would probably be damaged also until you get at the cause.

Should also say that I agree with twindman who made this same point earlier:

Quote:
I think you have a bigger problem tho. When plugged in your battery should never run down. So either the converter is not working and bad, or somehow it is disconnected.
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Old 11-14-2022, 07:28 AM   #7
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Shortly after purchasing our 2005 Montana 2955RL I removed the single 12V battery and battery box. I installed an 8D battery box and 3 new Group 24 Interstate RV/Marine deep cycle batteries. We have been on our trip since late July, dry camped/boondocked in many places while traveling across the US and never had dead batteries. We've used our furnace in cold temperatures (30* - 40*) and always woke up in the morning with enough battery life to run the furnace, water pump and whatever lighting we needed. We try to only dry camp one day at a time and be on shore power or generator every other day. I have an inverter we use to supply power to our Starlink dish and it displays battery voltage and have never seen 11.9 yet. Lowest it has gone is 12.0 volts.
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Old 11-20-2022, 06:48 PM   #8
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Our converter has two automotive type fuses on the the back. One or both of them was blown. So on shore power, it wasn't putting out DC to the power the camper DC system or to charge the batteries. Eventually the batteries drained. Replaced the fuses and been ok since (over a year). These fuses are not in your fuse panel. You have to access the converter. For ours I had to take a panel off in the basement storage area.
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Old 11-30-2022, 06:22 PM   #9
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We are boondocking on our property, and using a generator to charge up our batteries. We were using 2 12 volt deep cycle batteries, but even though less than 2 years old, they would not hold a charge through the night, running only the furnace. So I replaced them with two 6 volt 230 amp golf cart batteries in series. When running the generator, the voltmeter shows 13.5, but when the Gen is off, voltage drops to 12.6 plus or minus a tenth. By morning, I am down to 11.5 volts. I have tried using a higher rated generator, or running my Honda 2000 all day, but I can never get the batteries to hold more than 11.9 through the night. Is my converter defective or is something else wrong?
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Old 11-30-2022, 06:32 PM   #10
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13.5V when the converter is running (either shore or gennie power) is normal charge level. 12.6V is normal full charge for a battery that is not being charged by an external source.

You really need to measure what your amperage draw is when running off the gennie with no external charging going on.

The 230 amp capacity of the dual battery setup only allows for about 110 amp hours of consumption before you are down to 50% discharge. You don't really want to discharge a FLA battery more than 50%.

I don't remember what the fan on the furnace takes to run, but I know it is a power hog. I am pretty sure more battery power is required if you want to depend on it for heat when boondocking.
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Old 11-30-2022, 07:21 PM   #11
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12.6 is 100% charged but 11.5 is 20% charged. Like Carl said you shouldn’t discharge a LA. battery below 50% which is 12.06 volts. Below 50% will ruin your batteries prematurely. You need more batteries or bigger ones.
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Old 11-30-2022, 10:15 PM   #12
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I think the furnace fan uses 10A or so. I figured it out when my batteries died at 8300 ft. The furnace seemed to be running about 3/4 of the time, so it used 7-8 amp per hour x 10 hours (8 pm to 6 am). I had also had lights on from about 5 until 10 pm, so I was dead by 5 am. On a side note, it is not fun to hook up the truck at 5 am to charge the batteries in your pajamas!
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Old 11-30-2022, 11:16 PM   #13
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Quote:
Originally Posted by twindman View Post
On a side note, it is not fun to hook up the truck at 5 am to charge the batteries in your pajamas!
Hey Tom - at least the neighbors had something to gossip about for the morning if they too were awake at the time of day
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