What AMP Battery Maintainer?

[ATONOFUN]

Happy New Year all!!!!

2012 Winnebago Adventure 35P, two house batteries (no issues) 1 Chassis battery.

I purchased a new chassis battery about two months ago. Started the unit a couple times no issues. Living in Canada we had a spell of below freezing weather for about 5 days. I went into the unit yesterday. Battery dead.

I have the charger on right now.

My question is about a battery maintainer. I see they come in various AMP sizes. Any idea what size I require?

Knowing nothing about this I am reaching out to you for help! Appreciate any advice.

I have tried uploading a pic of battery, no clue if it worked. It has on it CCA 850, CA 1100, RC 150,

Thanking you in advance,
Respectfully,
Andy May

 

[creativepart]

Most battery maintainers are "smart chargers" and I haven't found them to be super high amperage devices. If you need to charge fast you may want something with more current. But "maintaining" only needs a few amps.

I always used a "Battery Manager" brand from Griot's Garage. Here's a link to what I use. https://www.griotsgarage.com/battery-manager-v/

But I don't use it on my chassis battery any longer. I have a knife switch disconnect installed on the negative terminal of my chassis battery so that battery never goes dead in storage.

Here's what I use:

https://www.amazon.com/Battery-Disconnect-Vehicle-Negative-Vertical/dp/B0896YT9MY

 

[Morich]

Amps are the term used for what we would call volume if speaking of water hoses.
So the bigger the amps, the larger "flow" of power we can expect to get.
That is one big factor when wanting to move power into or out of a battery but there are other points to consider.
One big thing is how much time we want to spend to move the power. Like water? If we want to move a certain amount of water in a specific amount of time, we may need a bigger hose! We need to consider how fast we want to move the water or power and that may mean different amounts at different times.
If we want to fill a big container like a barrel we may want a larger hose than if we want to fill a glass of water? Same for amps and filling batteries!

That means there are times when the battery is really pretty low and we need to get it back to charged pretty fast. Like if the car is dead and we need to get to work. We want lots of amps to charge quick.
But if the mission is to keep the small drains on the RV battery from running them down, we may only need enough amps to offset what the RV is using for what we call "parasitic drains".
A dirty little secret is that the battery disconnect switches DO NOT disconnect ALL the small drains!
One the chassis battery there are less as they involve things like the automatic door locks, radio presets and those smaller drains. On the coach batteries, we have more and larger drains. Things like CO and propane detectors, maybe a propane gas solenoid that keeps the gas line open?
Any safety items are often left connected!
So both coach and chassis may run down, given some time like when we store the RV!
And that gets back to which charger you may want.
If you only want to keep a battery that is fully charged up and not running down, a small battery maintainer may be best for small, cheap, and easy.
Only filling a glass of water!

But if you are wanting to get a battery that is down up and full again, a bigger charger that may put out 6 amps can be a better choice. But there are choices there as well. The newer model chargers can put out a lot when there is a big barrel to fill but then automatically slow as the barrel gets full. Much like we might do with a faucet? A reasonably new charger is much better than one our father might have left over! Those old ones had a habit of charging too high for too long and that runs the barrel over!
Unfortunately, the best method is also the one which takes the most time and effort to watch over things like the voltage and how much water it may be boiling off.
Newer sealed batteries like AGM are great for reducing the labor---but they can also run up the price a bit!

There are very few things that we get for free and have to swap work for money in many cases!

 

[Morich]

May I also throw in some thoughts that may sound more critical than meant? We seem to live in a world full of critics, but this is meant as a "helpful hint"!
When looking at your battery picture above, I notice what might be a problem when needing to start the engine.
I'm a bit of bug on batteries but I do not favor the type clamps I see.
Looking at the red cable, the size of the cable is normal and good size as we need to move a lot of power in a hurry through it to the starter.
But when we look at the clamp added to the cable end, it has been changed and we have to run all that power through a very small spot both where the clamp is on the cable, but also where that small clamp meets the bolt to get to the clamp[ which is actually on the post!
When you need lots of power to turn the engine, it has to come through those small tight spots to get to the good cable! Feeding a large hose through a small hose, perhaps?
It can work okay much of the time but then when we get a cold battery that is a bit on the weaker side due to cold and pass it through weaker cables, we can add to the odds of having trouble.
A bit of the same at the negative cable as well and all that energy has to go through that point as well, so some thought on changing the cables may be worth it.

I hate to recommend spending money but I think it might be worth it to change those two points!

 

[Pointyears]

Happy New Year all!!!!

2012 Winnebago Adventure 35P, two house batteries (no issues) 1 Chassis battery.

I purchased a new chassis battery about two months ago. Started the unit a couple times no issues. Living in Canada we had a spell of below freezing weather for about 5 days. I went into the unit yesterday. Battery dead.

I have the charger on right now.

My question is about a battery maintainer. I see they come in various AMP sizes. Any idea what size I require?

Knowing nothing about this I am reaching out to you for help! Appreciate any advice.

I have tried uploading a pic of battery, no clue if it worked. It has on it CCA 850, CA 1100, RC 150,

Thanking you in advance,
Respectfully,
Andy May

For a trickle charger amps don't matter since you're literally giving a trickle to keep it topped off and optimized. Charging a dead battery is a different situation, but that doesn't sound like what you're asking about since you're already charging. I think my RVs trickle charger is 2 amp and my Mustang's 3 amp.

 

[ATONOFUN]

Thank you for your input, Amazon in Canada has some different products than the USA, I have found a similar smart Charger/Maintainer 2Amp and have made the purchase. I do have both a chassis and house disconnect and intend to use them when the motorhome sits for longer than a month. Appreciated

 

[dickb46]

We have 3 AGM house batteries with a Trik-L-Start hooked from them to our 2 flooded lead acid engine batteries. The coach is always plugged into 110 vac sitting since the end August and all of the batteries ae still fully charged. (I just started the CAT to make sure)

 

[Journey39n]

Doesn't take much to keep a battery topped off. Winnebago provided a roof top solar cell for that job on my coach, rated at 15w. Very little, but if in the sun, it does the job. If up early in the morning, I can check the voltage, and after the sun comes up, the voltage climbs a bit.

 

[Bobn1957]

We have 3 AGM house batteries with a Trik-L-Start hooked from them to our 2 flooded lead acid engine batteries. The coach is always plugged into 110 vac sitting since the end August and all of the batteries ae still fully charged. (I just started the CAT to make sure)

What he said! Although you cannot get Trick-L- Charge device anymore as they've gone out of business, just search for a 40 amp voltage sensing relay and don't forget to put a fuse between it and the house battery. The house battery will then charge the chassis battery as long as you are plugged in!

 

[Mack125]

So I am new at this but what I just read is that I can hook up trickle charger to my chassis battery while still hooked up to the motor or do i have to unhook it from the motor first?

 

[creativepart]

You can attach a trickle charger to a hooked up battery. Just like you can jump start a hooked up battery. But if it's not too inconvenient, I'd remove the positive battery cable as a general rule.

 

[Bobn1957]

What he said! Although you cannot get Trick-L- Charge device anymore as they've gone out of business, just search for a 40 amp voltage sensing relay and don't forget to put a fuse between it and the house battery. The house battery will then charge the chassis battery as long as you are plugged in! If you are plugged in, I would recommend leaving everything on, the batteries will stay charged (Full batteries don't freeze).

 

[Mack125]

Thanks