RE: Battery Drain while plugged into AC power
Eric,
Thanks very much. Is there anyway that I can check the board or is just a matter of replacing it?
Ken
With your rig plugged into shore power........check the voltage at your chassis battery and at your house batteries......if your chassis battery is below 12.7 or there abouts.....you are NOT getting a charge to the chassis battery.....if not........it's pretty safe to assume your control board has gone south.....mine and everyone else that I know of with a Bounder has had to replace it.....
Eric,
Great picture of the control board and the relay that connects the coach and chassis batteries together.
Ken,
If you look at the silver relay (in picture above) and the yellow and black control power wires to it, when plugged in there should be 12 volt power to that relay to energize it and charge the engine battery from the coach battery (that is being charged by the factory installed coach battery charger).
If there is not 12 volt power, then suspect the circuit board is not energizing the relay like it should. But if there is 12 volt power, and you test the voltage from the left and right terminals, you might find a voltage loss across the terminals. The engine battery connects to one side and coach battery to the other side. The voltage should be within 0.1 volts, but if it reads 1.5 volts or more, then the relay has bad contacts, and it needs to be replaced.
If the relay is bad, then when driving the engine battery will not be recharging the coach batteries. I found that my relay went bad after about 6 years. I only noticed it when I drove home from dry camping at night, and the coach battery did not recharge. It recharged the next day with solar power.
Fred.
RE: Finding a Good Electrician
I look at a good electrician every time I see a mirror.
It sounds like you have a bad converter, and it needs to be replaced.
You can buy a 45 amp 12 volt battery charger at Camping World and install it yourself. There are only 3 wires, the +12, - 12 and the third is a 120 volt power cord.
I don't think your problem has anything to do with the installation of the solar panels, but because of the solar panels you did not notice the problem as soon as the converter/charger went out.
It might also be that there is a 40 amp circuit breaker in between the converter/charger and the batteries. By pushing the red button, you can re-set that circuit breaker.
You did not mention what RV you have.
Fred.
RE: no hot water heater bypass
Hi,
I installed a Tee into my pump output and installed a 1/4" gauge there.
In the fall, if I want to winterize, I remove the tee and hook up my air compressor to that fitting, and regulate the pressure to about 15 PSI.
Then I open the various fauscets, collecting the water in a dsihpan, so I don't end up with a tank full of gray water. Then I blow out the water from each line. The hot water tank will still be 3/4 full of water, so I turn off the air and remove the water heater drain plug.
Then I empty the water heater, put the plug back loosly, and turn on the air again. I re-check all the lines to ensure they are empty. At this point, the only water left in the system will be the fresh water tank and the lines from that to the water pump. By disconnecting the fresh water tank to pump line at the tank, I can drain out that line and then put the line into a tank of drinking water safe anti-freeze and pump in the anit-freeze to the pump.
The water lines will not be damaged unless there is a ice plug and no place for the ice to expand into when it freezes and expands. So if the water line is less than 30% full, any freezing conditions will not effect the tubing. You want the water lines 95% empty, but if a few ounces collects in a low point, it will be able to freeze without expanding into a damaging ice cube.
The anti-freeze is not bad for your water heater. The reason they put in a bypass kit is because without one your total system would use about 8-9 gallons of fairly expensive non-toxic anti-freeze. With the bypass kit, you would only need 1-3 gallons of anti-freeze.
Also if you don't drain the water heater before adding anti-freeze, the water in the heater will dilute the anti-freeze going into the hot water lines, making the water/antifreeze solution freeze into solid block of ice that can expand and break the tubing.
Many people report in the spring that they damaged their water pumps because they forgot to get the water out of the pump, or they damage the water heater tank because they turned it on while it was empty, or they did not drain the tank of water.
When I winterized the RV last year, I unplugged the circuit board so the heater would not come on until I took the time to plug in the circuit board again.
I did not use any anti-freeze, but also did not expect to see temperatures below about 22F. Running the water pump while the fresh water tank was empty prevented it from freezing up, and everything was fine. I was very careful to get the compressed air into all the water lines.
Fred.
RE: Stew Olsen
Stew,
I loved watching RV Today, and that is one reason I upgraded my Direct TV to catch your show.
Then a year later they stopped it. I hope that someday you could put on re-runs and perhaps start a new show.
Fred.
RE: Do you leave your brake controller in the vehicle?
Hi,
There is a tab that you need to push to unplug the wiring harness from the controller, then it is a matter of removing the two screws that hold it into the bracket on the dash.
If you want to leave it hooked up all the time, that is fine, and you will be ready to tow whenever. I would only remove it if it gets in the way while not towing.
Fred.
RE: Camping Alone - UPDATE
I an glad to hear that you and Hershey had a great time setting up camp a day early!
Now to get used to coming home on Mondays! Yes that is the next step.
I loved working 4/10 work schedules, and I could take off Friday one week and Monday the following week. So I could take out the RV on Thursday night or early Friday, and then come home on Monday after the rush hour traffic has died down a bit.
I have another friend who's wife works as a school teacher, with 3 months off in the summer. One summer when their son was only 8 or 9, she spent about 2 weeks at a nice RV park about 60 miles from home. She followed him up there with her car, then he went back home with the Suburban, and after work on Monday - Friday returned with his motorcycle to spend the nights at "Home" with them in the campground.
Fred.
RE: To tow or not to tow, that is the question
It would help to know how heavy the SUV is, and if you could use a much lighter weight tow dolly instead of a 2,500+ pound trailer to haul the SUV.
Another thought is you might be able to put the motorcycle on the very front or back of a car trailer, because I think it will be to long to put in your pickup, not to mention to heavy to lift up there without a good ramp and a lot of friends.
Make sure that you have plenty of hitch weight if you use a trailer. Your truck can handle 1,500 pounds of weight, but if you get less than 800 pounds it can become unstable. If you can borrow a hitch extension, then bring it along. It might come in handy if you need to leave the tailgate down to carry the bike in the pickup, but you will damage the tailgate if the tire must sit on it during travel, It is OK if the tire sits on the edge of the pickup bed, yet the tire hangs over a little bit, as long as it does not slip off the truckbed. Plenty of racheting tie straps will come in handy for tying down the motorcycle and stuff.
You might be best off renting a 5' x 10' U-Haul that is either open top or enclosed and put the motorcycle and other stuff in that, then drive the car seperately.
Not driving two vehicles will save fuel, and probably allow switching drivers along the route, so that you would not need to spend more than two days on the road, saving on a hotel bill as well.
Just a thought.
Fred.
RE: Fixing water damage on the old Dodge (pics)
Wow!
I am glad that I keep checking the roof, so I will not have sidewall problems like that!
That is a great big project! I am happy that at least the engine started, and the fuel in the tank was worth more than you paid for it!
Fred.
RE: Electrical Question...
OK...should have clarified...
NO WAY would I try this myself, I'd pay to have it done, here's my situation:
We do Renaissance Fairs for a living, and we camp behind our booth at the AZ show.
We have a 15 amp breaker and outlet box to the booth, and another 15 amp breaker and outlet for the coach.
During the week we don't use the booth power, and I know you can parallel two Honda gennies into one plug, so I was just curious if this sort of thing could be done in my situation?
again...I would not do this myself, just don't want to pay the fair electrician for a service call if it isn't possible.
Thanks!
Hi,
You can do exactly what I descibed.
Plug in the refrigerator and battery charger to one extension cord from the booth 15 amp breaker, and then plug in the whole RV to another 15 amp receptacle. (with is was 20 amps to allow running the rooftop A/C - my A/C uses 12.5 amps on high fan speed, 11.5 on low fan speed, that would be very close to tripping a 15 amp breaker).
By the way, when plugging into a laundry circuit breaker, many times they are wired with seperate circuit breakers, so it might be possible to have 120/240 volts there. Also when at the fair, you might have the same phase to both receptacles, or you might have differant phases, so trying to combind 2 extension cords with differant phases will cause sparking! And even if on the same phase, but one extension cord is 100' longer than the other, that can cause problems too.
By using two extension cords, you can do it safely! Putting less than 15 amps of load on each power cord, and you will not trip the circuit breaker either.
If you only had a Trace SW 2512 inverter. It can assist the input power source to run loads larger than the input capacity. If set for 15 amp shore power, and the load goes over 14 amps, the inverter will sinc with the input power and produce power from the batteries, up to the full capacity of the inverter and batteries. So by using that inverter, a 600 watt solar system, and plugging in a 45 amp battery charger to the other 15 amp circuit, you could in theroy run both air conditioners from a large battery bank and one 15 amp breaker that has less than 14 amps going through it, with the inverter making up the balance of the power required, and the 45 amp charger keeping the batteries above 11.5 volts.
You might be able to find a SW 2512 inverter used (trace does not sell them new anymore). Check out this place, they used to sell them and get in inverters when owners want to upgrade to a larger model.
SolarOnSale.com
Fred.
RE: Inverter install options
Hi,
There are many RV's that feed a 30 amp transfer switch with a 30 amp breaker, and the inverter and shore power from the 30 amp CB feed into the transfer switch, then the output oges to a new panel with 2-4 circuit breakers with 15 or 20 amp circuit breakers as required by the output wire size.
This works great unless you attempt to run two or more electric heaters on the receptacles fed by the inverter and 30 amp circuit breakers. Because the shore power is limited to only 30 amps, it is possible to trip the 30 amp breaker. It might also trip when making coffee and toast while a single heater is running.
Fred.
RE: How long to charge battery?
Thanks Fred,
I am only using a single 12v battery at this time. I don't use the humidifyer much anymore, so not using during camping shouldn't be a problem, especially if it will save on battery time.
2 batteries sounds like a good idea, but that would mean buying 2 new ones since I don't think your supposed to hook an old and new together. Maybe next year for new batteries.
My pup does have a WFCO inverter charger, I didn't know it put out that much charge. I can live with 3-4 hours charging a day, I believe my onboard power cord should be able to plug into the 30 amp socket on my Generac generater.
Thanks again for the help
Hi,
I am always happy to help out.
I guess your best option at this point is to try it with one battery, then see how long it lasts. Then recharge about 2 hours in the mornings and an hour at night.
Then see how well the battery lasts the next night. If it gets low, then run the generator 2 hours morning and night, but if the battery is OK, try 1 hour morning and night.
When you get the chance to modify your battery compartment, then consider adding a pair of golf cart batteries. They will store more than twice the amount of power, and can stand up to discharge over long times. While no battery should be left discharged, (a way to kill a battery quickly) golf cart batteries seem to recover much better than others.
Also a pair of golf cart batteries will allow camping for 2 nights without recharging - unless you are running a high amperage thing like the furnace or watch a lot of TV.
And having the inverter will come in handy if you ever have a power failure at home, and need to sleep with the generator off.
Fred.
RE: If you MUST have a SRW.......
Hi,
Because you want to carry a camper, the highest GVWR is going to be the best truck, and the F-350 is the highest GVWR with factory single rear wheels.
I think the F-350 SRW will carry around 4,000 pounds, so that might include a 2,500 pound camper with 750 pounds of camping gear, 400 in passengers, and some weight on the hitch.
If you find that you meed more weight capacity, there is a bit of an expensive solution, but it is safe. By getting a F-450 with cab and chassis, then replacing the dual rear wheels with 19.5" rims rated at 4,500 pounds, you can have a truck that is not rated at it's full 16,000 GVWR, but pretty close to that much weight.
With the F-450, you would need a bed of some sort. By picking out the correct toolbox body, you would have more storage space in the bins. The toolbox body can be found in differant widths and hieghts, so they are about the size of a regular pickup box.
The newer F-350's have 18" rims that are rated around 3,400 pounds each, so you can put almost 7,000 pounds on the rear axle before overloading the rear tires and rims.
Fred.
RE: How big and what brand inverter do you have
HI,
I suggest a 500 watt inverter like the ones sold at Costco for $30.
You can plug it into a cigarette lighter receptacle, and then power the TV set, laptop, recharge a cell phone, camera, ect.
They are very handy to quietly power something.
Fred.
RE: How long to charge battery?
Hi,
There should be a 45 amp charger in your RV that will charge the battery fine.
How many batteries do you have?
Are you willing to listen to that generator for 2-3 hours per day?
By installing two batteries, you can recharge in 3/4 the time because the batteries will accept the charge faster if it has more amp hours total capacity.
I have 4 golf cart batteries with a total capacity of 440 amp hours. If I have depleted them by 50%, the charger (mine is rated at 70 amps) will start out around 45 - 50 amps, then quickly fall to around 35 amps per hour as the battery voltage begins to rise.
With only a single group 24 battery (the other extreem) the capacity is only about 85 amp hours, and will charge at say 25 amps for a couple of minutes, then fall off towards 10 amps within 15 minutes and charge around that rate for a few hours. It might take 5 hours to put in 50 amp hours used during the day and prior night.
With my charger and 4 batteries, I can put in 50 amp hours within 1.5 hours, and 100 AH within 3 hours. 150 AH might take over 5 hours, because the charger will lower it's output as the battery begins to fill.
How much power will your CPAP use? Good question. I tested one that consumes about 2 amps to run the air pump (at 12 volts) and 3.5 amps while the humidifier heater is running. You can get away without running the humidifier heater as much by using warm water in the humidifier and sometimes not need to turn on the humidity section.
So 8 hours of sleep at 2 amps = 16 amp hours, while 3.5- 4 amps X 8 hours = around 30 amp hours
My RV uses about 35 amp hours to run 24 hours. So if you watch a little TV, run the lights for another 10 hour s per day, then the total amp hours that need to be replaced daily would be around 75 - 100 AH.
Fred.
Fred.
RE: New Improved solar cells???????Help
Read this magazine for a while, and then you will be able to make intelligent decisions.
HomePower.com
I bought my pair of 120 watt solar panels from this place when I dropped off my 1,500 watt Trace inverter for a repair. That was 8 years ago, and they are still paying for themselves. Each day spent dry camping is saving me around $20, so if I dry camp 200 days a year, that I figure is worth about $4,000 a year, much more than my solar system cost.
SolarONSale.com
If you want some good charts for figuring out how much eergy you think you will use, then check out this website. RVSolarElectric.com
I figure that one 120 watt panel is required to make about 35 amp hours used by my RV to run the carbon monoxide and propane detectors for one day. The other 120 watt panel, pair of 45 watt panels and 75 watt panel supply me with plenty of TV watching time, and I can use my inverter to run my laptop as well.
A $30 500 watt inverter is plenty for most applications, more than that much wattage should come from the generator, not a pair of batteries.
Fred.
RE: Did I overfill my batteries or are they shot?
Hi,
Make sure that you neturalize the water that you are picking up with baking soda. Also spread some baking soda around the battery compartment, so that when water leaves the battery, it will get netrualized before damaging anything, or eating through the steel mounts and supports.
The plastic that dips into the battery acid within the battery is supposed to just touch the water, with the slot being slightly higher than the high water level. The plates are supposed to ALWAY be covered with water. But filling above the plastic slot will preven air and hydrogen from escaping from the battery, and thus your condition where it blows out water with the hydrogen.
My tip to you to prevent water overflow with these batteries, I would only fill them to just below the plastic within the batter filler opening.
Fred.
RE: towing Ford Taurus x ?
HI,
It has the same 6 speed transmission and 3.5L engine as my Ford Edge, and it tows nicely. I just bought a hitch kit from Roadmaster, and removed the front bumper, and crossover peice, then installed the new bracket, cut holes in the front facia for the two 1" square tubes that are part of the bracket kit, then re-installed the front bumper.
I put on two brackets and then hitch it to my motorhome when I want to tow the car. Just start the enging, let it run 3 minutes, put it into netural, then shut off the engine, leaving the key in place, so the steering does not lock up. Every 250 miles or so, it is a good idea to restart the engine.
No need to disconnect the speedometer, or anything, becuase the mileage will not accumilate while towing because the engine is off.
Fred.
RE: Need to replace one Goodyear tire
Hi,
See if the tire dealer will give you a trade-in credit for the old but good front tire. Even if they give you a 35% credit towards the new one, I would change both at the same time, and then you have a fresh pair. Even if you don't change the other front tire now, then you should change the tire in another 2 years when it is about 6 years old.
Also make sure that you check your tireweight on each tire. I have a feeling that the left front is going to be a higher weight - because that is where the slide-out is located.
One brand motorhome manufacture actually re-rated it's front axles and replaced the front rims and tires on a few hundred RVs because the front tire on driver's side was overloaded when it left the factory.
Fred.
RE: load testing deep cycles!
I guess that you could use a automotive load tester, but how many amps load will it out on the batteries?
ALso how long can the load tester put that load on the battery without overheating? I have 4 deep cycle batteries and a 1,500 watt inverter. When I run my toaster on the inverter, I usually check the e-meter to se the load. It runs about 90 amps! I can run it for 5 minutes, and then check the battery voltage. Then check the voltage after about 10 minutes with very little load on the battery and see how much it recovered. Usually it returns to within 0.1 volts of the starting voltage within 15 minutes.
Fred.
RE: Camping Alone
Hi,
You need to get across the other point.
Tell them that you will go and set up the camp so that when they arrive everything will be setup already, and they can begin to enjoy themselves right away!
And that you can spend an extra few hours relaxing is another great point! And you can sleep in on the day they arrive.
Fred.
