Question about a drained battery

[lacochran]

Hi - I'm a new owner of a travel trailer and have made a couple of trips in my trailer. My question is what could be draining my trailer's battery. I thought I turned everything off after my last trip, but when I went out to check on something for my next trip, I discover the battery was drained. I plugged in the trailer overnight and it is fully re-charged. But I would like to know what happend so I can prevent it in the future. FYI - it was unpluged for several weeks. Thanks in advance for any input.

lacochran

 

[jimtoo]

Hi lacochran,

Welcome to the Heartland Owners Forum and to the family. We have a great bunch of folks here with lots of information and all willing to share their knowledge when needed.

Chances are the normal parasitic drain is what pulled the battery down, propane detector, and anything else that has a memory and operates off of 12v. The fridge will also pullit down if left turned on.

Be sure and check out our Heartland Owners Club. Join us at a rally when you can and meet lots of the great folks here and make friends for a lifetime.

Enjoy the forum and your new unit.

Jim M

 

[Bob&Patty]

How long does it sit before the battery is dead?

 

[BigJim45]

Hi - I'm a new owner of a travel trailer and have made a couple of trips in my trailer. My question is what could be draining my trailer's battery. I thought I turned everything off after my last trip, but when I went out to check on something for my next trip, I discover the battery was drained. I plugged in the trailer overnight and it is fully re-charged. But I would like to know what happend so I can prevent it in the future. FYI - it was unpluged for several weeks. Thanks in advance for any input.

lacochran

Do yourself some good and buy a battery cutoff switch and install it. It will turn off everything.

 

[Nuclearcowboy]

We have disconnects on our batteries and when we are not using the unit, we always open the disconnects. Otherwise the clocks, CO2 detector, etc. will drain the batteries over time.

 

[Jim.Allison]

Same thing happened to me as a new owner, it is parasite discharge. Even if you disconnect the battery, it will drain over time, but with the propane detector, co2 detectors, and any other device (especially the TV antenna amplifier) no matter how small, the batt will discharge at a rate that you would think is impossible.

I dont have the problem anymore since I installed my solar panels and inverter. But I try to remember to use the battery disconnect anyway. You need a battery disconnect if you don't have one get one, there are many reasons you need it and one so you can disconnect the battery in an emergency.

Here is some math to illustrate

Volts X Amps = Watts

A fully charged battery is 12.7 V

If you are discharging at a rate 1/10 of 1 Amp per hour, then in 10 hours you will discharge 1 amp hour, or 2.4 amp hours per day, if your batt is a 100 Amp hour batt it will be for all practical purposes dead after about 60 amp hours.

60 amp hours / 2.4 amp hours discharge per day = about 24 days until a dead batt, and that is not including the battery's self discharge, add that in, and I would estimate your battery to be drained at about 15 days which is what you are saying happened to you.

Just a note; battery discharge is just like the gas peddle on your car, driving from point A to point B. At 55 MPH your tank drains at one rate, but at 100 MPH it drains at a faster rate. SOOOOOOOOOOOO the 1/10 amp hour drain on the batt in my illustration is just an estimate, the batt would last a little longer consider the very small rate of discharge in my in my illustration, than it would at a rate of 1 amp hour. What I'm trying to say is that smaller vs. higher discharge are not directly proportional to each other.

I recommend that ALL RV DC electrical systems install a Bogart Trimetric or similar device. It will help you know when you are discharging or charging, at what rate you are charging and discharging, and what percent charged your battery is. Good luck

 

[wdk450]

Would a solar panel be a good in storage battery recharge option for you?

Check Harbor Freight Tools, or other places.

 

[lacochran]

Would a solar panel be a good in storage battery recharge option for you?

Check Harbor Freight Tools, or other places.

Thanks. Considering all options.

Lea Cochran

 

[szewczyk_john]

Also do not think that plugging the trailer in overnight will fully charge the battery especially if you are using the monitor button to determiner your state of charge.

 

[wdk450]

Also do not think that plugging the trailer in overnight will fully charge the battery especially if you are using the monitor button to determiner your state of charge.

I am a fulltimer, and when moving into a new space for a stay, the remote readout on my Progressive 9600 Converter/Charger doesn't go down into the lowest charge rate "standby mode" for something like 30 hours.

 

[PointyWombat]

My Bighorn with the Yeti option drains ~4 amps even when it's turned off. I discovered this while troubleshooting a quicker than expected battery drain while dry camping. It absolutely shouldn't do that but I think it would take a lot of effort to trace this problem to the source, so I just pulled the Yeti fuse. Anyway, if you know your battery bank is good and is indeed fully charged, I'd suggest taking the time to measure the current across all the individual 12v fuse terminals, while you're disconnected from shore power, in order to get a better understanding of what's consuming your battery amp hours, and by how much. With most multi-meters, you should be able to measure any fuse terminals rated for less than 10 amps. More if you have a good multi-meter.

Cheers!

 

[Jim.Allison]

That TV antenna amplifier takes a lot of juice.

 

[danemayer]

My Bighorn with the Yeti option drains ~4 amps even when it's turned off. I discovered this while troubleshooting a quicker than expected battery drain while dry camping. It absolutely shouldn't do that but I think it would take a lot of effort to trace this problem to the source, so I just pulled the Yeti fuse.

On some of the early Yeti builds, the switch only turned on the tank heating pads. The fresh water line heat tape was on all the time and thermostatically controlled. So in cold weather, it would draw down the battery.

Pulling the fuse is one way to deal with it. The other way would be to take the wire coming off that fuse position, run it up to your control panel, and add a switch so you can turn off the heat tape.

 

[olcoon]

Our rig is stored at our sticks & bricks. When it's sitting in the driveway, I've got it plugged in to a 120 plug to keep the batteries charged. So far, the batteries have been kept charged, and have lost very little water.