Can I Play Battery Roulette?

[dc8cappie]

Checkout this link.

http://www.irv2.com/forums/f101/jour...ion-52584.html

[bachler]

We have owned 7 motorhomes over the past 40 years. And have replaced a lot of batteries.As the posts stated They are expencive. The last set (3 30s) of batteries Lasted 9 years In that time we boondocked months at a time, added water Once in 9 years. Checked it yearly. When i took the batteries in To the factory for replacement ( DYNO ) He checked them and they checked out equal to the new one on the shelve;; I can not stress this enough. If your charger has a deep cycle setting. use it; But A battery is only a storage unit. When it is discharged it will start to sulfate emeduitly; So it MUST be charged as soon as possable If it sets for a day Discharged It will sulfate and lose some of it's storage capicity; When fully charged you should read 14.4. As each cell is 2.4 volts . WE would charge/run the Gen. in the mourning, 10 mniuts, and in the evening 10 minutes; Then you have the fellow that says you need to run the gen, more then that, I just say It had over 2500 hours on it when we sold the MH and it ran like new.. Life is good

[Dave78Chief]

Ricko,
Your short battery life could be due to the Diminisions setup. It is possible you require more amp Hours / day thaan what you have the unit set for. To begin with, the charger section performs 2 functions; Battery charging and 12VDC load support (ref Diminsions AN-002, Page 1, Float Mode description). When you set the Charger limit to 5 amps (your post 13 of this thread) you are limiting the total charger output to 5 amps. It is possible that may not be enough to meet daily requirements. If you are always connected to 12VAC then the unit can only provides 5 x 24 = 120 AH / day. Is that value large enough to supply all the 12VDC components in yout rig such that you do not draw the battery down below 50% capacity at any point? In your case that 50% value may only be around 157Ah (3 x 105ah [each 12VDC battery] /2). If not a true deep cycle battery (like golf cart batteries) then bringing the battery down to less than 50% capacity will drastically shorten the battery life.

In your case, because you have a Trick-L-Charger (pulls up to 5amp draw from house charging system; In your case the Diminsions Inverter/Charger) , you also have to factor in chassis battery loads (ghost loads) as well as all house loads. Items like automatic steps also draw power from the chassis battery that have to be feed via the Trick-L-Charger. The more features we want the more requirements we have. Once you know your total requirements, you can determine if you need to raise the charger rate. If you do much boondocking, then that charger level (5AH) is way too low for that sort of event. 5-6 AH was a level they used back in the 70's era converters for battery charging. Took forever to recharge.
The documntation says (last 2 pages of AN-002) that the charger will drop out of Bulk or Acceptance mode if the timer limit is reached. That could force a float mode situation which may not support the current loads on the system.

The other important thing to note about this model charger (Automatic Power Sharing Mode) is if the AC loads being supplied by the unit (when 120VAC is available) reach the 30 amp breaker limit, the unit will shut of the charger section OFF in order to supply that 12VAC load. If that happens, all 12VDC supply is being provided by the battery not the charger.

My point in all this is that the 5 amp charger setting may be to small for your needs.

Dave

[RJay]

Rick,
It sounds like you are mostly connected to shore power and batteries that aren't used will sulfate faster. How often do you equalize your batteries? I'm connected to shore power months at a time and I equalize my batteries quarterly. I only do it for two hours since I do it so frequently and never have battery problems.

[RickO]

Originally Posted by Dave78Chief

Ricko,
Your short battery life could be due to the Diminisions setup. It is possible you require more amp Hours / day thaan what you have the unit set for. To begin with, the charger section performs 2 functions; Battery charging and 12VDC load support (ref Diminsions AN-002, Page 1, Float Mode description). When you set the Charger limit to 5 amps (your post 13 of this thread) you are limiting the total charger output to 5 amps. Dave

Thanks Dave but it is my understanding that the limiting of current to 5 amps is AC INPUT and not charger output. That is how it's labeled and seems to behave. We never boon dock and >95% of the time we're in the coach we are connected to 50 amp.

Originally Posted by RJay

Rick,
It sounds like you are mostly connected to shore power and batteries that aren't used will sulfate faster. How often do you equalize your batteries? I'm connected to shore power months at a time and I equalize my batteries quarterly. I only do it for two hours since I do it so frequently and never have battery problems.

Thanks RJay. It's been my understanding that, when connected to shore power, the 12v draws in the coach (lights, control boards, etc) still draw on the batteries and I can see the battery voltage on the house batteries drop slowly from ~13 volts down to about 12.4v and then the charger goes from float mode to bulk mode to get the batteries back up around 13v and the cycle begins again.

Is equalization the same as what Dimensions calls "conditioning to ensure full restoration of active materials in all the plates of the battery cells?" This happens automatically every 10th charge cycle and I can see the voltage jump to >14v when it happens.

Thanks again...

Rick

[Dave78Chief]

The Diminsions Inverter-Charger performs automatic Conditioning (Equalizing) every 5 charge cycles. He reffered to that in post #17 above.

Dave

[Dave78Chief]

You are correct. I missed that little detail in the write up.