Sewer smell from battery

[NYSUPstater]

A couple weeks ago while walking past the RV, I smelled a good wife of a sewer type odor which I thought was kinda odd and more/less dismissed it. Few days later, came home from work early and REALLY smiled a bad sewer odor. Thinking it was from a stick house in our track, but walked by RV and WOW darn near knocked me over and got past the RV and nothing. Went back and sniffed around and noticed it most in vents for battery (only have 1). Opened the front compartment door and lo-n- behold there was the problem. Bad sewer smell and when I shined my flashlight just right, could see smoke. Had a OS moment !!! Turned the batt disconnect to off, removed pos/neg cables from batt and took it out and placed on concrete paver. Don't know the H happened as I thought it was ok when I put it in back in April. Somehow it lost acid in a cple cells. Didn't owe me anything as it was the orig batt back in '17. Went to batt store and got a new factory 2nd deep cycle.

But man, I never thought a batt going south would smell like that. Am glad I caught it when I did cause who knows if I didn't I'd probly be calling 9-1-1 for fire depot.

 

[jmarnell]

The same thing happened to us when we were still using flooded cell deep cycle batteries in our Cyclone. Bad sewer type smell in the garage that I finally traced to a bad battery. Same as you experienced, a couple cells in one of the batteries were dry and overheating. Ours was only 2 years old and Interstate tried to say it was caused by overcharging, but I argued with them and they finally gave a partial credit on a new battery. We've upgraded to lithium batteries since then.

 

[jerryjay11]

Yeah, I think now I should look at replacing our RV battery. After all I replace the deep cycle batteries (3) in my bass boat every couple/three years as recommended by the industry. Why not camper battery?