# Another Battery Question...but My 1St One....



## Water Witch (Jun 8, 2009)

I know next to nothing about RV deep cycle batteries. I do, however, know when mine is dead - which it is. My last tip out, it did not recharge any on the trip home. I have been camping with a/c, so it should behave better (I think) than it has been. It goes dead kind of quickly. It is only two years old, and hasn't been exposed to any drastic temperature changes. After looking at the price of batteries, I am hoping it is just "sick", and not really, terminally dead. I have been reading up on maintenance of batteries, but I would feel more confident if someone could give me step=by=step instructions on how to "test" it out to see if it can be revived? Any takers?


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## sunnybrook29 (Oct 7, 2009)

The best way to check a battery is with a hydrometer , testing each cell individually . Charge it up , let it sit for a day or so. Check all the cells , the should be very close together in readings. If one or more cells are a lot different from the others , you have a bad cell!
It is common for the charging wire from the tow vehicle to malfunction also , maybe your truck is not charging the house batt or possibly draining it!
Your inverter or converter should keep the batt up while plugged into shore power,WOW , you got a lot of checking to do.
I would go buy a three dollar hydrometer first!


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## outback loft (Sep 22, 2008)

If the battery is around 2 years old and you generally are lugged in all the time, there is a good chance the battery life has depleted. When you are constantly plugged in and not cycling the battery through discharge and recharge, you are quickly killing the battery. There is a chance that the battery is low on acid, which you can try topping it off with distilled water, but if it is dry, there is no hope.

If you are going to leave the trailer plugged in, there are two things you can do, if you leave the light over the stove on, you are at least discharging the battery so it has a reason to charge, or when in storage, only plug it in when needed.

I have had the same problem in the past, and I would actually get only about a year out of the batteries, because I was always plugged in and never using any 12v lighting.


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## Water Witch (Jun 8, 2009)

Thanks for the info; now I have a starting point. I did not realize that you needed to
DISCHARGE the battery to CHARGE it! What else uses 12V? I assumed (incorrectly, it seems) that if you were plugged in, you were running everything off electricity.

I am learning something new everyday! Hopefully I haven't totally wrecked the battery!


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## ED_RN (Jun 25, 2006)

Everything except the A/C work off of 12 volt. Check out the battery as sunnybrook suggested. If the cells are dead they are dead, sorry. If the battery holds a charge then you need to chase down all the connections to see if the are both clean and tight. I'm not an expert but check the voltage at the battery with a multimeter then connect to the tow vechicle and see if the voltage goes up. If it does the connection to tow vechicle is probably OK. I thought mine where on the way out last week. When we arrived at our site and after running the gen for several hours they would still show 2/3rds. Cleaned the connections at the batteries with a wire brush before we left. I hadn't plugged in since we got home but batteries now show full.


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